Simple Animation App? Not Stopmotion but...

[Tissue Paper]

Hi.

For the longest time I've been looking for a simple animation app. I tried several softwares like After Effect and such but they're massive and their features are immense. The type of animation I want to make is not very structured and realistic.

What I want is simply to hand sketch/draw still images
Add text
Shift the sketches in transition
Add audio
Add music
Add "small" effects.

This is an exact example of what I'm trying to do:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZWasH_YfBg

Most of the sketches in the videos are still except for tiny effects here and there and simple transitions.

Do I really need something like After Effect to do this or is there something else I can use? Would Stopmotion softwares perhaps allow me to do this?


Thanks
Dee

 

[Jessica Lares]

Do you have access to Creative Suite to begin with? If you did, it would be easy enough to do that in Adobe Flash Professional. (A LOT of professional animation is done using it still)

I personally got Toon Boom Studio in a MacHeist bundle earlier in the year. It's pretty expensive on its own though.

Anime Studio Debut is supposed to have some animation tools too, but I wouldn't know much about it.

The simplest, and cheapest would be Animation Desk by Kdan, but it gives off a very amateur result in comparison to the others.

 

[Tissue Paper]

Thanks Jessica,

I found out today I purchased Toon Boom Studio a few years back myself and totally forgot about it. It is pricy but I hear good reviews about it. I'll probably tweak around in it and see what happens. I also downloaded the trial for Animation-Ish by the same company of Toon Boom but it's more focused on doodling and unstructured drawings.