Giveaway: CrazyTalk Animator Standard 2

CrazyTalk Animator is a revolutionary animation suite with all the necessary tools to easily create pro-level animation. It provides an exciting new approach to traditional 2D animation with innovative new tools that allow users to apply 3D motions to 2D characters.
New powerful features have opened new possibilities for freely editing 2D motions and viewing them from any angle with a single click. In addition to HumanIK motion editing and seamless mix-and-match character customization, CrazyTalk Animator also offers creative and fun visual render styles that can dictate or enhance the mood of any scene.
Powerful features like body motion puppet and auto lip-sync further reinforce its position as the most creative tool for 2D character animation. It’s designed for everyone from cartoon and movie creators to artists, illustrators, web designers, and educators.

Download link available today:
https://www.giveawayoftheday.com/crazytalk-animator-2/

Crazy Talk Animator review: http://www.3dtotal.com/interview/262-crazytalk-animator-2-review-by-jahirul-amin


Free alternatives:

• Opentoonz
• Synfig
• Pencil2d
• Blender - grease pencil - more details about Grease Pencil & animation at https://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Ref/Release_Notes/2.78/GPencil

Giveaway: Ashampoo Home Designer Pro 3

Ashampoo Home Designer 3 helps you build the outside and inside of your dream house. Smart wizards will guide you from start to finish and help you produce either rough drafts or detailed construction plans. Bring your ideas to life with Ashampoo Home Designer Pro 3.

Home Designer Pro - benefits at a glance:

• 3 design views: 2D, 3D, cross-section
• Data input aids for maximum precision
• Extensive object library
• Area, length and volume calculations
• Keyboard shortcuts for frequently used features
• Native 64-bit support - more speed, more stability

Download link available today: https://www.giveawayoftheday.com/ashampoo-home-designer-pro-3/

Free alternatives:

• Sketchup
• Autodesk Homestyler
• Sweethome3d
• Fluid-designer for Blender
• Planner5d 

Giveaway: Сrazy Talk Animator Standard 1

CrazyTalk Animator is a revolutionary animation suite with all the necessary tools to easily create pro-level animation. CrazyTalk Animator's stage is a 3D layered 2D studio where you can drag and drop actors, props, scenery and images or video directly to the stage for scene setup. Create actors from any photo or illustration and CrazyTalk Animator's innovative Actor Creator wizard. Bring actors to life with automatic facial animation and innovative puppeteering motion. Drag-and-drop to build sets with scenery and props. Film and direct all the action with camera and time-line tracks for complete 2D.

Download link available today:  https://www.giveawayoftheday.com/razy-talk-animator-standard-1/

Crazy Talk Animator review: http://www.3dtotal.com/interview/262-crazytalk-animator-2-review-by-jahirul-amin
 


Free alternatives:

• Opentoonz 
• Synfig
• Pencil2d
• Blender - grease pencil - more details about Grease Pencil & animation at https://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Ref/Release_Notes/2.78/GPencil

Giveaway: Sketch Drawer 4.0

Sketch Drawer is a kind of photo editing software tool intended for converting photographs to pencil sketches. This program enables users to make usual photographs into exquisite pencil-drawn pictures, both black-and-white and colored. While creating a pencil sketch, you can choose your most preferred settings and options.
There are two ways you can edit photographs with SoftOrbits: manually and by aid of ready-made presets. These presets can be used as guides by beginners.

Download link available today:  https://www.giveawayoftheday.com/sketch-drawer-4-0/

Free alternatives:

• Fotosketcher - new version 3.20
• Gimp with Fx-foundry-plugin - tutorial at http://gorgodium.blogspot.ro/2012/01/easiest-way-to-create-instant-sketch.html  
• Gimp with QuickSketch-plugin
• PaintNet - Ink Sketch & Pencil Sketch effect

Giveaway: Сrazy Talk Animator 1

CrazyTalk Animator is a revolutionary animation suite with all the necessary tools to easily create pro-level animation. CrazyTalk Animator's stage is a 3D layered 2D studio where you can drag and drop actors, props, scenery and images or video directly to the stage for scene setup. Create actors from any photo or illustration and CrazyTalk Animator's innovative Actor Creator wizard. Bring actors to life with automatic facial animation and innovative puppeteering motion. Drag-and-drop to build sets with scenery and props. Film and direct all the action with camera and time-line tracks for complete 2D.



Download link available today:  
https://www.giveawayoftheday.com/crazy-talk-animator-2/

Crazy Talk Animator review: http://www.3dtotal.com/interview/262-crazytalk-animator-2-review-by-jahirul-amin

Free alternatives:

• Opentoonz 
• Synfig
• Pencil2d

Giveaway - Sketch Drawer 3.2

Sketch Drawer is a photo-editing tool for converting photographs into pencil sketches. With this program, you will be able to make exquisite black-and-white and colored pencil-drawn pictures from usual photographs. Choose options and settings you prefer while making a pencil sketch.
There are two ways you can edit photographs with SoftOrbits: manually and by aid of ready-made presets. These presets can be used as guides by beginners.

Download link available today:  http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/sketch-drawer-3-2/

Free alternatives:

• Fotosketcher - new version 3.10
• Gimp with Fx-foundry-plugin - tutorial at http://gorgodium.blogspot.ro/2012/01/easiest-way-to-create-instant-sketch.html  
• Gimp with QuickSketch-plugin
• PaintNet - Ink Sketch & Pencil Sketch effect

New Krita Kickstarter campaign - open source digital painting

"Krita: free paint app - let's make it faster than Photoshop!" - Kickstarter campaign.

The second Kickstarter campaign for Krita development is doing well (16.000€ and 21 days to go).

Primary goals:

• Make Krita really fast on big canvases with big brushes
• Make Krita an awesome 2D animation tool

Kickstarter campaign link and more details: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/krita/krita-free-paint-app-lets-make-it-faster-than-phot

Krita is a free raster graphics editor, designed to be a digital painting application. It has been influenced to some extent by software like Corel Painter. Krita packs with some key features different than most of its kind, including the ability to work with both bitmap and vector illustration.

More details about the previous release (from the first Kickstarter campaign):
 http://open-source-spot.blogspot.ro/2015/02/krita-29-open-source-digital-painting.html

Download link for Krita (Windows, Linux, MacOS): https://krita.org/download/krita-desktop/

Meet the Krita team (2014): Steven, Stuart, Lukas, Wolthera, Timothee, Boud, Sven, Leinir and Dmitry.

Free pattern making software Valentina 0.3 released

Valentina is an open source pattern drafting software tool, designed to be the foundation of a new stack of open source tools to remake the garment industry.
Small-batch and custom-sized clothing manufacturing is essential to create a sustainable future, preserve small- to medium-sized textile spinning and weaving manufacturers, enable independent and small designers and manufacturers to scale up to make a decent living, rebuild local garment districts, and reduce or eliminate slave labor.

Download link: http://valentinaproject.bitbucket.org/

Synfig Studio 1.0 - open source 2d animation - Release Candidate #3

Synfig Studio is a free and open source 2D vector graphics and timeline-based computer animation program.
Synfig is getting closer to final release for version 1.

Some specs for the new version:

• Single-WIndow and Gtk3 UI
• Group transformations widget
• Bones / Cutout tools
• Bone distortion
• Sound layer
• Bones
• Frame-by-frame animation (bitmap)
• UI improvement
• Rendering speed optimization
• SFG Format
• Sound support
• Video import
• Vector drawing tools
• Scripting (python) (minimal support ready : scripts can be called from an entry menu)
• SWF export 

Download link Synfig Studio 1.0 stable release: http://www.synfig.org/cms/en/download/

 If you want to use Inkscape for vector graphics and then export to Synfig you need SIF exporter extension.

Update 28 apr. - Synfig Studio 1.0 is released