12 Jul 2023

8 min read  

Best Animation Apps

What are the best solutions for professional animators who want to be creatively challenged? And what are the best apps for people without animation skills who just need to let their imagination fly? 

Here are 14 animation apps that will work amazingly for professionals and amateurs. But first, let’s find out more about these apps.

1. Renderforest (iOS | Android)

The Renderforest app offers a variety of animation templates and allows you to create, customize and download an animated video within minutes. From whiteboard to text, logo, and explainer animation, you can find anything on this app. 

One of the best tools for animation is available for iOS devices, with the Android app soon to be launched.

With just a few clicks, you can add your media files and text to the template, pick a color palette, a font style, add background music, and upload a voice-over. 

It’s an advanced app among video animation tools that can help you create unique videos with just a few clicks and high quality. Besides 3D and 2D animation templates, you’ll also find unlimited colors, video editing options, a large variety of thematic music tracks, fonts, and more! 

Features: 

• Can upload your font
• Pre-made templates for any occasion
• Export and import options 
• Voice-over recorder
• Preview options 
• 24/7 support 

Pricing:

• Starting at $9.99 per month/billed annually

1. Flipaclip (iOS | Android)

If you’ve ever dreamt about creating your cartoon without any creative skills and editing abilities, you can start your journey to being the next Walt Disney with Flipaclip. It’ll help you to easily make cartoon animations using its frame-by-frame principle. 

You can also add more effects to your animations with the Flipaclip overlay grid and make a flipbook-kind-of-animation from your own sketches.   

The files can be saved in GIF and MP4 video formats and be directly shared on social media platforms, such as Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, etc. 

Flipaclip is only available on the App Store. 

Features: 

• Simple and intuitive interface 
• Easy-to-use animation tools 
• A large variety of drawing tools 
• Sound effects 
• Light and Dark mode
• Grids 

Pricing: 

• Free (with in-app purchasing options)

1. Bot3D (iOS)

Bot3D is a brilliant mobile 3D animation app, and it’s a pity it’s only available for iPhone users. It offers male and female models which can be customized according to your liking. You can also import your photos and sounds to create unique animations with lip-syncing and different backgrounds. 

This 3D animation app uses a full-body inverse kinematics algorithm, which enables natural movements for the characters. So, the app allows you to create and save the poses, movements, and facial expressions you need for your animated characters and save them. 

Additionally, with this app, you can zoom in and out and rotate your frames to make your animations more professional and realistic.  

Bot3D is available only on the App Store. 

Features: 

• User-friendly interface 
• Lip-syncing option 
• Live recording
• Motion saving option 
• Customizable characters 
• Sharing Options 
• Available in English and Japanese 

Pricing:

1. Animoto (iOS)

Animato is a mobile animation app only available on iOS devices. They have storyboard templates that you can choose from and start creating animated videos. This means you don’t need any design skills to complete the task. 

The animation app is famous for its explainer videos, which you can create on mobile by adjusting the color, style, animated text, and other parts of their templates.  

Features: 

• A huge library of licensed songs 
• No per-video pricing 
• Sharing with one click 
• Three aspect ratios 
• User-friendly interface

Pricing:

• Starting at $8 per month/billed annually

1. Stop Motion Studio (Android | iOS)

Stop Motion Studio is one of the best stop motion animation apps with a unique full-featured and easy-to-use interface. With this app, you can create professional animations without having any necessary skills, as well as add filters, backgrounds, and foregrounds to your videos. 

Additionally, the app allows you to adjust the focus of your video, shutter speed, exposure, ISO, white balance, and time interval. All these features will improve the quality of your animation and take it to another level if used right.

However, this is not all. 

One of the best tools for stop motion animation has a rotoscope that allows you to import video files and images and start drawing over them. 

Features: 

• Simple interface 
• Advanced syncing capabilities 
• Full control of the camera 
• Sound effects library 
• Green screen
• Facial expressions library 
• iCloud sync 

Pricing:

• Free trial 
• iOS and Android: $4.99 (one-time payment)

1. Animation Desk (Android | iOS)

Animation Desk is one of the best animation apps for animation drawing. It allows you to draw animation on your videos and images using different types of brushes.

You can create animation sequences, sketches, animated storyboards, and cartoons here.

With Animation Desk, you can draw on your phone or tablet, using the Apple pencil or even a pencil rubber. 

Adjust the stroke size, the opacity, and other drawing tools the app offers to make your animation video more creative.  

Features: 

• Import and export options 
• Built-in messenger app 
• Direct sharing 
• Onion skinning 
• Animation Desk Community for inspiration and sharing 

Pricing:

• $15.99 per month/billed annually 

1. PicsArt Animator (Android | iOS)

With PicsArt Animator, creating impressive animated videos, GIFs, and cartoon animation will take no time. It allows you to draw your animation frame by frame and use the 3D camera app and 3D animation tools.

Features like frame duplication, special effects, background music options, and animated stickers will make your job easier and help you design animations with many layers and complex scenes. And well, if you’re not interested in that, you can simply animate your selfies and other photos with a few clicks and strokes of a brush. 

PicsArt Animator also has an Emoji Me feature, with which you can create your own animated emoji.  

Features: 

• Simple user interface 
• Direct sharing options 
• Suitable for both pros and beginners 
• No ads

Pricing:

1. Toontastic 3Dr (Android | iOS)

Toontastic is one of the best free animation apps available for both iOS and Android users. Developed by Google, it offers many tools to help you create animations and cartoons for fun and business.

The easy interface makes it perfect for users of different ages and professions. All you need is creativity. 

Toontastic makes the whole animation process fun and exciting, inspiring the storyteller and animator in you. 

Features: 

• Simple interface 
• No ads 
• Encourages creativity 
• Suitable for kids and adults 

Pricing:

1. MotionBook (iOS)

MotionBook – Draw & Animate is one of the most nostalgic animation apps. It gives all the classic feels with its flipbook format and is perfect for beginners. However, it’s not just a flipbook animation app. 

The app has many hidden additional features you need to explore, including a variety of pens, pencils, brushes, and erases. You can also customize your scenes with its onion skinning feature and copy your drawings for the next scenes. 

Features: 

• Intuitive user interface 
• Supports iCloud 
• Compatible with the Apple pencil 
• Copy and paste feature for images from other apps 
• Importing options 

Pricing:

• Free (with in-app purchasing options)

1. RoughAnimator (Android | iOS)

RoughAnimator is a simple animation app available for many platforms such as iOS, Android, Windows, and Mac. It’s a great way to create quality hand-drawn animations, using the frame-by-frame tactic. 

It offers many features for professional animators and beginners, including but not limited to an unlimited number of layers, onion skinning, rotoscope, and a flexible timeline.

You can also import audio files for automatic lip-synching, which is quite a terrific feature if you’re making a cartoon. 

Features: 

• Unlimited layers to apply 
• Simple interface
• Exporting format options   
• Compatibility (Animate, Adobe Flash, etc.) 

Pricing:

• Starting at $5.99 (one-time payment)

1. Stick Nodes (Android | iOS)

The name speaks for itself, Stick Nodes is a stickman animation app. The users can create their own stick figure movies and export them in different formats, such as MP4 and GIFs. 

It offers a large variety of shapes, colors, sound effects, and scales to create the stick figures you have in mind. With its camera, you can also take pictures of the scenes around you and add them to your animation. 

This free animation app also has transparency, blur, and other tools to help professionals and beginners make their animation more realistic and “alive”. 

Features: 

• Exporting options (MP4 only for Pro) 
• Sound effects (for Pro)
• Available in different languages 
• Compatibility  

Pricing:

• Free (with in-app purchasing options)

1. Pixel Studio (iOS)

Pixel Studio is a relatively new pixel art and animation app for both beginners and experts. It has a nice and simple interface, with which you can create frame-by-frame animations. 

Another great thing about this app is the Pixel Network™ community. Here you can find inspiration, as well as share your pixel art. 

In this app, you’ll find a huge library of custom brushes, image patterns, textures, and fonts. With the help of these and other practical online animation tools and layers, you’ll be able to come up with works of different levels of complexity. 

This free tool is only available to iOS users.

Features: 

• Available in 23 languages
• Simple interface 
• Google Drive sync
• Customizable toolbar 
• Export and import options 
• Autosave 
• Customizable grid

Pricing:

1. Adobe Spark (Android | iOS)

Adobe Express, previously known as Adobe Spark, is a popular animation app for both professionals and beginners. It’s convenient to use from both mobile and desktop by syncing your projects. It offers a huge range of fonts, stock images, and music. 

Don’t like anything from their lists? You can easily upload your own files. 

There are also many animated templates that you can use or just browse through and get inspired. 

It’s an excellent app not only for animation but much more. 

Features: 

• Huge stock of images and music 
• Seamless sync between devices 
• Sharing options 
• User-friendly interface 

Pricing:

• Starts at $9.99 per month

1. Textro (Android | iOS)

Made specifically for text animations, Textro is one of the easiest apps to create text videos for different platforms. 

You’ll find many colors, fonts, and other handy tools to make your text animation more eye-catching and creative. You can also add music to your project and make it dynamic. 

With Textro, creating animated quotes, intros, and other kinds of visuals is now fun and quick.

Features: 

• Simple
• A library of text animation styles 
• Variety of fonts 
• Importing options 

Pricing:

• Free (with in-app purchasing options)

Conclusion