What kind of program or software should i use to make a animation video?

Question

i am making a animation video. i am currently using windows movie maker. but i dont really like to use it. is there any easier program i could use?

Answer 1

well, you could always use powerpoint to make it, it might not look great, but it is a cheap, easy solution.  If you have some time and money on your hands, you could check out Adobe's Flash Animation program.

Answer 2

Don't use windows movie Maker to actually shoot or compile your animation together. You should use a program specifically designed for stop-motion animation purposes to actually compile your movie, then edit your larger clips afterwards in a video editing program like Windows Movie Maker. An animation program will make it easier to arrange, re-arrange, add and delete single frames. Typically, playing around with multiple single frames is kind of difficult and bothersome in video editors since they weren't designed with frame by frame animation as a primary function in mind.

Some of the better commercial 2D animation programs such as Digicel Flipbook, Toon Boom, TVPaint, TAB, and PAP, have Student or Express versions that are fairly inexpensive. However, you might be disappointed by how crippled these stripped down programs are compared to their more expensive Pro versions. But if you look hard enough you should be able to find them cracked online (rapidshare, bittorrent). There are some free alternatives.

If you're doing old school drawn on paper frame by frame stuff or stop-motion or 2D, I'd suggest MonkeyJam. It's free.

http://www.giantscreamingrobotmonkeys.co...

If you're on a Mac, use Pencil(there's PC and Linux versions as well).

http://www.les-stooges.org/pascal/pencil...

If you want to do Flash animation like the stuff on Newgrounds.com, either break down and buy Adobe Flash or you can try Creatoon or Synfig, which are free. They're not Flash, but they also do vector based symbol oriented

animation.

http://www.creatoon.com/index.php

http://www.synfig.org/

Here are some online resources about the basic principles of animation.

http://www.idleworm.com/how/index.shtml

http://www.awn.com/tooninstitute/lessonp...

http://www.animationarchive.org/2006/05/...

http://www.animationarchive.org/2006/05/...

http://www.karmatoons.com/drawing/1a.htm

http://www.animationarena.com/principles...

http://w ww.animationmeat.com/notes/notes.html