How to animate a 2d image convincingly

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I found a post that was asking about how to do what I’m trying to accomplish:

@SkysTheLimit"

Hi, new to this community and Blender, and though all the artists here are extremely intimidating, I hope to become a part of it someday.

So my main question:

How would I go about making a simple, looping animation of an existing 2D image?
Example:

• Mildly NSFW (lower nudity) Please note that the entire site of this artist is NSFW.

Is this “easier” to accomplish before throwing myself into full-scale 3D modelling? I’m not a 2D artist so I figured this was the way to go, but the only tutorials I’ve found relating to modelling in Blender involves full 3D models, which is not really the look I’m hoping to achieve.

Any pointers or tutorials would be greatly appreciated, thank you.

one person replied with this:

@ridix"

This type of 2D animation can be done quite easily with Blender: For your example I created simple 2D faces tracing the base image. Added Armature rigs and weighed it to the 2D image. And used “Auto IK” to bend / animate the tail. That’s it.

I’m new to blender and I don’t understand how to do what ridix is saying. could someone possibly make a step by step tutorial on how to do this? I’ve been googling for tutorials for hours and this is the closest thing I’ve found that is even talking about what I’m trying to do. or at least point me in a direction of how to learn to do the things required for this because this is the only thing I want to try to use blender for. thanks a lot if you help!

[Amr_Kamel]

I don’t see why you need to treat a 2d mesh any differently than a 3d one, you simply parent the mesh to the armature you’ve created and then weight paint each bone to the vertices they’re supposed to influence. In the end the same principles that apply to 3d meshes are the same that apply to 2d meshes, you model it, then rig it and animate away.

If you’re new to blender then check out some rigging tutorials just to understand how it works and apply the steps to your model.
There are a lot of good rigging tutorials on youtube, as well as basic information about tools and how they funcion on the blender wiki.

Hope this was helpful.

[ridix]

There are many ways to do 2D animation. The example I showed uses flat 2D object with Armature parented to it. Moving the armature will move the Mermaid’s tail in that example. And it can be animated. One should get result similar to this:

The method is really called 2.5D Parallax Animated Photo. The method is explained here:

2.5D Parallax Animated Photo Tutorial (using Free Software)

In his case he used “Shape keys” to animate the image and not Armature.