Animation Tools

GIF Movie Gear makes building GIF animations easy, using a filmstrip that allows you to view all the frames of your animation at once. Youi have full control over all aspects of the animation, including frame delay, transparency and more. Other useful features include palette reduction, inter-frame optimization, animation resizing, support for Photoshop PSD, JPEG, AVI, BMP, and GIF files, and export to AVI format as an alternative to GIF.

Amara Flash Photo Animation enables you to create virtual tours, using regular photos and a combination of panning and zooming effects that create a movie-like effect and allow the user to `walk through` each picture. You can combine multiple images into a slideshow, add URLs and more. The program offers an easy to use WYSIWYG interface that lets you design the zoom effects using simple mouse clicks and drag and drop to manipulate the effects. Additional features include optional background sound, customizable output size and background, 360 degree panning, transition time control and more.

DigiCel FlipBook allows you to draw 2D animations with your mouse or tablet pen, or capture rough animation drawings under a camera and scan your final drawings into a traditional timing sheet where you can add a soundtrack and cut, copy, paste and drag and drop thumbnail images to adjust the timing and repeat cycles. The program also includes painting tools as well as options to pan, zoom, rotate, blur and dissolve. Other features include a light table option to stack up to 10 animations, animation clean-up, custom color palettes, Multi-Level Painting and more. The finished animation can be exported as movie file that can be shared via the Internet or played on your TV.

Stickman enables you to create animated cartoons, without the need for any drawing skills. Instead of drawing, you can choose from a collection of enhanced stick figures that look like cartoon characters, and can be animated in the same way as stick figure animations, using control points. You can use full color backgrounds and choose from a variety of characters and objects that can be used in your animation. The program also includes a character editor (Elemento) that allows you to design your animation objects. Stickman supports multiple layers, adjustable camera angels, and more.

Nature Illusion Studio can transform your nature photos into realistic animations using visual and audible effects. You can add water effects (flow, ripple, waves) to select areas of the image, using a simple draw-on mask that will turn a static lake into a photo realistic animation while leaving the rest of the photo unchanged. Furthermore, you can add weather effects like snow and rain, as well as animated objects. The result can be previewed and then saved as screensaver, standalone executable, animated GIF or video file. The program works best with landscape images, especially waterfall and lake sceneries.

Stop Motion Pro enables you to create stop motion and other animated films, using your webcam, digital video input device or digital camera (RAW and JPEG supported). Once you have connected the video source, you can simply take a capture for each frame in your animation, and the program will automatically stitch them into a video clip when you are ready. Other features include a frame editor, automatic time lapse capture, onionskinning, as well as Chromakey and rotoscope support. The resulting film can be exported to AVI or MPEG 1 format.

Easy GIF Animator helps you to create animated GIF images with ease. You can set a variety of options to customize your GIF animation with several effects. The interface allows for frame by frame preview and configuration. You can import images from a file or the clipboard, add text effects to selected frames preview the animation and finally optimized it for publishing on the web.

Active GIF Creator enables you to create animated GIF images for the web. You can import image frames from a variety of formats, edit tham with the internal image editor or script editor, set transparency, delay, animation size and other common parameters. The program also allows you to apply several effects to selected frames (e.g. shake, ripple), add particles to the animation and insert text annotations. Other features include command-line features, web preview, GIF optimization, GIF comments and more. The animation can be saved as project, animated GIF, AVI video clip or several (static) image formats. In addition to GIF animations, you can also create simple buttons and image maps.

AnFX empowers anyone to create interactive java based animations with moving, fading, sizing, images, text and shapes. Add in some sound and you have a full multimedia experience. AnFX is an easy to learn tool kit that consists of a point and click design studio and a compact yet powerful player that loads transparently on your visitor s browsers. The results have to be seen to be believed. AnFX has been used to create Flash like, high impact animations, menus, simulations, advertising banners, presentations, on line learning content, product demonstrations, on line user manuals and more.

MotionGIF is an all-in-one tool to create animated GIF files. It offers a user-friendly interface, that requires only a minimum learning curve as well as a built in player and IE preview option. You can easily manage your animation frames and choose from 21 built-in visual effects for frame transition. MotionGIF also comes with a built-in image editor for editing, resizing, high-quality zooming, cropping and more. Additional features include resizable objects, Images, text, shapes and brush lines and several productivity tools as well as multi-level undo options. MotionGIF offers a wealth of features at a very competitive price.

Zoner GIF Animator is a tool tool for creating animated graphics with options to optimize the output animations and thereby reduce file size and download time. Features include bitmap import (PCX, TIF, WPG, MAC, TGA, ICO, BMP, JPG, DIB, RLE, PNG, BMI), animation import (FLI, FLC, AVI), internal support for text frames including advanced editing functions, editing of individual animation frames (using MS Paint), drag & drop, support for all frame-refresh methods, definition of animation borders and locking and frame printing. Additional features include support for "windows message box" banners, that allows you to create thos fake message box banners without the need for any third party editor. You can also apply alpha transparency to frames, generate textures, rotate, resize and transform frames and more.

Amara Flash Intro and Banner Builder allows you to create text based Flash banners and intros. You can add multiple text items, each with individual effect, timing and text style, and also link them to URL links and Target Frames. The program includes ready-to-use text effects that can be customized in some parameters, and easily used for your designs. Amara Flash Intro and Banner Builder provides 3 step WYSIWYG interface with built-in preview. Does not require any Flash skills.

Advanced GIF Animator is a tool for creating animated GIF images. It offers a built-in editor with basic editing and paint tools, as well as a button generator and tool to create HTML image maps for your designs. Other features include GIF optimization, image effects and support for GIF transparency.

Bannershop GIF Animator provides the easiest way to create, design and compress animated GIFs for the Web. Easy to use, visual interface lets you design your animation directly in the program by using vector graphics, image retouching and anti-aliased text edit tools. Animations can be also quickly assembled from pre-created images. Powerful optimization engine significantly reduces GIF file size.

Animation from Movie enables you to convert .AVI videos into cartoon-like animation clips. Just load the file and preview the animation, adjust the detail and contrast and then record it to .AVI or SWF file. The animation is black and white and looks rather simplistic, it will not work very well with videos that have a lot of detail.

Pro Motion is a drawing and animation package for graphics that contain up to 256 colors. You can use it to create comics, logos, still images, presentations, clip-arts or game graphics as well as to spruce up your web-pages. It will help you to bring your ideas down to sketches easily. The wide range of powerful functions and tools will help you to create high quality animations. Even if you are not one of the talented artists this software can help you with rendering various color or graphic effects for you. The built in keyframer allows you to calculate animations in 3d-space without expecting you to draw something on your own. Professional artists will find useful tools like the light table, helping to create smooth animations (also known as onion skinning).