Attention computer animators -- if you've ever felt limited by working in three dimensions with tools like Blender, check out Pencil, an open source, cross-platform animation app that lets you create in glorious 2-D. Pencil mimics hand-drawn animation techniques, but it's easy to use and produces high-quality output.

"All the big film studios primarily use Linux for animation and visual effects. Perhaps no commercial Linux installation is larger than DreamWorks Animation, with more than 1,000 Linux desktops and more than 3,000 server CPUs"

"The GIMP Animation Package, or GAP, is a collection of plug-ins that extend GIMP with capabilities to create and edit animations. The 2.4.0 version of the GIMP Animation Package is a bug-fix release that makes GAP usable with GIMP 2.4.x releases.A new release for the stable branch of GIMP, version 2.4.4, was released along with the GIMP Animation Package 2.4.0. You should know that this version of GIMP is a bugfix release and no new features were added..."

Synfig Studio is a 2-D animation program that uses vector graphics. Although it has only just released version 0.61.06-1, it is already approaching early maturity, with enough tools and innovations that professionals might seriously consider using it.

I don’t know a person that hasn’t collected anything in their life (particularly in childhood). Some people didn’t age out of this habit and their collections of books, CDs or coins have grown so much that they have problems managing these collections using only a sheet of paper and a pencil.

Synfig increases the 2D animation software available with a brilliant and professional piece of software.

One of my resolutions this year is to try to cut down on the carbon I spend on music. Notwithstanding my purchase of the In Rainbows discbox, I’ve amassed an awful number of discs of metallized plastic in barely-recyclable containers. (I say “barely” because K. got me a pencil for Christmas made out of old CD boxes, and a pen from dead car parts. But there’s only so many pencils the world can use.)

As a follow-up to the successful project Orange’s “Elephants Dream”, the Blender Foundation will initiate another open movie project. Again a small team of the best 3D artists and developers in the Blender community will be invited to come together to work in Amsterdam from October 2007 until April 2008 on completing a short 3D animation movie. The team members will get a great studio facility and housing in Amsterdam, all travel costs reimbursed, and a fee sufficient to cover all expenses during the period.

The creative concept of “Peach” will be completely different as for “Orange”. This time it’ll be funny and furry!

We quickly view the main functions of the implemented tools on the GIMP tool dialog. The elliptic selection tool, the pencil, the color selection, the darken brush, the smudge tool, etc. are just some of the helpful tools that GIMP includes. We make some experiments just to show what can be done.