Pencil is a free animation and drawing software that lets you create drawings by making use of a virtual pencil on your computer. The developers call it ‘traditional animation software’ as it lets you use the most basic drawing tool – the pencil. With Pencil, you can easily making realistic pencil drawings.
Pencil is one of the most thoughtfully designed animation and drawing software that we have come across. Using Pencil as the drawing tool indeed makes it look quite traditional, and extremely easy to use and understand. So, if you are struggling with more advanced free image editors like GIMP, or InkScape, you will get good relief with Pencil.
A Pencil document consists of different layers such as bitmap image, vector image, sound and camera. All the layers are present at the bottom of the application in the Time Line window. The main window of Pencil will give you an unlimited canvas space. The images that you create can be saved in XML format. It will also create a folder that will contain the bitmap data. Animations can also be saved in PNG and Flash movie format. You can play the Flash movie on your computer using any browser. If you want to convert Flash movie to some other format, you can use Format Factory.
Features of Pencil:
- Pencil is a free application that lets you create drawings in the most traditional way i.e. by making use of a pencil.
- It provides you with four layers, namely bitmap image, vector image, sound and camera.
- Other than making use of pencil, you can also use other drawing tools such as pen, brush, paint bucket, air brush, color picker, etc.
- You can make use of the zoom feature to zoom in and out on any area of your drawing. It also allows you to rotate the image.
- The user manual and tutorials present on the website of the Pencil will help you make the best use of Pencil.
- You can import existing bitmap drawings.
- You can save the animation that you have you created in XML format. While saving in the XML format, it will also create a folder that will contain bitmap data. You can also your animation in PNG and Flash movie format.
Whether you love or hate drawing, Pencil will surely leave you awestruck with its easy-to-use interface and let you create animations easily. Of course, if you just want to add some animations to your profile picture, you are better off using LunaPic.
