Use Blender 2.8 if you want to enhance or support your 2D animations with 3D effects, cameras, and environments. But beware, you might need a more powerful machine to run it smoothly. Use Krita if you want more complex animations and still the full power of brushes. It has the best performance and most intuitive user interface to get something done quickly, but it lacks in features (especially more layers) to build more sophisticated animations.

Use Autodesk Sketchbook to get off the ground quickly. Not professional animators, although you might still find the reviews useful. 🎙 DISCLAIMER: My review is mostly aimed at people starting out, that want to try getting started with animation. For those I used iMovie and Shotcut, I’ll give a quick review of these, too. Further, my toolchain consists of an app that helps cut multiple scenes together and edit. Mainly I tried Krita, Autodesk Sketchbook and Blender >2.8. At this point, I didn’t want to buy one, until I tried first the free options that are available. On this sparse setup, I wanted to try a bunch of free animation software and decide which one is the best. And of course some non-digital sketch material. I took a very rudimentary setup with me a 12' Macbook and a Wacom Intuous drawing tablet. I took some time off my day job, traveled and concentrated on art and animation for 3 months this year. In this article, I want to quickly present to you my free animation toolchain and review some of the apps I was using for 2D animation over the past months. 4 Free Apps to Get You Started with Hand-Drawn Animation

Type in pencil animation software