Ghibli studios has open sourced their animation software!

[Tetsuwan Penguin]

http://makezine.com/2016/03/25/the-animation-software-that-brought-you-studio-ghibli-films-is-now-open-source/?utm_source=MakeNewsletter+20160329&utm_medium=email&utm_term=&utm_content=button&utm_campaign=newsletter

Have you ever wanted to create films like Miyazaki? Or animate a series like Futurama? Well, the tools of the trade are about to become much more accessible. Digital Video, the makers of the 2D animation software Toonz, and Japanese publisher DWANGO have announced that as of March 26 Toonz will be made open source under the name OpenToonz.

link: http://www.toonzpremium.com/#!news/aawrs
download link: https://opentoonz.github.io/e/index.html

It seems that the software is only available for windows and mac, not Linux (maybe it will run under Wine?). Also the terms of use that you have to agree to is in Japanese (although the site is in English).

[Earthshine]

Yes, I saw this on tumblr a little bit ago and people are loving it. There are some problems though apparently; it's difficult for a lot of people to use if they don't know how to animate and it takes a while to understand the program. Already there are tutorials floating around to help people though.

[gokaiblue]

This is so cool!

[EyeOdyssey]

I gave the program a go just yesterday, my thoughts on it are very mixed.
Aside from taking a really short time to boot up, the main positive I had about OpenToonz was its drawing interface. It reminded me a bit of some of the brushes I would frequently use in Photoshop, and the smoothness tool built in worked in my favor (which is quite uncommon). In comparison with the very crisp, pixel riddled look that Toon Boom Studio has, I feel that OpenToonz has a much better look with its pre-rendered drawings.

My experience (as brief as it was) was tainted rather quickly by the unfortunately buggy nature of the software. I always tend to draw with a Wacom tablet, and whenever I tried to use my pen the software would freak out. The pen would stick like horse glue and draw absurdly long lines and sometimes it would quit responding altogether. Other users have pointed out this bug, so I'm definitely not alone. The main issue I had with it however was the overabundance of crashes, every OpenToonz session I attempted would be interrupted in a short span of time by an unpredictable software breakdown. The program would never freeze, never shriek or let out a single peep or bleep before shutting itself down just to give me the same old "OpenToonz has quit unexpectedly" message. Thank goodness for those super short boot-up times.