Hello! My name is TurtleArmyJess and welcome back to another animation tutorial. Just a reminder, I’m using Synfig Studio, a free 2D vector animation program. In part 1, which I highly recommend you watch first, I covered the layout of the program, how to draw some basic shapes, and how to add some basic movement to those shapes. Today, I’m focusing on tips to make more detailed character models and artwork in Synfig. I’m first going to cover some coloring tools. Then I’m going to explain some blend methods. Finally, I’ll cover some advanced drawing tools and how to mirror layers. Throughout the video, I’ll also share some random tips that I use when drawing characters. I’ve got timestamps in the description. Ok, let’s get started. My first art tip is to import your references. If you go to file and import, you can bring an image onto your canvas as its own layer. I like doing this because then I don’t have to flip back and forth between tabs while drawing. The first nice thing you can do with import layers is to use the eye dropper tool to pick colors off of your reference to save time. The matching won’t always be perfect, but it can give you a good starting point on your color selection panel. I really like using the HSV tab for picking colors, but if you don’t like it, there’s a really useful color palette in the upper right corner here. Left clicking a palette color will select it as your fill color. If you find a shade that you might want to (re)use, you can save it. Make sure the color you want to save is in your outline color, then Click the plus button. Don’t forget to save your palette so you can load it later. The second nice thing you can do with an import layer is to draw over it. Working in vectors can be hard to get used to, so when I was starting out, I would doodle characters on paper, take a pic with my phone, import it, and draw layers over it until I developed a style I liked. To assist with tracing, you can adjust the opacity of your layers by selecting a layer, and in the properties panel on the bottom left, change the amount from 1 to a decimal like 0.7 or 0.5. Now I want to go over some blending methods. I’m going to make a little cloud using the draw tool. Then I’m going to add another layer as a shadow. I keep my blend method on composite 90% of the time: it’s simple and basic. Whichever layer has a lower z-depth is closer to the view and covers the layers underneath it. Unfortunately If I want the shadow to line up perfectly, I may need to spend a lot of time zooming in and adjusting the curve. Then, if for some reason I ever have to change the cloud’s shape, I would then have readjust the shadow. A cleaner, faster way to make a shadow is to set your blending to “Onto”. What “onto” means is that where that shadow is covering a layer, the shadow will be displayed. But, if there isn’t a layer underneath, the shadow will be transparent. Now you may have a little problem if there are additional layers present on your canvas. For example, if I add a blue sky background, now my cloud’s shadow is registering a layer underneath it, so the whole shadow layer is visible. To fix this, I’m going to put my cloud and shadow in their own group, with the green folder button. Now the shadow’s “Onto” function no longer recognizes the background because the background is not included in the group. You can either change your blending method in the options of your shape and drawing tools or in the properties panel on the bottom left. The only other blending method that I use is “Alpha Over”. You can use “Alpha Over” to create masks or holes in your artwork. For example, I’m going to draw a pink doughnut using a normal composite layer. Now I’m going to make the doughnut hole. The color doesn’t matter. When I set the hole of the doughnut to “Alpha Over”, it will mask the layers under it. You can now see all the way through the doughnut to the canvas. Once again, group together the doughnut and the doughnut hole so the background isn’t recognized as a layer. The hole now goes through the doughnut but it’s not going through the background. There are a total of 22 different blend methods, but Composite, Onto, and Alpha Over are the only three I use. If you’re interested in the other 19 methods, you can check the wiki, I’ve got a link to it in the description. Now I’m going to talk about some advanced tools for making your art. The first advanced tool is the gradient. This tool makes a gradient between your outline and fill colors. You can then move the two green handles to adjust how fast the colors change and the positioning of the gradient. I enjoy using gradients for backgrounds. If you set your gradient to composite, it will cover your entire screen. However you can set your gradient to “onto”, and then group your gradient with other layers to apply gradient coloring to shapes. The next two tools are for adjusting the handles of complicated shapes. Here’s a really messy heart that I want to alter. So for these two tools, make sure that your width handles are off. In my previous video, I demonstrated how to use the transform tool (the mouse shaped button) to move these handles. You can either move them one at a time or left-click and drag boxes to select multiple handles to move at once. The scale tool and rotate tool work the same way. For the scale tool, there is a “lock aspect” check box on the right side that I usually keep on. The rotate tool also has an “allow scale tool” check box as well. The scale and rotate tools are great for adjustments while setting up shapes but DO NOT use them while animating. If you’re animating a change in scale or a rotation, use a transformation layer for that, I went over how to use transformation layers in my first tutorial. Speaking of my first tutorial, when I was covering the draw tool, I demonstrated what the auto loop function did, but I did not explain what the auto link does. What auto link does is that it will connect orange vertex points between layers if you draw them close enough to each other. So if I have auto link turned on, and I go over to my cloud here, I’m going to draw a streak of rain. This orange vertex here is in the same position on the cloud as it is on the rain. This orange handle is now linked, these two shapes share it. You undo this by right clicking on the orange handle and selecting “disconnect”. When I was first starting out I linked a bunch of points without realizing and got really frustrated. There may be some situations in which linking a bunch of points may save time while animating, but I can’t think of any right now. I never use Auto-Link. The last advanced tool I’m going to cover is the mirror tool. You can use this for symmetry when duplicating layers. For example I’m going to take this heart, duplicate it, select the mirror tool, draw a box around its points, and now when I grab a handle, it will flip the shape around that handle. The tool is set to flip vertically, but holding shift sets it to a horizontal mirror. After you flip the layer, I recommend switching to the translate tool to move it into position, otherwise you can add a bit of distortion to your mirrored layer. So, that is how to mirror things if you’re working with a single shape. Now I’ll show you how to duplicate objects with multiple layers. So I’ve got a group here for my cloud, you can see it has multiple layers in it. I’m going to have the top layer of the group selected. Then, Right click, new layer, distortion, stretch Select the stretch layer and go to properties. Under amount, add a minus to the first number if you want a horizontal mirror, or add a minus to the second number if you want a vertical mirror. Hit enter. Then you can select the folder and use the green handle to move it into position. Alright, that’s all the info I have for this tutorial. Join me next time for when I demonstrate how I build a character model and how to animate some common motions on that character. Please leave me a comment if you have any questions or recommendations for any other Synfig tutorials I should make in the future. Thanks again for watching, until next time.
