Simple 2D Animation Software for UNIX-like OSes

BSDanimation asks: "I want to create slide based cartoon-like animations with speech bubbles and simple programmable 2D effects in a widely accepted format like MPEG or AVI. I have considered using Ming to code a Flash animation, but then decided against Flash and would prefer to stay away from such proprietary formats. Blender seems nice, but is too complex and a complete overkill. OpenOffice presentations seem promising, but I am not sure if it is possible to program effects and speech bubbles in it and export such presentations into a format other than Flash. What free UNIX-like OS based open source software is there for such simple 2D animation that would also allow me to distribute my animations commercially without any licensing restrictions?"

Comments

Flash and non-preparatory formats

[Distortions]

You *do* know you can author in flash and export it as video, right?

"proprietary"?

[SanityInAnarchy]

Do you mean "Flash" as in "SWF"? Because: swf is a stanadrd. Ming saving as SWF should be an entirely open format. Now, the fact that gplflash is still in its infancy is a problem, but the format itself is open.

Re:Blender is not Overkill

[foniksonik]

What's nice about using 3d for 2d animation is the ability to create everything to scale, keep it at scale and simply move it back into the distance (z-index) instead of 'faking it' by scaling it down. This makes depth much more plausible to the viewer and much easier to animate... think of it like a theater stage with a backdrop and stand up props, except that you have an infinitely deep stage to work with and unlimited 'tracks/layers' to put your props on.