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

ktoon

[lanswitch]

http://ktoon.toonka.com/

SVG - scalable vector graphics

[sednet]

have you looked into scalable vector graphics format (svg)? it is a mature spec published by the W3C, and like macromedia flash, svg stands to become much more popular once it is distributed with web browsers.

there have been svg browser plugins for some time; now native svg is included with firefox on ms-windows, and scheduled for inclusion with firefox and mozilla. here are some SVG and SVG animation links for you:

• Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) 1.1 Specification - w3c 2003
• Mozilla SVG Project
• SVG Animation Tutorial - dated 2002, i'm sure you can find something more recent