How do you animate?

[Kari-Chan]

For traditional animations, I would recommend Pencil. I use art programs such as Paint tool SAI and Paint.net to animate frame by frame. I barely know anything about the other kid of animation, the stick motion/figure animation.

[Katy133]

What free programs are there?

I'm an animator, and so far I've used the following programs for 2D animation:

- Pencil Check Pro (good for quickly figuring out/experimenting the timing of the animation)
- After Effects (good for cut-out style animation)
- Photoshop (CS6)
- Adobe Flash
- Flip-Boom All-star
- 3ds Max (For 2D animation, I mainly use this for blocking out props/characters in a scene that has complex camera movement)

Do you have to draw second by second?

Most animators are taught to animate 24 frames per second, but many indie/Flash animators will animate 12 frames per second (fps): That's half of 24.
So for example, in Photoshop, you can set each frame to play for 0.04 seconds if you animate 24 fps (1 sec divided by 24 frames = 0.04), or 0.08 seconds if you animate 24 fps (1 sec divided by 12 frames = 0.08).

Also, the majority of animators will plan out their animation by breaking down a scene into keyframes (key poses), and then add the in-between frames. That way, the animator can experiment with timing (during the keyframes stage) to make the animation look more organic.

Hope this helps!