I'm going to start shopping for software soon and I wanted to know if anybody have any suggestion on what I should buy for creating my anime. Right now I pretty much got nothing. But I do plan on buying either a whole new computer or laptop dedicated for my anime project. So I want to know what I should be buying hopefully somebody can give me a shopping list of some sort. So let me know thanks -Shinogi-

Well, there is always Maya for 3D animation, I guess. It's high tech stuff, you know, used in the movies I believe. There's also Flash which I've seen some cartoon's animated in. It depends on how much you're willing to spend and how often you'd use it.

the software 'Mirage' was recommended to me, and was quite a powerful program.
Fully functioning paint capabilities similar to Painter, Photoshop, Open Canvas etc., combined with full keyframe animation functions.

Check out their site, and these links - there's some FANTASTIC animation there!!
http://www.bauhaussoftware.com/Flash/DemoR...ty_DemoReel.php

You should be able to check out more stuff here
http://www.bauhaussoftware.com/community_animations_2D.php

*recommended viewing*
'Nake Youth (used in demo reel - stunning animation!)
'Daniel'
'Water is Life'
'Stranger'
'Monster'

Blender, is a free 3D app used for stills and animation - I'm currently learning this (need a guidebook though) I'd used Lightwave quite a lot for uni animation and personal projects, but can no longer run it. Blender is available for all OS's with some great online galleries and a few tuts.

Flash is another good one for 2D animation, but you pretty much need to devote yourself to the app if you want to shine with it.
www.biteycastle.com is an example of superb flash animation. One of the best flash animators out there without a doubt.

Well.. Windows movie maker is kinda awlright but I think you just down load that.. and if you want GIF animation well i suggest Adobe Imageready but it cost a lot like photoshop.

actually, Imageready comes with photoshop Maybe you mean Aftereffects? This is also used for animation.

What kind of animation can you make in Movie Maker? I was under the impression it was just a simple movie editor - not something you create animation in...

You can animate in powerpoint by the old fashioned way of moving on object a little each time. In windows movie maker you can problem string together several pre-made images and get the timing right, I suppose.

I wouldn't recommend animating in powerpoint, though. Too troublesome for the likes of many people.

I wouldn't use Maya. Not only is it about $7,000 USD or so, it's 3D oriented and has a large learning curve.

I would use something like Mirage as dtownley1 has suggested. There are also other animation packages, though none come to mind at the moment. Try a program that was created for animation.

I can't speak for Blender because I haven't tried its 2D capabilities.

Flash is very easy, but can be a challenge for more special effects. It may also become a huge pain to convert it to a movie file.

Windows Movie Maker is only for editing existing videos and stringing them together.

ImageReady is very low-tech.

Adobe After Effects is more oriented towards special effects for existing videos.

PowerPoint is for presentations, not animations. The drawing tools are poor. You also cannot easily convert it into any portable format or video.

I know it's for presentations. But the idiots who designed the stupid curriculum for the computer class decided to make us learn to move the clip art and design backgrounds in powerpoint and make a very crappy looking animation. :| Although as a tool for making presentations, powerpoint is very nice.

Pfft. I've made [crappy] fully animated movies in PowerPoint. I've also made a working web browser in PowerPoint.

This was a basic computer class. o.o; So we naturally didn't go into as much detail. But we are learning how to work with Fireworks and Flash this year in webdesign. =o Should be interesting to say the least.

I use crappy loosely. xD No offense meant, Sk.

I found a great free GIF animation program, simple but effective, 's called Beneton Movie Gif You can find it on www.snapfiles.com Snap files also has many other animation tools