Attention computer animators -- if you've ever felt limited by working in three dimensions with tools like Blender, check out Pencil, an open source, cross-platform animation app that lets you create in glorious 2-D. Pencil mimics hand-drawn animation techniques, but it's easy to use and produces high-quality output.

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.

"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"

"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.

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.

When I was a kid, I used to make crude little animated cartoons in my notebooks using the flipbook technique. Walt Disney had nothing to worry about. I was awful even by the 3rd grade standards of White Pine elementary. Today, I could be great, because almost all top animation and special effects artists are Linux users.

GIMP Animation Package is a collection of Plug-Ins to extend the GIMP with capabilities to edit and create Animations as sequences of single frames.

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.