I’ve just been playing with Pencil, an animation/drawing software for Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux. It lets you create traditional hand-drawn animation (cartoon) using both bitmap and vector graphics. And what’s even better is Pencil is free and open source.

The site is well laid out, with a very easy to follow online manual provided, and a forum area that you can go in and read other people’s questions and tips etc. this is much more than a simply drawing tool as it allows you to create images as bitmaps or vector images, and to create animations that can be exported as Flash files or Quicktime movies.

Lots to explore and discover with this “work in progress” – try it yourself. I must confess, I think I’d find it easier to interact with if I had a tablet to use – I’m off to find one now…