molly,
Did you try the
basic synfig animation tutorial?
Just as with Gimp, it can feel overwhelming at first using it. I know I felt that way.
If you would like to try a simple animation, having a circle move from point A to point B and back to point A, I'll post some simple steps for you here:
After opening Synfig Studio, you have a lot of windows that open. The two to concern yourself with at the moment are the main Canvas window, which is comparable to the Gimp Image Window, where you do you drawing. The other is the Toolbox window, like Gimp it has the various Tool icons on it.
First, place your mouse pointer anywhere inside the Canvas portion of the Canvas window (the part with the checkerboard squares), right-click your mouse and select:
Edit | Properties
In the window that opens, towards the bottom there are three tabbed sections. Click on the Time section.
In there set your Start Time to 0f (for frame zero) and End Time to 5s (for five seconds) Set Frame per Second to 24.00.
Once you have made those changes, if you have to at all, click OK to close the window.
Click on the Circle Tool from the Toolbox window.
Somewhere towards the upper left corner of your Canvas Window, click and drag out your mouse a short distance to make a little circle.
When finished, go back to the Toolbox window and select the Normal Tool, basically looks like and arrow with a circle shading on it.
Go back to your Canvas window and in the lower right corner of the window, beyond the Canvas area, there is a little green dot. If you hover your mouse over it, it will say: "Not in Animate Editing Mode"
Click it and it will turn red. If you hover your mouse over it again, it will now say: "In Animate Editing Mode"
Also, you will now see a red border around your Canvas in the Canvas window. That let's you know any changes you make in this mode will affect the animation of your objects. In this case you only have one, a circle.
Now, if the circle you drew in the Canvas window does not have a green dot in the center click with your mouse pointer somewhere inside the circle to activate it. There is also a green dot on the edge of the circle, but please to not click on it for this tutorial. Then place your mouse pointer over the center green dot in the circle and click and hold down your mouse button and drag the circle to the lower right corner of the Canvas. That will be the starting position for the Circle. (Normally, instead of moving it into it's first position, you would set a keyframe for the first position of the circle before moving it, but that can be for a later tutorial.)
At the bottom left of your Canvas window, you see a little window with 0f in it. That lets you know what frame of the animation you are in. 0f is the beginning of the animation, at zero frames.
Double-click in that box and change it to 2s12f (means 2 seconds and 12 frames, which is the half way point of your animation). Then press the Enter key.
Now click on the center of the circle and holding down your mouse button, drag it back up to the upper left corner of the Canvas.
Synfig now knows it must move the circle from the lower right corner where it was to the upper left corner.
Next, go back to that box in the lower left of the Canvas window and change the value in there from 2s12f to 5s then press your Enter key.
Now, with the Normal Tool still active, place your mouse cursor again over the green dot in the center of the circle and click-drag the circle back down to the lower right corner of the Canvas. Try to get it near the position it was before, but it doesn't have to be perfect.
You have just completed your first Synfig animation.
Now, to Preview it, just hold your mouse pointer inside the Canvas portion of the Canvas window (but outside the boundaries of the Circle) and right-click and select:
File | Preview
A little Preview Options window opens. Just accept the default options and click on the Preview Button.
In the Preview Window that opens, click the little circular arrows button (if you hover your mouse cursor over it, it says Toggle Looping)
Then click on the little Green Arrow beside it to play the animation. If all went well, the little circle should go back and forth between the two corners.
The animation would still need to have a background added and then rendered, but this tutorial was just about helping you to make the animation. You can save it as a .sifz file, which is a normal Synfig file format. I have a dedicated Synfig folder to keep all of my Synfig work in. The sifz files are very small in size and you can easily send them to another Synfig user to see your results before you would render it into a GIF file or into separate image files, or into a video file.
Well, just throwing this out in case you want to give it a try. Thanks.
![Smile :)](./images/smilies/icon_smile.gif)