I have searched, searched and searched but not able to find a single tutorial on how to make short animation movie using blender. Actually there are several issues that are related to the idea. I want to make 2D nursery rhymes for kids and want to start with finger family. How can I rig 2D hand and attach characters to the fingers. I mean I have searched a lot and not able to find any tutorial on this. I am new to blender and other than basics I know nothing about this kind of complex animation. It would be great if you or any one else can help me out in this regard.
Also it is not just related to finger family rhymes I also want to create short animation movies like 5 to 10 minutes long. Can anyone help me out?
well the Piero course on CG Cookie is a hugely in-depth Blender animation tutorial series, but 3D not 2D but it would tell you a lot of what you’d need to know.
The rigging of 3d and 2d characters is actually quite similar. If you can rig 3d characters, you can rig 2d characters as well. The main difference is that with 2d characters (and scenes) the viewpoint is a flat plane, and the character components (generally) consist of flat 2d meshes as well (but not always - 3d character components can be very handy for 2d characters as well).
Anyway, first learn to rig simple to medium complex 3d characters. If you are able to rig in 3d, 2d rigged characters become quite simple to pull off.
Next, the cutout tools plugin may be quite helpful as well. For one, it adds the option to fix your camera to a 2d one, and two it includes a plugin for Photoshop and Gimp to export a 2d character and automatically converts that to a working 2d rigged one in Blender.
Of course, in Blender version 2.78 the 2d animation Grease Pencil tools may prove quite helpful as well when doing 2d animation work.
Aside from these, first learn the basics well. Then proceed to do the rigging course, and then start experimenting with COA tools and create your own 2d rigged characters.