I'm doing my final college graduation project ( https://web.facebook.com/pages/Watchmak ... 03?fref=ts )now. And since I'm interested in open-source programs, I wanted to try making the 2d short using only these.

Recently, my NID animation batch started making 1 short gif per person per week based on a common topic decided over the weekend (at http://hanimashaan.tumblr.com/ ). This perfectly aligned with my interests : I wanted to do some test animations for a while now to test the technical aspects of what I was aiming to achieve using open-source softwares.

So, here are the breakdowns of my tests using Blender, Krita, Gimp (with G'MIC), Natron and Inkscape.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N150Pt24qP4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_CkXeQAuS4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctMut2Ter-M

Now that Krita 2.9.9.2ae beta has been released, I've been using it for a new series of collaborative projects.


This loop was entirely made in Krita itself. First, a rough loop in a tiny canvas so that the fps isn't affected (my laptop isn't giving me exact fps if the animation image is too big). Then I resized every frame to a higher resolution and painted each frame individually. It was quite fun and exciting to animate in your favourite painting program. The animation tools have a solid foundation, but it definitely needs many improvements, including resizing and placing the toolbars, playback in proper fps, resizing multiple frames simultaneously, etc. But I'm really happy that animation feature is now being integrated into the main program, and eagerly waiting for Krita 3.0 and further. Lots of thanks to the people who are making it happen.

Hi Shaheen,

By NID do you mean NID Ahmedabad? ( If yes its great to see someone from India using krita )


the gif you attached is nice also best of luck for your project

Yes, kamathraghavendra, NID Ahmedabad. Thanks. The project is happening, just at a slow pace.

wow this one is amazing!

Man, you are getting some really cool styles in your Blender/Gimp/etc. tests.

The all Krita mouth gif turned out great! Would love to watch a screencast of your process for that one.

Thanks comhorse!
Ah, andyvandalsem .. I was still figuring out how things worked in Krita animation while making this one. I can make a process video once a stable version of Krita animation is released.

shaheens wrote:I can make a process video once a stable version of Krita animation is released.

That would be awesome. Looking forward to it.

Over the last year, I've continued working in open-source softwares for 2d animations. Here are 2 of them:

SleepySlipWalk (4Feb2017)
This one was completely done in Krita, from rough to coloring.

A short loop animation trying out Krita(3.1.1)'s frame-by-frame tools after a while. Now the developers have added an animation curves feature, which can only be used on opacity at the moment, but still, a good start for more possibilities. Also used the humble-looking but powerful (adjustable grow selection, eraser as fill color!!) fill tool for coloring as I had cleaned-up lines. Took almost a week to make these 4 seconds.


Ideal Death (2September2016)
Took a small break from Watchmaker work to make this, using only greasepencil2 from blender 2.78testbuild2.


And now I've started making tutorials explaining my process.
https://youtu.be/CcreMz68mxE
This one is on how to use G'MIC to color animations, a process I use to color many of my 2d animations. It uses only free, open-source softwares like GIMP, G'MIC plugin for GIMP and Export layers plugin by khalim19.

The advantage of this method is that:
-unlike painting manually, the line edges are detected automatically & large areas are colored quickly.
-unlike bucketfill, this works well even if the line is sketchy/rough and has huge gaps. And coloring mistakes can be fixed iteratively.
-it gives fully filled, aliased color images which are great for compositing.

Hope someone finds it useful

Hi Shaheens,

Your work looks amazing, I've always been curious as to how 2D animations are done.

The mouth reminds me of Courage the Cowardly Dog a little bit But the rest of the stuff for me looks really cool as well!

Keep up the good work!
DJ

I love your animations, the movement of this drunksleepingweird guy is really beautiful