askvity

How Do You Make a 2D Stickman Animation in Blender?

Published in 2D Animation Blender 5 mins read

Making a 2D stickman animation in Blender primarily involves creating a stick figure using curves or simple shapes, building a skeletal structure (rig) for it, and then animating that rig over time, often utilizing background images for context.

Blender, known for 3D, is also a capable tool for 2D animation. For a stick figure, you don't necessarily need complex character modeling. The core process revolves around rigging and keyframe animation.

Essential Steps for 2D Stickman Animation in Blender

Here's a breakdown of the typical workflow:

1. Creating the Stick Figure

You can create your stick figure artwork using a few methods:

  • Curves: Draw lines using Bezier curves or paths to form the limbs and body. These can be easily manipulated and animated.
  • Simple Meshes: Use cylinders or thin boxes for limbs and spheres for joints, though this is slightly more 3D.
  • Grease Pencil: Blender's Grease Pencil allows for drawing directly in 3D space, which is excellent for hand-drawn 2D animation, including stick figures.
  • Image Planes: Create your stick figure drawing in a 2D program and import it as an image on a flat plane in Blender.

2. Rigging the Stickman

Rigging is crucial for efficient animation. Instead of moving each part individually, you build a connected skeleton.

  • Add an Armature: Go to Add > Armature > Single Bone. This creates the first bone.
  • Extrude Bones: In Edit Mode for the armature, select the end of a bone and press E to extrude a new connected bone. Build the stick figure's skeleton (spine, arms, legs, etc.).
  • Parent Bones: Ensure bones are correctly parented (e.g., forearm bone is parented to the upper arm bone).
  • Weight Painting (Optional but Recommended): For mesh or grease pencil objects, you need to tell the bones how they affect the object. Since a stick figure is simple, this might be straightforward or even automatic depending on the object type. For curves or Grease Pencil, linking the object to the armature is often done via modifiers or parenting.

3. Posing and Animation

Once rigged, you can pose your stick figure using the armature.

  • Switch to Pose Mode: Select the armature and change from Object Mode or Edit Mode to Pose Mode.
  • Rotate Bones: Select bones and rotate them (R) to pose the figure.
  • Insert Keyframes: With the bones in a desired pose, press I to insert keyframes (e.g., Location, Rotation, Scale, or LocRot). Keyframes record the position/rotation at a specific point in time.
  • Move Through Timeline: Advance the timeline (right arrow or drag the marker).
  • Create New Poses: Adjust the bone rotations for a new pose.
  • Insert More Keyframes: Press I again to record the new pose at the new time. Blender will automatically create smooth transitions (interpolations) between your keyframed poses.

4. Setting up the Scene and Camera

To see your animation from a fixed viewpoint and potentially add backgrounds, you need a camera.

  • Add a Camera: If you don't have one, go to Add > Camera.
  • Switch to Camera View: To see what the camera sees, you can press Numpad 0 or go to View > Cameras > Active Camera. As mentioned in the reference, you can switch to the camera view here.
  • Position the Camera: Move the camera object (G) and rotate it (R) in the scene until your stickman animation is framed correctly in the camera view.

Utilizing Background Images

Backgrounds add context to your animation. Blender allows you to add background images to the camera view.

  • Access Background Images: In the camera settings (with the camera selected and in the Object Data Properties tab - often looks like a green camera icon), you'll find settings for Background Images. The reference specifically points out this option: "let's go here under day top and the background images."
  • Add Image: Click Add Image.
  • Open Image: Browse to your background image file (e.g., a PNG or JPG).
  • Adjust Settings: You can control how the image is displayed. The reference notes settings like "stretch" and "fit". Changing from "stretch" to "fit" adjusts the image size to fit within the camera frame without distortion, though parts of the image might be outside the frame if aspect ratios don't match. Other options include "Crop" and "Stretch".
Setting Description
Stretch Image stretches to fill the camera frame
Fit Image is scaled proportionally to fit the frame (may leave empty space)
Crop Image is scaled proportionally to fill the frame (may cut off parts of the image)

5. Rendering

Finally, render your animation as an image sequence or video file.

  • Set Output Settings: In the Output Properties tab (printer icon), choose your output location, file format (e.g., FFmpeg Video, PNG sequence), and frames per second (FPS).
  • Render Animation: Go to Render > Render Animation.

Using these steps, combined with the ability to set up background images within the camera view and adjust their display settings like 'fit', you can create engaging 2D stickman animations in Blender.

Related Articles