Vectorian Giotto -- Create Flash Animation without Coding (Now Free)

Flash Animation -- love it or hate it, chances are that you have to work with it at some point if you design or otherwise work with web sites. Programs to work with Flash beyond the "create a button' or "create a Flash ad banner" level are usually complex, require a lot of programming ability, and high priced. Thanks to Vertorian making their Vectorian Giotto program freeware in mid-April, this is no longer true.

Vectorian Giotto is a powerful but easy to use -- as Flash design software goes -- program for any modern version of Windows. It was create for designers rather than coders. Although you can use Actionscript 2 if you which to, there are a large number of effects generators which generally make this unnecessary. The user interface is clean and similar to that of the very expensive Adobe Flash software.

Here are the features and benefits of Vectorian Giotto from the Vectorian web site:

Powerful Drawing Tools 
Vectorian Giotto gives you all the drawing tools you need to create a perfect drawing for your Flash movie. Aside from the standard lines, rectangles, ellipses and freehand brushes and lines, Giotto has the vector eraser tool and supports automatic object merging when drawing shapes with the same brush. Full Support for Buttons and Movie Clips     Giotto enables you to make complex movie clips and buttons, that can be reused throughout your work in multiple projects. You can make button and movie clip libraries that you can share with your colleagues or even sell to other designers. Simple to Use Project Tools     For bigger projects, Giotto offers tools to organize them: multiple scenes, movie browser and external libraries.

Support for Advanced Flash Features
Full support for Flash 8 blends and filters.

Shape Morphing     
Unique on the market, Giotto offers powerful and intelligent shape morphing: morph complex shapes into other complex shapes.

Colorful, Stunning, Easy to Use Effects     
Giotto features dozens of stunning effects that can be applied to simple drawings, movie clips, buttons or text. Each effect is highly customizable Giotto will follow wherever your imagination goes.

Full Sound and Music Support     
Add background music or transitional sound effects to your movies, in MP3 or WAV format. Giotto even lets you compress your sound and change the compression of existing MP3 files, if you need to decrease the bandwidth needed to send your sound to the user.

If you need to work with Flash, but don't have a lot of money to spend or a lot of time to spend on learning a complex program and a programming language, Vectorian Giotto is the probably the answer to your prayers. As it started life as commercial software -- and fairly well thought of commercial software at that -- it is better thought out and easier to use than most freeware Flash animation software. It is well worth the download.

Rating: 5.0
Operating System: Windows XP or later
License: Freeware
Price: Free
Version Tested: 2.0
Web Site: http://vectorian.com/giotto/