Simple Animation Program for Mac (Or even Windows!)

[Doctor Suarez]

Hi. I'm looking for a simple 2-D animation program that will allow me to essentially make what looks like cutout animation, like Terry Gilliam's work, or South Park before they went to Maya.

Cost is a factor, so the cheaper the better, so long as it's functional and not for children.

The only program I have found so far is Anime Studio 5. Is this a good option? Are there others?

Thanks!

[Sdashiki]

Hi. I'm looking for a simple 2-D animation program that will allow me to essentially make what looks like cutout animation, like Terry Gilliam's work, or South Park before they went to Maya.

Cost is a factor, so the cheaper the better, so long as it's functional and not for children.

The only program I have found so far is Anime Studio 5. Is this a good option? Are there others?

Thanks!

I can think of nothing cheap or free that will do this, but I am sure there are.

Adobe After Effects
Flash

come to mind immediately

[Doctor Suarez]

Ouch... those would be examples of too much money. But thank you!

[ChrisA]

Hi. I'm looking for a simple 2-D animation program that will allow me to essentially make what looks like cutout animation, like Terry Gilliam's work, or South Park before they went to Maya.

Cost is a factor, so the cheaper the better, so long as it's functional and not for children.

The only program I have found so far is Anime Studio 5. Is this a good option? Are there others?

Thanks!

What about "Blender". Maybe a bit of overkill for 2D but you can define all your wire frame object to be on a plane.
www.blender.org

[mrgreen4242]

Well, I'm not a master animator, and the animation I have done is all "traditional" stop motion work with clay, but the Anime Studio 5 you referenced seems like the right tool for what you want to do, and it's only $40 on Amazon, so quite affordable, compared to the other tools.

I may even snag a copy to do the mouth/eye/other facial animation on my stop motion stuff... the lip syncing feature would be a HUGE time saver over trying to hand animate mouths frame by frame, plus let me make quick changes to the script after the animation is all shot. EDIT: Nice, the lip sync package is GPL'd and free for download, which saves me $40. :p

Anyways, I think you answered your own question! :D

[emorydunn]

If you are looking for REALLY simple animation you could try animated gifs... but that is for veyr basic animation.

[DavidLeblond]

Try Pencil (http://www.les-stooges.org/pascal/pencil/index.php?id=Home). Its free, and seemingly easy to use.