If you've ever wanted to make high-quality animations on your PC, Pencil's worth a download. This small application allows you to lay your art on a timeline, arranging the layers to create movement. You'll need experience with vectors and some decent artistic ability to get much of anything from this program, but it's an extremely capable tool and a great entry point for beginning animators.

Pencil's main display gives you a set of tools on the side of your screen that you can use to touch up your images and characters, an options menu, color controls and a timeline that runs across the bottom of the screen. Everything's in its right place, and you shouldn't have much trouble figuring the program out. You can download and read the user manual if you ever get stuck or consult with Pencil's decent user base for advice.

If you're looking for an animation program that will hold your hand while you learn, Pencil's probably not for you. You don't get the luxury of templates or dozens of ready-made examples. You're left to your own devices for the most part, which is either a bad thing or a major feature of the software depending on your perspective.

With that being said, Pencil will give you real results if you have artistic talent and an appropriate set of tools. With a good drawing tablet, you can make professional-level animations without dealing with the high learning curve of programs like Adobe Flash. Best of all, Pencil is completely free under the GPL license.

If you're confident in your artistic abilities and you don't need predefined shapes and other extras, give Pencil a try. It's a tiny program, light on system resources and perfectly suited to its task.