Animation Desk vs Spriter

Animation Desk is software for creating animations, cartoons, and animatics on Android, iOS, and Windows. Its tools include paint brushes, layers, onion skinning, sound effects, and frame-rate settings. Work can begin with video clips, photos, or pre-built animation templates, with stock collections, batch frame pasting, and effects for video and images available for editing; some features depend on app version. The product is aimed at beginners, students, learners, and professional animators making rough animation, animatic sketches, or storyboards. Finished work can be exported as video, GIF, PDF, PSD, or image sequences, and editable projects can be exchanged among the Android, iOS, and Windows apps. The iOS listing also describes export to Photoshop for further editing. Animation Desk is free to download, and a free plan is listed. Animation Desk Pro for iOS is $2.49 a month, billed annually at $29.99. Creativity 365 for Individuals is $4.99 a month, billed annually at $59.99. KDAN says the product will remain available under existing paid plans but will not receive proactive new feature development or routine version maintenance updates.

Spriter is a 2D game animation tool for building motion from modular sprite pieces and skeletal animation. On its timeline, pieces can be rotated, transformed, and tweened, with intermediate frames generated between keyframes. Its animation data can be used in games and manipulated through game events. Export options include spritesheets, animated GIFs, sequential images, and other formats. Features include pixel art mode, inverse kinematics, collision areas, sound effects, and Papagayo lip-sync support. Spriter Pro includes Essentials versions of BrashMonkey animated art packs for game projects. The maker lists a Free Version with a feature comparison against Pro. The Pro license covers one user and can be installed on that user's computers, but not used on multiple systems at once. The listed Free Version is free, and Spriter Pro is $59.99 a month. A separate Spriter 2 pre-order is $59.99, paid once and includes Spriter Pro immediately; Spriter 2's retail price is undecided. Listed platforms are Linux and Windows; Ubuntu 14 is the only officially supported Linux version, and Windows Vista or higher is required.