Ten Simple Animation Tools

Students love to see their stories come to life and create animated scenes to show what they know. All of the apps on today's list will help students create animations. Teachers who are creating their own mini-lesson videos may just want to take a deeper look at some of these options as well. 

Animate with Your Finger

Apps in this category work by setting up a scene with characters and then recording. Students speak and use their fingers (or a mouse) to move the pieces around. The recording will play back an animation showing the movements of the characters in the scene. 

Students who know how to screencast can also use this method to create animations using Jamboard or Google Slides by importing clipart and background images. Then, they can record their screen and move the clipart around.

1. Puppet Pals HD and Puppet Pals 2

These iPad apps both have limited, but excellent free versions. For those with money in the budget, I recommend the Puppet Pals HD Director's Pass for $3.99. Puppet Pals 2 also has the School Edition for $5.99 and the Puppet Pals Pack bundle costs $7.99. 

The free versions will give students limited scenes and characters to work with. The HD Director's Pass unlocks loads of scenes and characters, but also gives students the option to create their own characters and scenes from a photo (or a drawing they've taken a photo of). Because students can create their own scenes and characters this is my go-to iPad app.

2. Princess Fairy Tale Maker

This free iPad app from Duck Duck Moose includes 32 background scenes and 190+ animated stickers. Students can tap the characters to make their mouths move. 

3. Superhero Comic Book Maker

This free iPad app is another Duck Duck Moose app that includes 27 background scenes and 170+ animated stickers. Tap to make the mouths move.

4. Draw and Tell

This free iPad app from Duck Duck Moose was created for making art and talking about your drawing, however, it also works for animation because you can move the stickers as you record your voice. This app gives students drawing tools in addition to 150+ stickers with animals, food, cars, letters, and more.

5. Toontastic 3D

This app can be found in both the Google Play and Apple App Store. I was pleased to see that Google Play let me get it for my Chromebook. 

With this app students develop their stories by building them from one of the preset story arcs. They then select or draw their own scenes and characters. The character's colors are also editable. They can create the right mood by adding in music to their scenes.

6. Seesaw

Seesaw's drawing canvas can be used to create animations. The record tool captures your voice, the movement of images on the screen, and anything you draw. Students can start from scratch and upload their own images or you can set up an activity for them with preloaded characters and backgrounds.

Write Code to Create Animations

The apps in this category require students to click together basic computer programming blocks to write code to create an animation.

7. Scratch Jr.

Scratch Jr. is a coding app available on Google Play and the Apple App Store. I checked to see if it would work on my Chromebook and it is not compatible.

Students can choose premade backgrounds and characters or create their own. There are six categories of coding blocks they can use to write the code to create their animations. Scratch Jr. provides nine pre-made activity worksheets to introduce students to coding basics. Students will be able to move a character across the screen after the very first activity. 

8. Scratch

Scratch is a little more complex than Scratch Jr. and it works on computers instead of tablets. Teachers who want to invest a little more time in having their students learn the programming side of animation will love this free website.

Still Frame Animations

Apps in this category create animations by running a series of still frames in sequence to make it appear as if the objects are moving.

9. ABCYa Animate

ABCYa Animate is a basic animation app for grades 3-6+. It is free online, but requires a subscription to be used on tablets. 

Students can use painting tools, shapes, stickers, and text to create still images. They can then develop a series of frames that will make it appear as if the objects move.

10. Stop Motion Apps

Stop motion animation was made famous with claymation movies like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and Wallace and Gromit. There are several apps out there to help students create stop motion animation.

Stop Motion Studio (free) version for iPad and Google Play (doesn't work on my Chromebook). 

Stop Motion Animator is available for free in the Chrome Web Store (does work on the Chromebook).

ClipMotion is available for free in the Chrome Web Store (does work on the Chromebook).