blog.ninapaley.com/2013/01/03/it … ftware-is/
let’s speed up the ui redesign 
“it’s simply not useable by anyone not actually developing the software”
Oh, REAAAAAALLLYY? lol
Maybe what is really needed is a Synfig Made Easy,a beginners guide .Perhaps like the One with the Flea character that was done for Anime Studio.Focusing on Character animation,Learning Synfig by building a character and animating it.
As a non-developer user I can say that making it actually user friendly is preferable a long tutorial. I learned from video tutorials.
I tried posting a comment to the blog, but it didn’t show up, so I’ll just post it here:
Crowdfunding is all about getting the maximum available publicity. I recommend coming up with a detailed marketing strategy before launching a time-limited funding effort. $100k is possible with dedication to the marketing. Preparation might start with making a list of every possible valuable social media contact and news site you can think of.
If going with the Synfig team, they should write a detailed description of how the money will be spent and make the needed preparations and developer contacts. IndieGoGo might be the best platform, if aiming for something like $100k (you can select an option where you get to keep the money even if the goal is not reached). Consider also setting the initial goal much lower and then listing stretch goals right at the outset.
Perks/rewards should also be planned well. They don’t have to be physical objects and I’m not sure, if people donating to open source are interested in getting things like t-shirts or mugs.
An alternative to a platform service is just to host the campaign with a tool like selfstarter.us/
For smaller projects and single bugs and features there is freedomsponsors.org/
Here’s an example, where even 800 euros was too much for an open source animation program: goteo.org/project/tupi-magia-2d
Good point. I made a overview of that tutorial before it was released by my friend AmigaMan.
We need something like that, yes or perhaps with a series of video tutorials.
-G
Woah, I just discovered the Google+ post with 70+ comments already. Some very nice propositions in there already:
Nina can definitely make crowdfunding happen, because she has a following. We all know Sita Sings the Blues, but even her latest short film This Land Is Mine, released 3 months ago, has already been viewed 1.4 million times (Vimeo + Youtube stats).
“nina can definitly …” si sen~or de accuerdo… and i like nina’s work .
This thread started has a good info … is it morphing to a very great news ???
Hummm… i never went to madrid…is it nice in april ?
see(:ya!
The problem is that people with flash background have no idea what vector graphics is. They just get their pen tablet and use the pen tool to draw. They leave all the hard work to be done from the software. They do not know the beuty of the bezier curves and how perfecty can applied to human figures. This is the reason that bad vector graphics artists need bone tools for animation. To group their messy vector drawngs and move it.
The funiest thing is that they ask for svg support. But with svg they get a huge in kb svg file cause they have handrends of points for simple shapes.
Synfig needs to improve in stability and speed and not in favor of user’s inability. A bone animation is a better aproach to help the bad vector graphics artist.
I do not know Paley’s work but I see bad vector graphics usage in almost every flash animation.
Depends on when they started in my experience. I started with Flash 2, back in the dial-up internet days when I spent hours taking every unnecessary vertex out of my Flash animations by hand to meet bandwidth limits.
Sadly, I got so good at it I used to get other people’s artwork because people knew I could turn their messy drawings into something a fraction of the size! That was a mind-numbingly dull job.
People who started with Flash much later often do exactly as you say - make shapes full of vertices that are hell to animate.
You can easily know it… all her work are under CreativeCommons, some under CopyHeart licence
sitasingstheblues.com/
blog.ninapaley.com/2012/10/01/this-land-is-mine/
questioncopyright.org/minute_memes
for long to shorter nina works … [ that i try to copy a lot 
]
i support (more intellectually … but…) nina’s interrogation about liberate the vector workflow !
see(:ya!
If I could interject, it was also because Flash needed to cater to animators who preferred working traditionally. 
And it’s easier to “draw” with a tablet quickly than to slave over with a line tool. Plus, some professional artists prefer to draw and frames themselves than to “automate” their tweening, giving them absolute control, which is something Synfig lacks currently when it comes to doing just that “properly”.
Now getting back on the topic:
Despite Synfig’s innovative approach to art quality, we already know that Synfig is lacking plenty of modern-day toolsets that people would expect from an animation software. Our primary focus (not to undermine the hard work of the developers, though) should be be to pull through those shortcomings, so as to keep the user-base growing, and thus garnering more support. (I know, I tried lipsyncing in Synfig for my Polar Detective episode, and it was excruciating enough to make me give up the software for a full-fledged movie tool, and move to Blender instead) Without giving up on Synfig just yet, I have since developed realistic expectations of the software for now, and decided to simply make do with the best it has to offer, and not to “work through” what it does not support. But I’m just a persistent artist who never gives up; but what about the majority, who eventually will (and have)?
Tutorials are the easy part, and I’m thinking of making that happen. But what about the rest of the problems here? Without intending any offense, my advise would be currently this: What drives you most frustrated about using Synfig for a full-fledged movie? Fix them, but not what isn’t broken.
EDIT: Just thought I’d insert some of Steve Jobs’ own standard dialogues for humor’s sake to bring across the idea of what people “expect” form us:
Steve: “Tell me, what is this software supposed to do?”
Developer: “(insert software claim here)”
Steve: “Then why the heck doesn’t it do that?!”
Nina Paley is now listed in the participants list of LGM 2013.
Here is the G+ post where she talked about attending and giving a talk expanding on her blog post: plus.google.com/108742242108606 … pLxtw9EaZ1
This might interest some news sites and I hope Nina would post or tweet about it so the news can be shared to raise awareness of LGM (and help raise funds).
Yep, what i did (also to promote Z funding!) for a french website (linuxfr.org)
“Ce rendez-vous en avril prochain pourrait marquer une étape majeure dans la vie de ce logiciel libre aux fonctions uniques(?) de liens/exports entre points clés d’une animation. En effet, un article de Nina Paley sur son …” linuxfr.org/news/synfig-studio-a … eting-2013
If you want a news sites/paper show an information, sometime you need to submit by yourself the news to the team who take care of the site.
So if you have an idea where you want read/display this news, go on !!! write some words and submit then !
see(:ya!
Hey guys, did Synfig meet her(Nina) expectations now?
What’re the pending(s)? AFAIK sound/audio option missing. And I agree that UI is little bit difficult(like blender) to handle. If it’s easy then already I would have posted atleast couple of tutorials.
I didn’t use synfig much now, actually I was/am busy with something(? you could see my previous posts) so I couldn’t spend much time here. But downloaded latest version 0.64 couple of weeks ago. I’m glad that I got this version(major) because I’m using windows 7.
Anyway I’ll help you guys on couple of ways later. Thanks for the later version.
During LGM 2013, Zelgadis, synfig’s knight, Gustav from Tupi and Nina has meet about 2d animation floss …
You can have a look to LGM 2013 report & afterthoughts, from z.
But i want to say, nop…it’s “awful”, synfig do not -actually?- meet Nina’s expectations…
Hi!
With all respect for Nina Paley and her work and not ignoring the valid remarks she had or still has on Synfig, but I think it is a bit short sighted of her for not even trying to work with Synfig even not for one of her tiny projects. I mean, I don’t think that she learned using Flash in jiffy. I worked with Animo for ten years and l used Harmony and TV paint on several ocasions in a professional environment and one thing I learned is that learning a new animation program takes a lot of time and effort and you have to make the effort to learn to work around the quirks of every program because no program is perfect. If you think that the half implemented bone system in Synfig is complicated then try rigging a character in Harmony with deformers without getting a headache.
Greetz!
Just checked Nina Paelys Blog. She has chossen a replacment for her beloved Flash and its not an open Source program.She is now using Anime Studio Pro and Praising her Teacher.Not that she has given up totally on open source,she dose mention the Tupi Kickstarter.
Yes Synfig can be hard to learn and always thought what was really needed is comprehensive set of Tutorials.DarthFurbys Tutorials are a step in the right direction and look foward to the Zeldegais training DVD. Yes the Development of new features is needed but what I see as the key to Synfigs success is Clear Documentation and Tutorials.
I am absolutely agree with everything said above. Though, I have to say a few words advocating Nina.
Although she bought a new proprietary software, she still gave a donation to our Synfig fundraising campaign.
Also, in my opinion things are moving in the good direction, because conceptually Anime Studio is much closer to Synfig at the moment.
After couple of revisions(Synfig) & the Training DVD releases, Surely she’ll continue to use Synfig. Glad to know she donated for the recent campaign, so it shows that still she likes Synfig.
Like most users, she also expecting audio option, Visible audio waveform in timeline.
I have used flash in past(8 years ago, version is 5 IIRC) & it had audio option which was easy for me to make a video with audio without using any other tools. I was just a novice in flash during that time & now I don’t remember anything about flash because I didn’t touch flash after that. Only recently I got interested in animation & found synfig but without audio. I hope that one day you’ll add that option, Untill then I’ll wait & use any other tools for that option.
And happy to see the recent Synfig updates.