Pencil: Free Animation Studio for Windows, Linux and MacOSX

Have you ever wanted to try your hand at animating cartoons or movies, but just didn't feel like shelling out all your cash for an expensive commercial program? The Pencil application for Windows, Linux and MacOS X is a free and open-source animation studio that could help get you started with simple animation projects for free!

After downloading and installing the application for your platform, you're greeted with a nice, unintimidating interface reminiscent of any simple painting application. A large, blank "canvas" area takes up the bulk of the application window, and you'll find simple drawing and painting tools on a tool bar on the left. Below your drawing canvas, you'll find a simple timeline for your individual animation frames.

Actually drawing on the canvas is pretty easy, though you are limited to the very basic tools of pen, pencil, eraser, fill bucket, etc. My efforts came out looking a bit less than stellar, but for optimal results you should really use a pressure sensitive drawing tablet.

One of Pencil's main objectives is to lend a digital edge to a more traditional style of animation, so as you work you'll notice that the frames immediate prior and after the one you are currently working on are rendered on the canvas semi-transparently. This technique is known as "onion skinning" and is meant to emulate working with tracing paper. You don't have to draw every part of every frame by hand though! Pencil allows you to use certain images as backgrounds, so you only have to animate changing elements.

When I went to check out how to export and polish my final project, I was pleasantly surprised by all the options I had...including the ability to set up a virtual "camera" that can pan around the canvas as part of your animation. This particular feature can add professional touch to your animation that looks quite nice. I love that you can export as a Flash video, so it's easy to make your work accessible on the web. Of course, you can also add a sounds to your animation in various formats to give it even more life.

Pencil is far from being an industrial strength animation package, but that's not it's goal. If you're looking for a simple, easy, and fun way to produce a quality animated work, then Pencil will fill the bill nicely!

Sources:
http://www.les-stooges.org/pascal/pencil/index.php?id=Home