I want to do some old-fashioned raster-based animation, in a program which imitates cel animation. In other words: I want a program which will let me import or draw a background, and import or draw line artwork (which will appear as transparent layers, except for parts that are inked or painted in) for each frame. Oh, and for Macintosh. :P I've looked at Flash tutorials, and it doesn't quite seem to be what I'm after. Vector stuff.... I thought I might be able to do it in Photoshop, but now that I'm learning it, it doesn't seem right for the purpose. Painter has animation features, but not set up to do what I want. The folks who make Lightwave have just released the ideal program (Aura) but it's beyond my budget. I have found lots of programs that sound okay, but they refuse to tell you on their websites what they cost or what platforms they are for or what the system requirements are, so I am simply assuming they cost a fortune and are Windows-only. The only way to find out is to register to download for a demo, and the last thing I need is spam from twenty more software companies who don't make anything I can use. I have just given up on the personal (free) edition of Animation Stand, which seemed ideal, if the manual wasn't written by an utter cretin. (I swear, when I tried to do the tutorial, at least three times I was told to do something, but not HOW to do it until pages later, and twice told to do something which was not actually a feature of the program, and then when I goofed up doing something that was poorly explained, the frikkin' program crashed!) Does anyone have any suggestions for me? Help!

I think the program you may be looking for is Retas. Sorry, I don't have the address.

I did a bit more research for you. The site is www.retas.com and the software is Mac compatible and I'm pretty sure it's what you're after. The down side is it costs an arm and a leg. I've been looking for the same thing myself.

Thanks, found it! :) Hmmm, the price is $5,300 for the basic studio bundle....ouch! :P I hope the demo version is fairly functional...

I have just been to www.freewarehome.com and found 3 freeware programs that fit the bill for me, but I'm a PC user. Try a site like that and look under animation and you might find something.

I've tried that, I find nothing but Animation Stand (grr) and GIF-making programs. Thanks, though. You'd think it wouldn't be all that complicated a program to make (says the non-programmer. :P)

I'm only learning to program now, but like I said I only do PC.

Try Apples web-site and look under Mac based software. There are ton's there.

Attached Link: http://www.macromedia.com

Have you looked at Macromedia Director? I have used it for both 2D and 3D animation. You can create your characters, etc. in Illustrator or Photoshop. Use the photoshop layers to create individual cells or frames and import them into director to animate, or you can create them directly in Director.

Thanks, I'll have a look at it!

Adobe has live Motion which is comparable to director.