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Paint an animation in Krita

Use Krita's animation workspace to paint a short loop, such as a flickering candle flame, with onion skins, then render it to a video. About 40 minutes.

2DKritapaintinganimationloop

Krita animates like Pencil2D but with all its painting brushes, so it is good for painterly effects: fire, water, smoke, magic. We paint a candle flame that loops.

Krita's welcome screen.
Krita's welcome screen.

1. A new animation document#

  1. Start 2D Graphics → Bitmap Editors → Krita.
  2. File → New: width 1080, height 1080, Create.
  3. Window → Workspace → Animation. The Timeline (bottom), Animation and Onion Skins panels appear.
  4. In the Animation panel set Frame rate 12, Start 0, End 11 (one-second loop).

2. Background and candle#

  1. Fill the background layer dark (bucket fill, F).
  2. Add a layer (Insert) named Candle and paint the candle body. It does not move, so it needs no frames.

3. The flame, frame by frame#

  1. Add a new layer Flame. In the timeline, right-click frame 0 of Flame → Create Blank Frame.
  2. Paint a flame with a soft brush (orange-yellow, brighter in the middle).
  3. Turn on the onion skin (the light bulb icon on the Flame layer in the timeline).
  4. Click frame 2, right-click → Create Blank Frame, and paint the flame a little taller and leaning left. Continue on frames 4, 6, 8 and 10 with small changes. Each drawing holds for two frames (animating on twos).
  5. Make frame 10 lead back to frame 0, so the loop is smooth.

4. Play and adjust#

Press Play in the Animation panel, and switch on looping. Drag frames in the timeline to change the timing.

5. Glow#

Duplicate the Flame layer, put the copy below it, apply Filter → Blur → Gaussian Blur (large radius) to each of its frames and set its blending mode to Add or Screen. The flame now glows.

6. Render#

File → Render Animation:

  • Image Sequence (PNG): best for editing in Kdenlive;
  • Video: choose MP4 and the output file. Krita uses FFmpeg (included). The first time, Krita may ask for the FFmpeg location: /usr/bin/ffmpeg.

Save the project as .kra.