Hey there!

I decided to make a mobile game with two friends. I finished the graphics for the three characters:



One of my concerns for the game is that we will have huge problems with animations, because nobody has done that before. Yesterday I harvested the Internet for tips and similar stuff, tried to get warm with synfig and vectorian giotto, took a look at pencil and tupi, but I did not found what seemed powerful enough to create good vectorized animations.
I love Inkscape and I think that the best solution for me is to work with keyframes and use path Interpolation between them, but with groups and more complex graphics, also this with get rather tricky. An other thing I tought about was frame by frame animation, but That is very time-intense and if I don't save every frame in a layer group I will loose control over the animation, once done.

So my questions are, if any of you have made experiences with animations in synfig or inkscape and what would recommend doning. Also of course, how you like the graphics

Thanks in advance!

Hello,
If you ask me, I will say:
- Draw your characters in Inkscape. In this case I think it's better the dev version 0.49 as it has a better support for exporting to synfig
- As they are simple (no gradients, or filters), export to Synfig
- Do the animation, using the last version (0.64). Just use the simple tools, transform, rotate, scale, a little of morphing in the paths always save!!
- Export the animation in several png images
- Put the pngs in spritesheets, if you prefer. Or use Gimp to do a post-edition, or convert to gif.

It always take time. It's not easy to do an animation, and be prepared to use ... a lot of time

About the graphics ... well ... they are ok ... It's better for animation, because they are simple.

Hey Hulf,

Thanks a lot for your reply. I don't know how stable version 0.49 is right now, I got the export working with this extension: https://github.com/nikitakit/svg2sif

Your tip is one of the options I thought about. I would be interested if you have any experience in working with synfig, because right now this program does not look that finished to me. I've seen a few works, that were done in Synfig, that are pretty impressive (like this one http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PThy9_RZQ8c), but I'm not sure if this piece of software will make it through the next 2 Years and I don't want to invest a lot of time in learing something, which has no future.

So has anyone made any expirience with Synfig and if yes would you recommend it for my project?

About, 0.49... If you ask me about stability, I'm using Win7, and downloaded the last version from the links that appear in the Inkscape page. On the other hand, I won't put my hands on fire about the stability of any version. But The 0.49 has an exporter to synfig. I don't know if the used for you is better. You will have to try that.

Your tip is one of the options I thought about. I would be interested if you have any experience in working with synfig, because right now this program does not look that finished to me. I've seen a few works, that were done in Synfig, that are pretty impressive (like this one http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PThy9_RZQ8c),

- I just did a little animation, very very simple, just circular objects changing their size, position, color, etc. It is possible to do more complicated animations, like following a path, linking an object to other, adding bones (which is hard, I don't recomend), adding an effect, or change a gradient, or using some kind of programatic variables. But is more complicated.

but I'm not sure if this piece of software will make it through the next 2 Years and I don't want to invest a lot of time in learing something, which has no future.

- About the continuity of ANY open source project, in general ...I don't know!.

- But, at the end ...trying to be helpfull, just release your project. You don't need to learn more.