Recently my niece and nephew were visiting for a few days and my nephew (who is ten) was playing a lot of video games.  But he wanted to download something to my computer and I wanted to check out first what it was.  It was a little animation program called Pivot Stickfigure Animator.  It is a very simple to use animation program that has been around since 2004 and I was quite pleased to let him spend time on it as it felt more that he was creating something, rather than just shooting at something or racing through an imaginary track.  You can download it here.

I’ve looked into this since and there are two other animation programs that are free and then a more advanced one that is fairly inexpensive, but can make some impressive animated videos.  Stykz  is another animator that is free, and is compatible with Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux.  Finally there is TISFAT (This Is Stick Figure Animation Theatre).  This is a bit more advanced in that it shows the timeline of each object you create.

Anime Studio Video Gallery

Grampian Horn: Lost in Longmeads from Alex Morris on Vimeo.

This is a video made with the Anime software.  It is a program that you need to pay for, but you can have a 30 day trial to see if you or your kids are interested enough to want to use it.  The website had tutorials on how to use it, and a lot of animations that were made with this software.

I know that summer is coming to an end for kids off school, but this is software where you don’t mind them using as it is teaching them something that they may even use in their careers!