How-To/Info/Sources
Animation
2D/Traditional Animation
Pencil is "an animation/drawing software for Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux. It lets you create traditional hand-drawn animation (cartoon) using both bitmap and vector graphics. Pencil is free and open source." This programme is easy to use and ideal for beginners or young people. Professionals may find it usefull for creating animatics. See also the User Manual. (www.les-stooges.org)
Synfig "Two-dimensional animation has long been the domain of proprietary software. That changes with the introduction of Synfig, a free software/open source tool for producing feature-film quality animation with fewer people and resources." (www.synfig.org)
KToon is "a 2D Animation Toolkit designed by animators (Toonka Films) for animators, focused to the Cartoon Industry. This project is covered by the GPL License using G++, OpenGL and QT as programming resources from KDevelop as the development platform. By now, KToon is only available for Unix systems but we expect to make it works on Windows systems too someday." (ktoon.toonka.com)
Computer Generated/Code Based Animation
Processing is an open source programming language and environment for people who want to program images, animation, and interactions. It is used by students, artists, designers, researchers, and hobbyists for learning, prototyping, and production. (...) Available for GNU/Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows." See also the Learning resources. Worth noting is also the list of Related Initiatives on the main Processing page, though not all projects listed there are open-source ones. (www.processing.org)
Pure Data "PD (aka Pure Data) is a real-time graphical programming environment for audio, video, and graphical processing. (...) Pd is free software and can be downloaded either as an OS-specific package, source package, or directly from CVS." See also the Pure Documentation. (puredata.info)
Not stricly for animation but related:
Arduino is "an open-source electronics prototyping platform based on flexible, easy-to-use hardware and software. It's intended for artists, designers, hobbyists, and anyone interested in creating interactive objects or environments. (...) The microcontroller on the board is programmed using the Arduino programming language (based on Wiring) and the Arduino development environment (based on Processing). (www.arduino.cc)
Video
Video/Movie Editing and Video Captioning are two resource pages from "Shambles in S.E.Asia (The Education Project Asia)" aimed at teachers and educators. (www.shambles.net)
Possibly of interest to open-source developers:
Lumiera "a Free/Open Source Non-Linear Editing (NLE) application project for Linux developed by the CinelerraCV community. It was born as a rewrite of the Cinelerra codebase called Cinelerra3 but it is now an independent project with its own name. Lumiera is still in an early stage of development. It is not usable yet." (lumiera.org)
Related Video blog:
GVFX - Gnu Video FX "is a project for creating TEMPLATES of 3D transitions, filters, etc." using free and open-source software.
Related Video article:
Video Editing with Blender looks at the open-source blender built-in VSE (Video Sequence Editor) from a user's point of view - note that some points made in the article refer to how things were before the blender 2.46 update in May 2008 (eugenia.gnomefiles.org, 20.04.08) - this article was also discussed on Slashdot. (tech.slashdot.org, 21.04.08)
Related Articles
Film 2.0: The Open Video and Story Remix Platform (indiworks.wordpress.com, 20.06.08)
Want to Make an Open Movie? Recommended read for anyone thinking about making an open-movie, be it an animation (as discussed in the article) or a live action project. (andy-dolphin.blogspot.com, 26.08.07)
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