Pencil 2d Software For Mac Rating: 9,0/10 4217 reviews

Pencil is an animation/drawing software for Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux. It lets you create traditional hand-drawn animation (cartoon) using both bitmap and vector graphics. Pencil 2D Comment by lauraess. About Pencil Nov 2014 Helpful Not helpful Report as spam.

  • Grease Pencil is a software utility built in Adobe AIR which provides a simple means of drawing on the desktop. Clean and non-obtrusive environment. The installation process is a piece of cake.
  • Jan 29, 2020  There are many great animation software free of unnecessary tools and comes with easy to use user interface. Here is the list of the free animation programs which you can download today. Also Read:-Best Windows 10 Themes / Skins. Free 2D Animation Softwares For Windows 2020. There are two types of animations, namely 2D animations and 3D.

Do you want to create animations without worrying about paying for the software? The following article lists various animation software that are available for free. So dive in and check it out!

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Use these free software available for Windows, Mac and Linux.

1. Pencil: A Widely Used Software For Creating Animations

Download Pencil if you want free software with loads of features to make your animation beautiful.

  • Supports both Vector and Bitmap images
  • Exports animations in formats such as FLV, SWF, X sheet etc.
  • Features such as Import Sound, Import Image, Set Frame Rate etc. are available
  • Inbuilt illustration tools
  • Completely free with compatibility on Windows, Mac and Linux

2. CreaToon: A Free Animation Software For Giving Shape To Your Creativity

Use CreaToon if you want a simple animation making software with loads of added features

  • Configures frame rates per second as per your animation
  • Supports most of the available formats
  • Separation of various layers possible
  • Switch between four point of view cameras to review your work
  • Cons: Compatible only with Windows

3. Synfig Studio: A Free Software With Premium Features

Use Synfig Studio, a software which gives your animations the professional look you have been wanting.

  • Improved effects through High Dynamic Range Imaging (HDRI)
  • Intuitive interface for a pleasant working experience
  • Different types of layers present, such as: geometric, gradient, filters etc.
  • Automatic interpolation of key-frames which results in a smooth experience
  • Open Source and available for Windows, Mac OSX, and Linux platforms.

Pencil 2d Animation Software Download

4. Tupi Animation: A Software For All Ages

Download Tupi Animation, a software which blends traditional animating methods with new ways

  • An interface designed for all age groups
  • Important features/tools such as Pencil, Tweening etc. are present
  • Exports files to both image and video formats (MPG,AVi etc.)
  • Features such as Timeline and Exposure sheet are available, but still on a beta phase
  • Completely free and available on Windows, Mac OSX and Linux platforms

5. Plastic Animation Paper: An Effect Animation Designing Tool

Download Plastic Animation Paper for a fun experience of going back to hand drawn animation with the advantage of digital features.

  • Allows you to draw pictures with a pen tool, thus giving the animator the chance of defining the quality of the image
  • A preview option to check and re-check the flow of the scenes
  • Effect to control and design the animations are present
  • Customizable interface
  • Allows animation to be saved in most image and video formats

6. Stykz: A Free Software For Chiselling Your Animating Skills

Download Stykz, the first multi-platform stick figure animator.

  • Animated sequence creator with Stick Figures or any other geometrical shapes
  • Control each and every frame
  • Blueprints of old frames are available while designing the new ones
  • Built-in player for reviewing animations
  • Exports the animation to various image and video formats (JPEG, AVI, MPG etc.)
  • Available for download in Windows and Mac

7. Scratch: A Educating Software With Animation As A Tool

Pencil 2d Software For Mac Free

Use Scratch, a software that trains young people and uses animation as a method of teaching.

Best photo handling software for mac One of the best photo management apps for Mac, Unbound helps you efficiently manage your photos according to your needs. Let’s take a look at the features of the Unbound: You can use albums to categorize your photos. With instant search, you can locate any album within a few clicks. Jul 05, 2020  Apple Photos Adobe Bridge Mylio X Digikam. Here are 18 of the best photo management software solutions, in no particular order, that are currently available on the market. Adobe Bridge. If you use the popular Adobe Creative Cloud software package, you will most likely already be very familiar with Adobe Bridge CC.

  • Encourages reasoning through creation of characters that can interact with one another
  • Easy Drag and Drop interface
  • Share creations through the internet
  • Facilitates creating animations to visualize complex problems
  • Layout manipulation is not possible as they are pre-made
  • Open Source Software that runs on Windows, Mac OS and Linux

Related Posts

Animated Videos have become one of the signature tools of marketers worldwide for telling a story and creating effective marketing campaigns for the future.

Depending on your purpose and skills, you can choose from different types of software available both offline and online, for professionals and amateur users, 2D, 3D, whiteboard or stop motion animation tool, etc.

Below are our picks for the best animation software for mac of 2019. For more background information, see a more detailed buying advice below the picks.

Part1. Whiteboard Animation Tools
Part2. 2D Animation Tools
Part3. 3D Animation Tools
Part4. Stop Motion Animation Tools
Part5. Motion Graphics Software
How to Choose the Right Animation Software for Mac

Part1. Whiteboard Animation Tools

#1. Best Whiteboard Animation Software for Mac: VideoScribe by Sparkol

This program is produced by Sparkol and it remains one of the best whiteboard animation software programs for both Mac and PC. You can also use it on a number of mobile devices including devices that run android. There are elements of the program that works through the cloud making it very simple to upload and edit video wherever you might be.

Videoscribe works quite intuitively for building business presentations, TED talk style videos, tutorials, creative marketing solutions and more. What is produced out of this program looks hand-drawn and extremely professional for any type of marketing campaign. The best part is that you can use many of these tools to create these effects with very little animation knowledge.

Even children enjoy using this program because of its ease of use. There is a full library of stock images, animation and more as well as an extensive voiceover soundtrack that can be used with the solutions here.

The yearly and monthly subscription also ensures that there is a flexible use for the program. It also comes with a seven-day free trial with features to try before you buy.

#2. Best Free Animation Software for Mac: PowToon

This is a fantastic online presentation maker for academic use, presentations and infographics.

The program is completely free to use and has a number of animation effects on board that can make anything exported out of the program seem extremely professional.

The free templates available in the program as well as the quality of the animations that are presented within the platform make it a true favorite amongst many brands.

A number of major companies now almost exclusively trust their creative tools to Powtoon and it can be used almost anywhere where there is an Internet connection with mass compatibility.

As a fully cloud-based system there’s no use for installation or downloads to take full advantage of it. Its available for free use on any Macintosh computer as long as you are willing to use the watermark.

Part2. 2D Animation Tools

#3. Best 2D Animation Software for Mac: Toon Boom Harmony

This is a program that actually deserves some surprising recognition. The company has partnered with major film companies like Warner brothers, Disney, and Nickelodeon and it’s currently one of the best and most powerful 2-D animation suites for commercial use.

With the use of this program you can build anything from traditional animation all the way to amazing drawing tools that can produce the future of 3-D animation. The 3-D cameras and integration available in this platform can provide fundamental solutions for drawing, rendering and building beautiful projects.

There are tools and tasks available here that can suit small hobby animators all the way up to professional uses. The premium version delivers the top tool professional solutions that you might expect at of any major animation suite. The essentials level of the harmony program is designed more for hobbyists and it delivers a scaled down version of some of their more high and customization techniques.

Toon Boom not only remains one of the best 2-D animation programs for mac but it is a regular fixture in the animation world today.

#4. Runner-up, Best 2D Animation Software for Mac: Adobe Animate

Adobe is one of the successors to perhaps one of the most popular 2-D animation software is available. At the core of Animate are the flash tools that have been working to create high-quality animations since the early days of the Internet. Today the program uses vector-based publishing to produce intuitive and inexpensive animation results.

Although it may not have all of the professional animation tools that you would find in some major production suites, it’s possible to get very professional looking results.

#5. Best Free 2D Animation Software for Mac: Pencil

This is a simple and open source vector-based program that’s designed for the Mac OS X platform. It’s also available on Linux and Windows and it was originally created for producing digital comics. The platform allows animators to use the basic hand-drawn techniques that were experimented with long in the past. Pencil is an ideal program for beginners that don’t want to invest in expensive license for a program. It can teach the basic principles of animation and with a timeline feature it’s possible to add new layers to arrange fun effects.

This is one of the best programs for beginners and sketching characters as well as setting keyframes can all be done using the pen tool, fill tool and the vector layers tool. The interface on this is actually based off of some of the original Adobe flash platform’s and it produces some good quality graphics even on a tablet device. Perhaps one of the best parts of using this program is that it automatically exports everything in.FLV which gives it mass compatibility with a number of online sources. The videos that you export here will be easy to embed or upload in video sharing sources and more.

Part3. 3D Animation Tools

#6. Best 3D Animation Software for Mac: Maya

Autodesk Maya remains one of the best 3-D modeling software programs that’s designed for Mac, Windows and Linux. The program itself has migrated many of the tools away from Autodesk Mud and now has features that you would normally find in several different pieces of software for creating highly detailed 3-D models. Autodesk Maya is a 3-D modeling software that is designed mostly for professional artists but with the templates that are available for download and the massive amount of tutorials online, it is possible to see quite a difference with this software when you are working with it over time.

#7. Runner-up, Best Free 3D Animation Software for Mac: Blender

Blender is a program that is designed with open source technology for 3-D modeling and it’s made mostly for beginners that want the option to learn how to play and get comfortable with reading modeling on their Mac computer. This open-source program does feature many of the basic features that you can expect to find including rigging, animation, architectural support and even the option to create full games. The philosophy that’s behind it allows for the inclusion of many different templates and it is very well suited to use by a number of creators. Blender remains some of the best 3-D modeling software for creative artists with its completely free use.

Part4. Stop Motion Animation Tools

#8. Best for Making Stop Motion Videos: Dragonframe

Dragonframe remains one of the best stop motion software solutions for mac today. It’s one of the top choices for many of the world’s largest studios like Laika and Aardman. It can produce high-quality masterpieces in stop motion animation and it is a perfectly suited set of professional tools. The program allows for easy capture of a number of precise movements and you can also compose in light various angles using the camera controls on board. Editing images as well as performing advanced image review techniques can all be done through the program as well.

The process of inserting and editing audio can be done according to a characters needs and based off of the animation that you want to create. The advantage to using some of the precise movements and controls in this program is that you can have a wide array of improvements at your fingertips for professional products.

#9. Runner-up: Stop Motion in Movavi Video Editor

We selected this is our runner up because with this program there’s no need to pay for a dedicated piece of stop motion software. This is an open source piece of technology that delivers a full-featured video editor that suitable for many beginners.

The program itself is perfect for getting all of the features that are often teased in many full license software programs. Because it’s open source there are also a number of templates that can make it easy to use. The full-featured video editor is excellent for its features and for the newest features that are being added by the community regularly to keep up with the stop motion technology of today.

Part5. Motion Graphics Software

#10. Best Motion Graphic Animation Software for Mac: After Effects

With a number of motion graphic animation software programs available for Mac, after effects sets itself apart.

Adobe After Effects is truly one of the most masterful programs for any motion graphic artist. Of course many of the features of aftereffects can be found in other Adobe programs, but there is no other piece of software that can be so versatile for the creation of motion graphics. The way to the menus are set up and the way that the program behaves makes it an intuitive leap for 3-D modeling and 2.5 D animation.

The whole goal of aftereffects is to help you produce almost any type of animation that you may want without having to involve 3-D modeling. After effects remains one of the primary pieces of software for motion graphic work in storyboards, motion comics and more. There are elements in this program that are close to Photoshop and illustrator but they have been optimized for the purpose of creating motion graphics here.

How to Choose the Right Animation Software for Mac

When it comes down to choosing the program that you may want to purchase a license for or download on your computer, you need to be very focused into the types of animation that you are looking for and what you need out of any program. The first thing you need to understand is the various styles and techniques for animation and what you might want out of a program:

2d animation

This is the traditional style of animation that comes from the idea of cell shading or digital cell shading. In the past animators would draw images on transparent pieces of paper and then later than one frame at a time to create motion. Today drawings can be rendered and layered on top of one another using a digital timeline and computer vector animations.

3d animation

This is a completely new and different way to look at traditional animation that requires understanding the basic principles of composition, movement and 3-D modeling. Creating 3-D graphics can involve scanning objects or even piecing together various 3-D models to create characters, share complex ideas and then animate all of the items along a storyboard.

Motion graphics

A motion graphic is considered to be one of the newest forms of animation. These motion graphics are fairly common in items like banner ads, short comics and more. Usually these types of graphics are designed for commercial purposes.

Stop motion

Stop motion involves taking photos of an object and manipulating it ever so slightly to eventually produce a storyboard of motion. Completing and repeating this process over and over eventually gives the full allusion of movement. This is a very time-consuming process that often involves manipulating objects slowly over hours of movement to create just a few seconds of animation.

Pencil 2d Software For Mac Computer

Presentation or whiteboard style

This is a popular style of animation that has taken off over the past few years. The online marketing videos that are produced and the specific programs that have been created for building whiteboard videos are proving that this is a format that truly keeps people engaged and remains a trend for school projects, business presentations and more.

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Hey, My name is Paul – nice to e-meet you 🙂 I’m a freelance video editor who has over 4 years experiences of making all types of videos. I founded this website to provide step-by-step and easy-to-follow instructions to first-time editors or beginners like you who want to start their journey in video editing.