Can anyone reccommend....

[Efexeye]

Some good, fairly inexpensive 2d animation software? I started a club at my school whereby a group of 6th to 10th graders will produce, write, direct and shoot an animated short.

I'm looking for something real basic and real cheap- no 3d needed, here....but something that includes stuff on the production end (scripting, storyboarding) would be helpful, too...I could go do the research myself, but I just think there has to be someone on this site who does animation as a hobby, and could reccommend something good. I'm looking for something more sophisticated than Flash, but nothing like Maya or anything that complicated. Thanks in advance for your responses!

[DarthMaulRat]

While not 2-D, I played around alot in my youth with a kid's animation program, Microsoft 3-D Movie Maker. I doubt they ever updated the franchise, but it was a cinch to use and produced pretty good results. I used the program on a 90MHz PC with no graphics acceleration, so you don't have to worry about hardware capabilities. The only thing you really needed was a microphone to record dialouge. There were 30-40 animations each character had, and all of their movement and blocking was done by simply dragging the characters. There were lots of sets with preset camera angles, 30 or so characters, 30+ props, a few special effects (explosions, lightning and such) and a decent sound effect library. Scenes could be cut and paste in any order you wished. Sound effects were incredibly easy to place, also. While there are obviously some restrictions with the program, namely the inability to create specific animations, it was a great program. I played with that program almost everyday from 5th to 8th grade.

Since the program is 8-9 years old, it may not be hip enough for today's kids, and it might be a bit 'kiddish' for a 10th grader, but it's worth a look if you can find it. I believe there was also a 2-D movie maker, but I never owned the program, so I can't tell you about it.

[Efexeye]

Thanks for the feedback- I'm acutally looking for something in the minimalist style, like Sealab- but I want the kids to be able to create their own character designs....

[DarthMaulRat]

Yeah, I had a feeling that's what you were looking for. Movie maker would be like a last resort. I've looked for free 2-D animation programs, being cheap as I am, but I've never found much past animated gif generators.

[Efexeye]

I'm sure Best Buy will have something ludicrously overpriced, but, seeing as it is the kids' money, I was thinking that maybe I could find a better deal somewhere else. All I can find for free is, like you said, gif generators, but I REFUSE to go to Kazaa to get free software- after all, I'm trying to teach these little bastards cyberethics, too......