Contents
DESKTOP APPS
Animated Stories
- Plotagon (Mac, Windows, iPad; free) invites you to enter your script or screenplay and then bring it to life with characters, actions, and backgrounds. Unlike most of the other options, which are 2D cartoon style, this one produces a kind of low-resolution 3D style animation.
- CrazyTalk Animator 2 (Mac & Windows; cost)
- Anime Studio (Mac & Windows; cost) (review)
- ToonBoom’s free trials (Mac & Windows)
- Synfig Studio is a “free and open-source 2D animation software for creating film-quality animation using vector and bitmap artwork. Use vector-based elements and animation-keyframes to produce smooth high-quality 2D animation, without working frame-by-frame.”
Animating with Slide Presentation Apps
The three main slide presentation apps, Keynote (Mac iPad or desktop), PowerPoint (Mac and Windows), and Google Slides (web) all have the ability to animate text and objects using a simple keyframe approach.
The resources below are on animating with PowerPoint, but you can find resources on the other apps via Google searches.
- PowerPoint Animation Basics
- Apply Custom and Advanced Animation Effects in PowerPoint
- Wikipedia article on PowerPoint Animation
WEB APPS
Wideo.co
From the Wideo.co home page: “Wideo is the perfect online video tool, that allows you to easily make animation videos for your product demo, presentations, teaching lessons, or just to have some fun. It has never been so intuitive to create an online video. With Wideo anyone can make cool videos.”
Check out how easy it is to use keyframe animation using this app:
Powtoon.com
Like Wideo, Powtoon is probably better suited to “explainer videos” than to stories, but you might find creative ways to use them for storytelling. These are “cartoon” style animation apps that combine keyframe and frame by frame animation tools.
MOBILE APPS
- PhotoPuppet HD for iPad (includes both frame by frame for individual puppets and keyframe movement through finger gestures)
- DoInk for iPad (how to) (includes both frame by frame drawing and keyframe)
- StickMotion for iPad (comes with some amazing pre-rigged assets, or create your own)
- Plastic for iPad (allows for complex rigs on pre-made or your own characters)
DESKTOP APPS FOR 3D ANIMATION
- Plotagon (Mac, Windows, iPad; free) invites you to enter your script or screenplay and then bring it to life with characters, actions, and backgrounds. Unlike most of the other options, which are 2D cartoon style, this one produces a kind of low-resolution 3D style animation.
- DAZ Studio (Mac & Windows; free): much higher quality 3D, though the free version comes with only a limited set of characters and locations.
- Anim8or (Windows; free) “is a 3D computer animation program that is designed to allow straightforward creation of animations. This is a good introductory program to 3D animating. Once you have created a model or scene, you can render high quality .jpg and .bmp images and .avi movies and save them to disk for later use.”
- Blender (Mac & Windows; free). Blender is a free open source 3D content creation suite. The platform provides a wide toolset from modeling to sequence editing, allowing the creation of complex animations. While this platform is beyond the needs of product sites, the 3D component can be used to design sets for 2D animation. Price: Free.
More Resources
- 3D and Animation Software for Mac
- Keyframe Animation for SketchUp (Windows and Mac)
ANIMATED GIFS
You can find many more through your own web searches.
- GIF Brewery (Mac)
- Free Animated GIF Maker (Windows)
- Easy GIF Animator (Windows)
- FotoMorph (morph one image into another)