Ok, so this is really cool… if you’ve ever hankered to create an animated cartoon, or meld real pictures and drawings but really didn’t want (or have) the big bucks needed for the software, this is for you. Imagine ZubaZ or PoSmedley as cartoon characters. Hmmmm…. (any shots of the software are incidental)

This is simple software. It’s 2D, and really just has a set of very good, basic tools to work with. If you have Ps experience, or Gimp the tools won’t seem strange.

It’s portable, so it doesn’t require installation.

Tools:  Paint brush, Polyline, Eraser, Modify curve, Select tool, Clear button, Pen tool, Color picker, Paint bucket, Move tool, and Zoom canvas.                                                    

Features: Layers (no surprise), Drawing, Bitmap drawing, Vector drawing, Zoom and rotation, Animating, Adjusting keys, Importing images, Cameras, and Sound.

Animation: This allows you to create animated images, cartoons, and import sound. This puts it all together.

Pencil Animation has a really good Wiki (user manual: http://pencil-animation.org/wiki/doku.php?id=en:users:manual:0.4.3b:index)

and even provides swf files to play with.

Download link: http://sourceforge.net/projects/pencil-planner/ 

Source:  http://www.thewindowsclub.com/pencil-animation-software-windows

Screen Shots from the windows Club and Pencil Animations