Making a Simple 2D Animation in Blender

I drew this cute white kitty with a pink bow and a little heart pendant around her neck. For future projects, I wanted to bring her to life with a little animation! Initually I was only going to animate her tail… but I thought, why not try to animate a little bit more? This is the first time I animated a drawing in this manner, and I wanted to write down what I did and how I did it for future reference. The drawing was made in Krita, and the animation was done entirely in Blender 4.3.

Step 1: Preparing the artwork

After drawing my kitty in Krita, I separated the different parts that I wanted to be able to move. In this case:

• Body (base)
• Head (with eyes/face)
• Whiskers
• Tail
• Pendant

Each part was saved as a transparent PNG, exactly where they need to be on the full image. Each individual image had the exact same dimensions so I didn’t need to worry about placing the tail, head, whiskers etc accurataly – I just layered them on top of each other in the right order.

After separating the art, I either manipulated the individual moving parts (such as the pendant) or redrew the art partially to make them move (such as the tail).

Step 2: Importing into Blender’s Video Sequencer

Okay first of all, I ran into an issue adjusting the width and height of the output file, so from now on I’ll be sure to first set the resolution to what it needs to be, under the Output properties tab.

So, what we do in Blender’s Video Sequencer, is adding each PNG as an image strip (Shift + A → Image/Sequence) in the correct order so the layering looked right: whiskers above the head, pendant above the body, etc. This layering ensured nothing important was hidden behind another piece.

After adding all images, the playback is rather fast. So I wanted to slow it down. I grouped all strips together with Ctrl + G → Meta Strip so I could move and slow them all together. I then selected the Meta Strip and added a Speed Control (Shift + A → Effect Strip → Speed Control). Finally, I adjusted the frame count / duration to control the pacing.

Step 3: Rendering the 2D Animation in Blender

To render the animation of my cat, I changed the output file format to MPEG-4 in the Output Properties tab.

That was it! A simple, hand-drawn character turned into a little cute animation using only Blender’s Video Sequencer.
No rigging, no 3D modeling. Only layers, timing, and a bit of patience.