Pencil is probably one of the easiest animation programs for children to learn. Kudos to the Pencil development team. They got a winner for the educational environment.

User interface prototyping is supposed to be a creative discipline, where the tools don’t get in the way, so you can place your ideas on the screen just like you would draw them freehand on the back of a napkin. Up until recently, there was not a high quality open source UI prototyper. But,those days are in the past, though, thanks to Pencil.

After featuring some of the best Free and Open Source 3D animation software, it's time to take a look at some 2D computer graphics program for Linux users who are into creating two-dimensional models. These free 2D animation software is as capable as those that are commercially available so do take time to try them first before emptying your wallet.

"The GIMP Animation Package, or GAP, is a collection of plug-ins that extend GIMP with capabilities to create and edit animations. The 2.4.0 version of the GIMP Animation Package is a bug-fix release that makes GAP usable with GIMP 2.4.x releases.A new release for the stable branch of GIMP, version 2.4.4, was released along with the GIMP Animation Package 2.4.0. You should know that this version of GIMP is a bugfix release and no new features were added..."

You have just spent months working on your latest animated short. Hours and hours of work bent over a computer, pouring out your technical and creative heart, and finally it is finished. It is ready for distribution. Your next step is to put the animation on your website for people to download for free.

"All the big film studios primarily use Linux for animation and visual effects. Perhaps no commercial Linux installation is larger than DreamWorks Animation, with more than 1,000 Linux desktops and more than 3,000 server CPUs"

Want to know when a bit of news has really hit the mainstream? It's when the Taiwanese company Next Media Animation does a computer generated animation of the story. ... Yup, the battle over SOPA, which they animate by showing Hollywood lobbyists seeking to attack the internet, and showing not only how tech companies teamed up to fight this, but that internet users are pushing back.

This DR-21 3D Design course is an introduction to the world of computer generated 3-D modeling and animation using Blender. The course covers version 2.4 of Blender and it is composed of a few dozen lectures. The lectures are really easy to understand and this course is a great place to start if you are new to Blender.

Synfig Studio is a 2-D animation program that uses vector graphics. Although it has only just released version 0.61.06-1, it is already approaching early maturity, with enough tools and innovations that professionals might seriously consider using it.