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.

User interface prototyping is supposed to be a creative discipline, where the tools don’t get in the way, so you can place your ideas on the screen just like you would draw them freehand on the back of a napkin. Up until recently, there was not a high quality open source UI prototyper. But,those days are in the past, though, thanks to Pencil.

The Pencil Project's unique mission is to build a free and opensource tool for making diagrams and GUI prototyping that everyone can use.

"It’s a new year, and Free Software is more ubiquitous and important than ever. At the same time, the work is far from over. Here’s something inspiring you can read to stimulate some deep thoughts about the nature of Free Software: an essay from 1958, “I, Pencil.” ..."

After featuring some of the best Free and Open Source 3D animation software, it's time to take a look at some 2D computer graphics program for Linux users who are into creating two-dimensional models. These free 2D animation software is as capable as those that are commercially available so do take time to try them first before emptying your wallet.

"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"

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.

"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.