A bit of news I stumbled across on Twitter earlier was that the Toonz Animation Suite, which was used by Studio Ghibli for a few of their films as well as in the production of Futurama, is being released as Open Source Software on the 26th for anybody to use freely.
Keep an eye out for its release here: https://opentoonz.github.io/
Toonz animation toolset released as open source software
Posted by Mega on March 22, 2016, 7:17 a.m.
Comments
This is exciting. I have no use for it and have no knowledge of animation or what this is or how to even begin, and I have no intention of downloading it, let alone reading anything else about it…
But this is exciting.BUT WILL IT MAKE TOTOROS FOR ME????
Ooh!
Sadly, it's basically unusable on OSX currently.
Right-clicking to do anything borks several very important features until you restart the program. Like panning around the canvas. Or drawing.To be honest, it controls kinda bad on Windows too. Seems to be a weird custom windowing toolkit that they used, and it doesn't work all the time.
Might have to give it a shot on Windows XP.Not so sure how optimized it is. These specs dont look so encouraging. Will have to test it for myself.
-Microsoft Windows 7 SP1/8.1/10 (64bit required)-Intel Core i series processor (Not AMD? how many cores?)-4GB or more RAM (No suprise)-500 MB or more available storage space-1280 x 1024 or higher monitor resolution (WHAT?)-Scanner compatible with the TWAIN standard (including the driver software)※EPSON DS-50000 is recommended. (This is a $1200 scanner)I did a bit of testing over a week or so, and basically… it's "Made for purpose" software. It's definitely outdated, and is probably going to be nearly impossible to learn properly for most people.
Obviously one could get stuff done in it, but it might be better to invest a bit of cash in a more "modern" solution, or hunt among the free ones.From memory, I know that AnimeStudio goes for about $60 and has a pretty extensive toolset (Well beyond me), Pencil2D is very basic but also easy to understand (And free).And of course there's Flash, but Adobe's prices are ridiculous.