AnimeEffects

The main advantage of Anime is the fact that it's easy to animate, at least compared to western cartoons. What's more, with the right tools, even amateurs can create good-looking animations and effects. One such tools is AnimeEffects. It provides you with the tools you need to move, rotate or deform 2D drawings and it lets you work with keyframes, which make the entire process straightforward and easy. On the surface, the software looks quite simple, but it comes with a wide range of useful features under its hood.

AnimeEffects is offered completely free of charge and it works on all popular Windows platforms. Its components are distributed in a ZIP archive, so you only need to extract them and run an executable, instead of going through an installation process. There is no need to install any prerequisite tools or services and you don't need to worry about the application's hardware requirements.

The user interface has a fairly simple layout, which shouldn't be too difficult to memorize. Besides the main editing area, you can also find a timeline, animation tools, as well as a properties dock, where you can make all sorts of adjustments to individual objects and keyframes.

The first thing you need to know is that AnimeEffects doesn't come with drawing tools, so you can't create an animation from scratch. You need to have drawings, in JPEG or PNG format, ready. You will need a different tool, to draw your characters or scenes, such as Easy Paint SAI or Clip Studio Paint.

The animation process is somewhat similar to manipulating a puppet. You basically have to move, rotate or deform separate bits of a drawing, like arms, legs and so on, which obviously need to be loaded on separate layers. This is why you will be glad to know that AnimeEffects lets you import Photoshop PSD files and it provides support for layer clipping and blending.

Even if you've never worked with keyframes before, mastering AnimeEffects' controls shouldn't prove to be a challenge. The available animation tools can be used directly in the main editing area. When you move, rotate or transform an object, a keyframe will be created automatically in the timeline. When you hit the Play button, the object will start animating until it reaches the state you've placed it in with the animation tools.

An animation can be made longer or slower by moving its corresponding keyframe in the timeline. Furthermore, the adjustment options, on the right side of the window, can help you move or transform object with pin-point accuracy.

High-quality animations can be created with little to no effort, thanks to the efficient tools that AnimeEffects places at your disposal.