Couple of animated path (Synfig calls them Splines) animations. I am a fan of minimalism and while some animations can be complex, I like using simple figures to represent them. One of my favorite animations is Simon's Cat, which can be seen on youtube. A simple black and white animation, but it gets the point across quite nicely. Enough philosophical rambling though. Here are the animations:



Four circles follow a path. Figuring out how to accomplish that in Synfig took me a long time. The hard part to figure out is how to keep the circles even spaced throughout the animation. I was able to use a position value in the keyframing elements to do this. Of course on the other hand, once I understood how to do that, I could use that knowledge to make the circles separate and come back together as they travel along the path. Sort of like a slinky effect I suppose.



The above is the sixth version of this animation. I arrived at it after tweaking things and adding other elements including some color. Here is the original form of the animation:



In the original animation, the tail expands and contracts too much. Unless you are using a bungy cord on the tail and have a stiff wind, it should remain relatively the same length. In the sixth version shown above this one, the tail still needs some work.

I have included a ZIP file with the Synfig sifz files for anyone wanting to play around with either animation and maybe add some tweaks of your own if you wish.

Thank you for checking out these little animations.

Lovely animations. I like the way the kites move - very naturally.

Thank you ccbarr, I'll take you up on the files offer. Synfig is on my list of programs to learn more about.
I know you like your animations, although it's not in the same league as Synfig, have you heard of QGifer?

Very nice ccbar.