Synfig

I'm no animator, but I found this interesting:
http://synfig.org/

2D Animation has traditionally been very expensive because every frame must be drawn by hand. Even with today's digital inking and painting software, the process still relies on individuals hand-drawing each frame. This laborious task is called "tweening".

Synfig eliminates the task of manual tweening, producing smooth, fluid motion without the animator having to draw out each frame individually. This allows you to produce 2D animation with fewer people while producing art of a higher quality.

Okay, I'm suspicious. Obviously, it's easier to have a computer draw most of the frames, but won't it end up looking like cheap Flash animations?

Well, as they say, seeing is believing.

[E]verything you see was drawn and animated in Synfig, but the poses of the squirrel are not original, in the sense I took the original ones by Preston Blair (jpgs images), traced (copied) them and let Synfig draw the in-betweenings to see how it works. Hope I was clear!

Okay, that's nice, obviously you can copy one of the greats and it'll turn out pretty, but how about some original stuff? If you want to get silly-detailed, you can.

Finally, here's their big bragging piece: a 3 minute short in Synfig (caution: violence and some offensive language) Prologue

Like any other artistic tool, quality depends more on the artist than on the tool, so I think the claim to "eliminate" 'tweening is excessive--someone still needs to pay attention to each frame--but the gains in efficiency might be worth the effort required to learn the new drawing techniques.

Again, I'm not an animator, but my gut feeling is that a big part of "flashimation-feel" of "Prologue" is the simplicity of the backgrounds. If we take a look at this still from Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, for example



the foreground objects and characters aren't all that much more complex than your typical web animation; the depth and sense of being there come from the shadows and shading in the background.

Anyway, something to look into.

That was pretty neat. I've never heard of this program.

lol this program is just like CACani (just recently knew about that program through guest), tho it seems that CACani's better, synfig still had the flash feel to it. (though it could be the animator's fault)

I'm not sure about using synfig tho.. because most of us don't know how to use it. No harm trying out individually tho. *will check it out*

CACani: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEnx5T1jzmA