[JPjuice23]

So I tried torrenting Photoshop and Flash, but fuck that. They're pretty damn good at catching you, and I don't care to change settings and firewall shit to get it to not connect to the internet.

But it doesn't matter, I like Gimp anyways.

However, I need a good 2D animating program that's free to use, much like Gimp is a free to use program.

Anyone have any suggestions? Basically, I need to make a stick figure animation, and it's sort hard to do with Gimp.

Thanks

[Andrex]

Yeah, Gimp has satisfied all my needs. The UI is still pretty bad, though it's improving with single window mode in 2.7 and 2.8.

As for animation, a couple years ago I used LiveSwif Lite. It was decent. Apparently it's being revived as OpenSwif, but that seems kinda dead. jSwif is apparently alive and kicking, though. LiveSwif 2 Lite is out there as freeware now.

If you just want to make short GIFs, GIMP has that capability built-in.

[JPjuice23]

Thanks Andrex . I think I'm going to start out with Pencil, which is free and pretty much the basic of basic when it comes to 2D animation. If I continue to enjoy 2D animating, I may move up to a more complex program like the ones you suggested.

[Andrex]

Originally Posted by JPjuice23

Thanks Andrex . I think I'm going to start out with Pencil, which is free and pretty much the basic of basic when it comes to 2D animation. If I continue to enjoy 2D animating, I may move up to a more complex program like the ones you suggested.

Ooh, I'll have to give that a shot. Good find.

[StealthMaster86]

Originally Posted by JPjuice23

Thanks Andrex . I think I'm going to start out with Pencil, which is free and pretty much the basic of basic when it comes to 2D animation. If I continue to enjoy 2D animating, I may move up to a more complex program like the ones you suggested.

Damn It!

Too bad I can't draw for shit.

[JPjuice23]

Nah Pencil isn't good. Now I'm trying to get the GAP add on for Gimp, which is an Animation add on, I'll get a link when I can find one, but I think this is better because it combines layers as a single frame instead of treating layers as frames, which I don't like.


Hopefully that made sense...

Originally Posted by StealthMaster86

Damn It!

Too bad I can't draw for shit.

It's never too late to learn

[Andrex]

Nah, I understood it. Layers should definitely be different from frames. With GIFs it kinda doesn't matter, but with any serious animation it does.

[JPjuice23]

It seems to me that when it comes to open source 2D animation programs, Flash is really the only one you should get. I assume this is the case, because flash is really universal, so instead of getting the new CS5, I just went to the same "Dock" and got Flash 8, which is good enough.

Thanks for the help though, I love open source community driven programs, doesn't seem to exist that well in 2D animation.

[Andrex]

Slight misnomer in your post, Flash isn't open source. But yeah. Flash 8 is a surprisingly good program, it's what I originally started with. It does have a couple bugs though.