Help needed: developing a beginner's tutorial [reviewing the process]

#1

Hi guys! I’m doing a master’s in Technical Communication and one of my current courses focuses on the development of a tutorial. Since many of my fellow students could really benefit from an animation tutorial, I’ve decided to create a beginner’s tutorial for Synfig.

My question is: is there anyone willing to review/test my tutorial during development? Expert’s views are also very welcome. Basically: all testing and/or feedback would really help me (and, hopefully, this community too).

The tutorial I’m making focuses on the following basic animating procedures:

  • Setting Up the Project
  • Creating a Gradient Background
  • Placing an Image onto the Canvas
  • Creating Vector Images
  • Grouping Multiple Layers
  • Animating: setting up the first scene
  • Animating: movement
  • Animating: rotation
  • Animating: opacity
  • Animating: size

I hope we can make a great beginner’s tutorial together. Thanks!

#2

Great idea but do you know it already exists? :wink:


See on main page: https://www.synfig.org/

#3

Thanks! I must say that I have not seen that tutorial yet. My bad, it looks great!

However, I feel like it is a rather extensive (and thus, possibly, long) tutorial. My aim is to make an as short as possible tutorial covering just what you need to know as a student who wants to create a simple animation for a school project, and not per se for people who want to become really good animators.

Or am I in the wrong place for such a project on this forum?

#4

Yeah, I can help you reviewing and give feedback of what you are working.

#5

That’s a great course @BobSynfig but for some reason it doesn’t show you how to draw and animate vectors in Synfig, Can you believe it!? It’s mainly about cut out animation and use of external assets.

#6

That is really great, thank you so much! I will let you know as soon as I have an update on the process.

#7

I do want to have a look as well! :smiley:

#8

That is amazing! Great, thanks! You’ll hear from me as soon as possible.

#9

Hi guys! I’m sorry for the radio silence over the past few days.

I’ve made a (VERY) simple animation for absolute beginners, using some of the (what I think are) key principles of Synfig and animating in general. Also, I have created a short, written tutorial draft.

Could you guys please check out these documents. and let me know if there is anything you miss, or wish to see differently? Other general comments are ofcourse also welcome!

Thank you in advance!

Preliminary tutorial steps:

Example video:

Edit BobSynfig: Direct link to the video (as it seems that Google videos are not integrated properly in discourse, a matter of security)

#10

Hi! It’s looking alright. I followed it and these are some very minor notes:

Grouping Multiple Layers Together
1.Select the layers of all the circles that make up your think cloud by clicking on them in the ‘Layers’ window while holding shift

Selecting with Shift just work with a block of layers, if the layers are in different places use Ctrl, works directly on the canvas too

**

  1. Select the ‘Group Layer’ button on the bottom of your ‘Layers’ window (the one that looks like a folder)

**

Maybe ‘Click on’ not ‘Select’

3. Rename the group ‘think cloud’ by double clicking on it

With F2 too.

4. Select both layers ‘MisterBoy_body.png’ and ‘MisterBoy_arm.png’ by clicking on them in the ‘Layers’ window while holding shift

same: Shift / Ctrl

Animating phase three: rotation
1.In your timeline, while still at the 18th frame, click the ‘Add New Keyframe’ button

Move to the keyframes tab first. You are in the parameter tab by default

#11

Great feedback, ebarranko! Thank you so much. I will be back with an updated version ASAP.

#12

It is quite detailed for a start, pretty good :slight_smile:

Does the tutorial will include the vector shapes as well (such as lines and regions) ._.