Link: https://youtu.be/UcblaBJVr8g
Context:
This is the latest event in my story within the Mafalda world. Muriel finally gets the courage to confess to Miguel, but he flatly rejects her with cruelty. This is the song animation about her demolishing heartbreak 
The soundtrack is Mil Pedazos De Mi Corazon, by Cristina Rosenvinge. A powerful, SAD, SAD ballad from 1992, but now forgotten. It’s in Spanish, but if you look for it in Youtube, it can show you a translation.
Krita phase:
First, I drew a comic page with 9 frames… but not for immediate publishing like the other comic pages, but as a base for animation. Each frame would hold the text of 2 song lines, so they hold 1 idea each, and are similar in timelength. I use the Krita animation feature to make a “boilover” effect, by re-drawing everything 2 times more on frames 2 and 3.
I made copies of the Krita files and cropped them to isolate each frame.
3 frames are special. The girl walking, the boy walking, and the motorcycle. They were animated in Krita. The girl walking was 12 frames, and the others are 4 frames. Everything was exported as sequences of PNGs in different folders.
Synfig phase:
I created the project as 720x720 to be compatible with Instagram, and 4 FPS because that’s the framerate I need, and I don’t want to manage more than 1000 frames.
Added the audio track as mp3.
I imported each set of PNGs, added the group container and the Time Loop object. Everything visible and mounted on each other on the canvas… A REAL MESS.
But I gave each group a good name, to remind me of the order and meaning of each object.
When I press play, all objects are animated, cycling the frames the way I need them. It was important to change the Time Loop parameter to the correct number of frames.
Transitions, like a Powerpoint presentation:
Then I scroll to the points in time where there should be transitions, guided by the audio. I modified the opacity to make each object appear and disappear at the correct times.
First mistake was to start with everything visible: opacity 1.00. If I had started with everything with opacity 0.0, I would not need a starting waypoint with opacity 0.0 in all objects. Oh well, I continued.
I created “Dissolve Through Black” transitions with a black rectangle covering everything. This has opacity with “Linear” waypoint type, to make a smooth appearing and disappearing effect.
For some esthetic reasons, I needed to make some animations have smooth linear animated opacity.
In retrospect: I completely forgot that I could use a “Switch Group” object, to select which animation is being shown in each time period, instead of working with the opacities.
Movement and parallax:
In some scenes of the video you see the character or background move. This is a simple transform animation.
But in some scenes, the background and objects are sliding at different rates, creating a 3D movement sensation. Some sideways, and some with approaching or leaving movements.
Experience:
I didn’t use Synfig for about 9 months, so I kinda forgot the best way of doing these things. But this time, I was very happy that Synfig (Linux 64 bit) only crashed on me once, not several times like last year 
Previous video: A little Mafalda animation, suggest ways to improve
I have other musical projects 