Flip Boom
© 2008 Toon Boom Animation Inc.
Art and animation teachers, take note of this well designed and powerful animation package that offers frame-by-frame drawing tools. Based on the software that is used by Cartoon Network, this adaptation for kids was made in Canada, and has simplified menus designed to make creating cartoons easy. The menus are cleanly designed, making it easy to cut, paste, fill, and freely sketch your ideas -- and see them combined into a moving stream of images. The overall experience is easy to pick up and use, although a drawing tablet is highly recommended. The included tutorial teaches you how to make a ball bounce. In addition, a library of clip art is available to help you make more polished results. We were not able to import our own JPEG images, and projects are saved in a format that can't be read by traditional browsers. Note that we've seen various versions of the software (one, called Flip Boom Battat, comes bundled with a USB drawing tablet -- see http://toonboom.com/fbb). Also note that this company designed Animation-Ish for Fablevision, and if you've used both, you'll notice similarities.
$40, Windows, Mac OSX
Teaches: art, creativity, animation
CTR Rating: 90%