making flash animations with synfig studio

However, its enough to get you started and the cheapest private plan is only $19 per month and gives you a lot more to work with. Online user manual, very in depth, goes through how to do everything the software does.Īlthough this is primarily a pay monthly piece of software aimed at people making explainer videos and infomercials, there is a free plan which gives you the option to make some short videos with limited access to the content library.Link parameters and create expressions, to create advanced character puppets and other dynamic structures.Skeleton Distortion layers to alter bitmap artwork.Bone system, allowing you to make cut out animation with either bitmap or vector parts.Layers based, with various layer types including filters, distortions, transformations, fractals and others.Vector tweening, just set the key frames and tweening is done for you.Definitely worth a try if you want to speed up your production process.

It’s a very advanced free tool, and it looks like it will continue to develop and improve. However, once you have mastered this you have a tool with which you can make complex animation more quickly than drawing each frame. Again its free and open source, and has lots of functionality, which does give it a steeper learning curve. If you are looking for something vector based, then this may be the better tool for you.

Fairly limited drawing tools (vector tools are more limited than the bitmap tools), but stick to the bitmap tools and you can create a good drawn animation sequence, and it does use the pressure sensitivity from a Wacom tablet.

Save your movie as a mp4, AVI, GIF, or as an image sequence.

Make custom pallets and export as XML so you can edit in text if you like.

Import various assets including an image sequence (for rotoscoping or reference).

Timeline, allowing for viewing looped sections, onion skin, and setting your frames per second.

Layers based, allowing for moving background, mid and foregrounds, as well as sound layer.

Free tutorials, clear to understand and more added over time.

Easy to use, intuitive tool, so you can focus on your animation, not how to use the software.

You can switch between Rastor and Vector workflows.

It’s cross platform so runs on Windows, Mac OSX and Linux.

This is a totally free and open-source 2D animation program, even for commercial use.

So if you like drawing, get out your Wacom tablet and start some drawn animation. It’s really easy to use and has lots of nice features for people who know how to do drawn animation. As it’s name suggests this is will help you to make traditional looking pencil line animation. The best free, open source animation tool for drawn animation.

Making flash animations with synfig studio