HI, I’m a traditional animator trying to get my own projects started in a completely free and open source working environment.
I’ve had a look at Synfig, Tupi, and Pencil2D, and so far, Synfig appears to be the most developed and stable of the three. Unfortunately, I believe it also has the least intuitive interface, from a traditional animation perspective.
I know Synfig is used more for cutout style animation, and though I might be doing some of that in the future, what I need right now is software that I can use to import storyboard panels and audio to time out an animatic, apply camera moves such as zooming panning and rotating, import hand drawn frames for line testing, and match animation frames to dialogue.
I hope I can learn how to use Synfig to accomplish all these tasks, though if anybody has any other software recommendations I’d be happy to hear them.
Thanks for all the suggestions, Genete. I’ll check them out. I already use GIMP and Audacity for image and audio manipulation. I tried Pencil2D and it seems well suited for traditional work, however, at least on my system, it crashes… A lot. Hopefully it’ll improve in the next version.
d.j.a.y, I certainly appreciate Synfig’s technical capabilities. Though I’m more into the “draw every frame” style of animation, I can see it being a great tool for graphical work. I may just need more time to get used to the interface, I’ll give it a little while and suggest features if I still find things that could be improved.
And I’d never really considered using Blender for all that, ebarranko. I’ll have to look into it.
Thanks for the warm welcome and helpful advice everybody!