Good Programs!

I'm looking for some really good, inexpensive animation programs, and or portable tablets. I need to know which ones are worth buying. Please share your wisdom!

Well, "really good" and "inexpensive" don't always go together.

For example: my favorite drawing/animation program is TVPaint PRO .
It's really good , but it also costs 950 Euros, which is currently about
$1300 U.S. dollars. Worth it to me , but not inexpensive . There is another version of the program called TVPaint Animation , which has a few less features than the PRO version, costs 475 Euros
which is $656 U.S. dollars. Neither of those is inexpensive, but to me worth the money for what you get in TVPaint. If you're a full-time student there are significant educational license discounts. Flash is another popular animation program . A full-seat of Flash CS3 is $699 dollars. What's your range for what you consider "inexpensive" ?

Depends on what you want to do with it . Tell us more about your needs.

3D or 2D ?

Do you just want to do some animation and have pencil tests of it on a reel to show potential employers? Pencil, paper, animation disc are relatively inexpensive , especially if you're handy with tools and can build your own animation desk as shown here: Do It Yourself Animation Desk or buy one here : Portable Animation Desk Use basic level DigiCel Flipbook for pencil testing or
Toki Line Tester . (Toki Line Test is currently available at 50%-off discount special price until August 4, 2007) . There's a free pencil test program called MonkeyJam (doesn't work on Macintosh; Windows only) that some people here have recommended in the past.

You did mention portable tablets. Do you mean like a tablet PC or a Wacom tablet ? Shop around on eBay for good deals on Wacom Intous 3 tablets. Portable Tablet PCs and Tablet Mac
(the "ModBook" ) are quite expensive . The Wacom Intous 3 is very portable and relatively inexpensive compared to a tablet pc or tablet mac (or the Wacom Cintiq tablet, which is not portable) . Of course, drawing directly on a tablet pc screen surface is in some way much more comfortable and offers more control than drawing on an Intous 3 tablet .
However, I'm afraid there's not much out there in the tablet pc world that could be considered "inexpensive" .

Again, in terms of animation software (paperless, all-digital animation) there is usually a gap between "really good" and "inexpensive". Depending on the style of your project and what you want to do with the software , something like ToonBoom Studio might suit you nicely and it is relatively inexpensive.
(They are currently running a special until July 27 , 2007 for ToonBoom Studio at $249.99 , down from the regular price of $349.99)

AnimeStudio PRO (aka "Moho") for vector-based , cut-out style animation is also a good program that is relatively inexpensive ($199 dollars for the PRO version . $49.99 for the basic , stripped down version). Some people have gotten amazing results from AnimeStudio , such as the GreyKid Studio . Some of Greykid's work is featured on the AnimeStudio gallery section .

There, those suggestions might get you started. Post back again with more specifics about what you want to do in terms of style and complexity.

Have you looked at Animation:Master? www.hash.com

If you`re after a programme for 2D drawn animation, why not try the Tapptoons Animation Studio which is now totally free of charge from
www.tapptoons.co.uk

If you`re after a programme for 2D drawn animation, why not try the Tapptoons Animation Studio which is now totally free of charge from
www.tapptoons.co.uk

Wow, that's a nice program, Bill T. !

I sort-of-almost got it to run on my Mac using CrossOver For Mac (Wine) . It was too laggy for drawing directly into the program , but that's a problem with the emulator (Crossover) , not the program. TappToons looks like a whole lot of animation function for FREE . Very generous. I hope people who are using it are supporting you with donations.