Create Cartoon Animation In Android and IOS

Are you looking for some apps that you can use to create animation for your videos?
Surely, you are at the right place because today we are going to discuss a lot of things about 2D animation and which apps are most suitable to make 2D Animation in your android smartphone or any iOS device.
Keep reading the article, because I am going to be sharing with you an animation trick that will surely help you if you are new into 2D animation domain and do not have such good drawing skills like me, you should definitely try them.


3D Animation VS 2D Animation

First of all, 2D Animation is a great way to engage with you audience with minimum efforts. Generally, Animation is a time consuming field with lots and lots of detailing required. 2D Animation is time-saving compared to 3D Animation. 3D Animation requires a lot of time, efforts and detailing (360 degree editing required). 2D Animation is a great alternative to 3D Animation and is an equally engaging and intuitive way of grabbing hold of your audience.


2D Animation Software VS 2D Animation Apps

Animation software are compatible to the “big devices” that we use namely PCs and Laptops and Animation Apps are compatible for only smartphones except if you use an emulator to make it function.

Some examples of 2D Animation software include Adobe Animate (aka Adobe Flash), Toon Boom, Krita and etc. On the other hand, examples of 2D animation apps include Flipaclip, Picsart Animator, Draw Cartoons 2 and etc.

The specialty of Animation Software is that you can customize a lot of small details of your animation and make it your own, whereas Animation apps are bound to certain features and you can’t do much about it.

2D Animation softwares are generally paid (extremely expensive) like Adobe Animate (aka Adobe Flash) and Toon Boom Harmony with the ironical exception of Krita, a free animation 2D Animation software. Talking about Animation apps, most of them do not require you to pay any money. In case, if you want more feature, or removing the watermark you need to pay say some few dollars to get them. For instance, Draw Cartoons 2 is generally a free 2D animation app, but if you want more features and better control over your animation you’ll need to upgrade to the PRO version of the app which will cost you a few dollars.


As we know that 2D Animation software are mostly paid, they to carry the benefit of creating long projects with thousands of frames without any kind of disturbances in the process like lags, bugs or glitches (They are tested an launched by verified companies), but for Animation Apps anybody in the world can upload their app on the Play Store, so there isn’t any confirmation on the reliability and capacity of the app surely and that is one of the reasons why animation apps In android (leaving some apps like Draw Cartoons 2, Flipaclip and Picsart Animator) are not capable of supporting heavy projects with large number of frames, another reason is that the android phone’s processor is not as capable as the processor of a laptop or a PC, so it automatically hinders the process.

Also, for creating animation of Animation software you can easily see the details and edit them because of the large work screen of the laptop or PC. On the contrary, animation apps are usually ineffective because the work screen is small and you can hardly see the character you're animating (for some animation apps, you can zoom in to see the details like FlipaClip Cartoon Animation).

It is hard to draw and animate the objects and characters in animation apps if you don’t have a stylus (with hand, you’ll end up drawing terribly awful because the screen is too small). To the contrary, sketching on animation software is not as laborious as sketching in animation apps and you can use your mouse to do all the strokes for you, which is at least better than using your hand.


Top 10 2D Animation Apps For Android

1. Flipaclip: Cartoon Animation Creator & Art Studio (My Ranking: 2)

Our first and one of the most loved and famous 2D animation app is the FlipaClip: Cartoon Animation. App. This app is based on frame-by-frame animation like an old flipbook.

Flipaclip: Cartoon Animation Creator & Art Studio
Flipaclip: Cartoon Animation Creator & Art Studio

Pros:
Quite Easy to use, even for a 12 year old.
Lot of intuitive features to work with like Text, Shapes, Fill Tool, Colours, Brush Types, Brush Thickness and etc.
Download animation in gallery without watermark for free.
Can import or record audio for the animations.
Can save the project and continue whenever and wherever you want.
Can zoom to detail the animation.
Good for all kinds of 2d Animation like cartoon animation and storytelling (Kids Stories).

Cons:
Include lots of in-app purchases
Hard to shade the objects
You can only add 3 layers without a premium.
Lots of lagging problems once you reach large no. of frames (that also depends on your android version)
Not full control of your animation (can’t do lot of detailing)
Some users have also faced glitches while reopening the projects.

Playstore:
Status: Free (Include in-app purchases)
Offered By: Visual Blasters LLC
Required Android: 4.4 and up
Downloads: 10,000,000+
Rating: 4.4 out of 5 (4,47,601 reviews)
Download Size: 33 MB

Appstore:
Status: Free (Include in-app purchases)
Offered By: Visual Blasters LLC
Compatibility: iPhone - Requires iOS 11.0 or later. iPad - Requires iPadOS 11.0 or later. iPod touch - Requires iOS 11.0 or later. Mac - Requires macOS 11 or later and a Mac with Apple M1 chip.
Rating: 4.6 out of 5 (94.8K reviews) 
Download Size: 123 MB


2. PicsArt Animator: GIF & Video (My Ranking: 3)

One of my most loved apps is the PicsArt Animator, it gives us the platform to create stickers and animate them using a lot of creative tools. This app is very similar to FlipaClip: Cartoon Animation and is based on frame-by-frame drawing tools.


PicsArt Animator: GIF & Video
PicsArt Animator: GIF & Video


Pros:
Animation creator and cartoon maker is simple to use, no advance skills required.
Includes pre-composed animation, which can be downloaded and included the animation movie that we are making.
Lot of Features similar to FilpaClip: Cartoon Animation like Animation timeline, voiceovers, Shapes inclusion and etc.
Can create cartoon animation, animated GIFs and Funny Doodles.
Unlike FlipaClip: Cartoon Animation, You can add multiple layers and create complex animations
Like FlipaClip: Cartoon Animation, you can control the animation length and speed
Does not include any kind of ads.

Cons:
Stroke weight not present.
Few bugs are present in the app like the disappearing of projects suddenly without any warning (Lot of users faced this problem).
Too many bugs and lags (but they are working to fix them one by one)
App crashing problems present in the app.
Brushes do not have stabilizers decreasing the overall quality of the animation.
Includes a watermark for every animation you create.
Can’t create detailed animation due to the lack of features.

Playstore:
Status: Free (Include in-app purchases)
Offered By: PicsArt
Required Android: 4.0.3 and up
Downloads: 5,000,000+
Rating: 3.7 out of 5 (46,672 reviews)
Download Size: 33 MB

Appstore:
Status: Free (Include in-app purchases)
Offered By: PicsArt, Inc.
Compatibility: iPhone - Requires iOS 10.0 or later. iPad - Requires iPadOS 10.0 or later. iPod touch - Requires iOS 10.0 or later. Mac - Requires macOS 11 or later and a Mac with Apple M1 chip.
Rating: 3.3 out of 5 (252 reviews) 
Download Size: 123 MB


3. Make cartoons with Poppy Toons (My Ranking: 6)

Make cartoons with Poppy toons is a cartoon animation app, which uses gallery images to create animated videos with the help of finger gestures. Instead of using frame-by-frame animation technique, it allows you to create animation by importing images from the phone’s gallery.


Make cartoons with Poppy Toons
Make cartoons with Poppy Toons

Pros:
Draw your own images and use them as characters.
App’s interface is easy to understand
Simple to animate, due to the ability to use finger gestures to animate.
Good for basic animation and kid’s story telling animations.
Download animation in gallery without watermark for free.
Can do all the difficult operations like rotating, scaling up or down, hiding and moving using your fingertips.
Good for simple animation, but not good for Detailed Animations.

Cons:
Duration of the cartoon animation is limited to 30 seconds (No Duration Limit for Pro Version Users)
Includes a watermark (company’s name) on every animated video that you create (Pro version does not have a watermark on the exported video).
Includes a lot of ads (Pro version does not include any ads)
Objects and Characters can be animated, but individual body parts can’t be animated like hand movement or legs movement.
Limited characters and objects to animate.
Project Exporting and Video recording problems
Graphics are not the best
Irritating Ads pops up while creating the animation

Playstore:
Status: Free (Include in-app purchases and has a Pro Version that is under development)
Offered By: PoppyToons
Required Android: 5.0 and up
Downloads: 100,000+
Rating: 3.6 out of 5 (1,436 reviews)
Download Size: 12 MB

Appstore:
Status: Not Offered


4. Draw Cartoons 2 - animated video maker (My Ranking: 1)

From drawing to publishing a cartoon, this apps presents a great workflow platform to create your animation, it is called Draw Cartoons 2. This app is based on frame-by-frame animation, and is suitable for both people good at drawing and people who are good in drawing.
Tip: I would recommend you to spend $2 and buy the PRO version, it is the best animation app I could recommend anybody using an android phone and wanting a high quality animation app.


Draw Cartoons 2 - animated video maker
Draw Cartoons 2 - animated video maker

Pros:
A huge library of objects and characters to animate.
With each object and character possessing keypoints from where the part can be animated.
Create skeletal-based characters from scratch.
Can Voice over cartoons and add music
Easy to understand interface and smooth workflow
Can export the videos in the phone gallery in mp4 format without nasty watermarks
Perfect for storytelling purposes.
Easy to use with no professional tools, even kids can use this to animate.
PRO Version: No need to add lo of key frames just key frames of the crucial positions of the characters and immediate frames are created smoothing up the workflow (GREAT!! Isn’t it)
Can even edit the pre-composed characters provided in the app and customize it according to your own needs.
Great for all sorts of 2d Animation like Comics, Cartoon Making and storytelling (Kids Stories).

Cons:
Lot of basic things are paid like stickman and etc.
No option of importing your images from the gallery
Slow workflow and lagging problems
Glitches and bugs present like drawing your own character
Painful to use the drawing tool, because of the small screen and confusing interface
Difficult to understand interface for newbies
Gets glitchy and starts lagging once the animation frames increase.
Lot of ads Present, which hinders the work pace.
Project saving problems are present in the app.
When the project reaches 100 frames, there are lagging problems and also items start to disappear (some users only).

No Promotion: My Favorite Cartoon Animation App!! Try it once and you'll see its magic.

Playstore:
Status: Free (Include in-app purchases)
Offered By: Zalivka Mobile Cartoons
Required Android: 4.4 and up
Downloads: 10,000,000+
Rating: 4.5 out of 5 (313,416 reviews)
Download Size: 79 MB

Appstore:
Status: Not Offered


5. Animatic by Inkboard (My Ranking: 5)

Animatic is based on frame-by-frame animation, with which you can create flip book-like animation on your android. Similar to FlipaClip and Picsart Animator in functionality.


Animatic by Inkboard
Animatic by Inkboard

Pros:
Easy to understand interface and is simple to use.
Has got all the necessary tools to animate basic objects.
Import photos form gallery.
Great for single layer animations.
No watermark present in exported animations.
No silly ads present in the app.
Can export the videos in the phone gallery in standard formats.
Can be helpful in creating intros for YouTube and other platforms.

Cons:
Can’t share your videos on Social Media directly from the app.
Limited drawing tools like colors, brushes and fill tool.
Does not have the basic tool of copying and pasting the frames.
Not good for multiple layers, because this app is limited to only certain number of frames.
Lot of glitches present when animating and while exporting the project.
Hard to use with hand, a pen for the device would be nice which most people don’t have
Export is not in HD, which decreases the overall quality of the animations.
Can’t build animation in landscape.
It crops the video at the end which decreases the quality
Zooming feature is not available.
16:9 aspect ratio is not present which is an important standard for animation.

Playstore:
Status: Free (Include in-app purchases)
Offered By: Doodle.ly, Inc.
Required Android: 4.1 and up
Downloads: 100,000+
Rating: 3.6 out of 5 (3,527 reviews)
Download Size: 19 MB

Appstore:
Status: Paid (Price - $9.99)
Offered By: Doodle.ly, Inc
Compatibility: iPhone - Requires iOS 13.0 or later. b- Requires iPadOS 13.0 or later. iPod touch - Requires iOS 13.0 or later. Mac - Requires macOS 11 or later and a Mac with Apple M1 chip.
Rating: 4.6 out of 5 (656 reviews) 
Download Size: 290 MB


6. RoughAnimator - animation app (My Ranking: 6)

Rough Animator is a fully featured hand drawn animation app, which is based on traditional frame-by- frame animation.

RoughAnimator - animation app
RoughAnimator - animation app

Pros:
Timeline with unlimited layers to animate
Audio importing available
Can import video for rotoscoping animation (trace over picture footage, frame by frame, to produce realistic action).
Can export the video to quicktime video, GIF, or image sequence.
Its projects can be imported to Adobe Animate, After Effects, and Toon Boom Harmony.
Custom brush option available for better drawing
Professional enough for animators, simple enough for beginners.

Cons:
Annoying bugs that cause the layers to get corrupted
Complex Interface, hard to understand
No save button. It just auto-saves after every action.
No layer groups available.
Do not have the ability to set brush and eraser presents.
No portrait mode layout available
No layer locking and toggling feature available.
Confusing a lot of times due to complex interface.
No shape creating feature available.
Crashing problems reported by some users.
Bugs and glitches also affect the workflow, reported by lot of users.

Playstore:
Status: Paid (Rs. 400)
Offered By: WeirdHat
Required Android: 4.2 and up
Downloads: 10,000+
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 (1,443 reviews)
Download Size: 29 MB

Appstore:
Status: Paid (Price - $4.99)
Offered By: Jacob KAFKA
Compatibility: iPhone - Requires iOS 8.0 or later. iPad - Requires iPadOS 8.0 or later. iPod touch - Requires iOS 8.0 or later.
Rating: 4.5 out of 5 (1.3K reviews) 
Download Size: 32.3 MB


7. Animation Desk – Make Your Animation and Cartoons (My Ranking: 10)

Animation Desk is another app on the list, which is famous for creating frame-by-frame animation in your android smartphone. It gives you an intuitive drawing environment and the then helps in animating it.
Animation Desk – Make Your Animation and Cartoons
Animation Desk – Make Your Animation and Cartoons

Pros:
Lot of features specifically brush types to work with.
Friendly interface and easy to understand features.
Can add multiple layers to perfect your animation.
Great painting tools and colour variations
Great app for beginners, and one layered animation.
Onion Skinning (See an overlay of adjacent frames) available to save time.
No prior animation experience required to use the app.

Cons:
No option available to include the audio for animation only available after exporting the project.
Can’t set the frames per second of the video according to our needs.
Prone to a lot of glitches while creating and exporting the animation.
Some basic tools missing like brush thickness and fill tool.
Slow workflow and lagging problems
A good app for drawing, but lacking animation tools.
Stabilizers for animation not present.
Animation preview problems reported by some users.
Gets glitchy and starts lagging once the animation frames increase.
Problems in buying up the accessories
Crashing problems experienced by some users.

Playstore:
Status: Free (Include in-app purchases)
Offered By: Kdan Mobile Software Ltd.
Required Android: 5.0 and up
Downloads: 1,000,000+
Rating: 4.4 out of 5 (10,992 reviews)
Download Size: Varies with device

Appstore:
Status: Free (Include in-app purchases)
Offered By: Kdan Mobile Software LTD
Compatibility: iPhone - Requires iOS 9.0 or later. iPad - Requires iPadOS 9.0 or later. iPod touch - Requires iOS 9.0 or later. Mac - Requires macOS 11 or later and a Mac with Apple M1 chip.
Rating: 4.3 out of 5 (11K reviews) 
Download Size: 310.9 MB


8. (Discontinued) Anitales – Make Story (My Ranking: 4)

It is designed to encourage kids (but if you are like me, not a “kid”, you can still use it) to create animated stories. You just need to choose your cartoon story location, add personalized characters, adjust outfits in accordance to the scene, do voice-over and here we go: We have a cartoon animated movie.


Anitales – Make Story
Anitales – Make Story


Pros:
A wide variety of scenes, weathers, skies, props and music to add.
Customize your characters, according to your needs.
Create voice-overs to narrate the cartoon animation movie.
You can use your friend’s charcters in your animated film.
Perfect for storytelling purposes.
Great for kids (moral) stories.
Easy to understand interface.
Simple to use (because it is meant for kids).

Cons:
Limited scenes and characters like only human characters available to animate, no animals present and also clothing of characters.
Can’t animate the scenes.
Limited number of scenes that can be added.
No option of importing your images from the gallery
Slow workflow and lagging problems
Glitches and bugs present like drawing your own character
Hard to animate at first.

Playstore:
Status: Discontinued (Under Development)
Offered By: Mibao Infornation technology Ltd.
Required Android: 5.0 and up
Downloads: 1,00,000+
Rating: 4.2 out of 5 (6,000 reviews)
Download Size: 82.60 MB

Appstore:
Status: Discontinued (Under Development)


9. StickDraw – Animation Maker (My Ranking: 8)

It is specially designed for stick figures. Animate in this app frame-by-frame and create Animation.


StickDraw – Animation Maker
StickDraw - Animation Maker
Pros:
Easy to use interface.
Good Control of your animation.
Easy to Animate.
You can control a lot of details in the animation.
Easy to draw and make the stickman.
Great for beginners.
Would recommend you to buy the PRO version.

Cons:
Complex toolbar, hard to understand
Lot of glitches while opening the app like appearance of a black screen while animating.
Lot of lagging problems as the no. of frames increases.
“Tap and Hold” feature doesn’t work well.
Majority of the users have complained about the repetitive bugs.
Can’t animate the background.
Quite confusing to use at first.
No option for adding sound
Limit of adding no. of layers.
Less tools for animation like the brushes and also painting.
No Zoom option.

Playstore:
Status: Free (Pro Version available with no ads and a lot more features)
Offered By: Bingzer LLC
Required Android: Varies with device
Downloads: 1,000,000+
Rating: 3.5 out of 5 (40,168 reviews)
Download Size: Varies with device

Appstore:
Status: Free 
Offered By: kalubhai beladiya
Compatibility: iPhone - Requires iOS 10.0 or later. iPod touch - Requires iOS 10.0 or later. Mac - Requires macOS 11 or later and a Mac with the Apple M1 chip.
Rating: 2.0 out of 5 (4 reviews) 
Download Size: 13.7 MB


10. Anime Maker (My Ranking: 9)

This app is very similar to StickDraw Animation app, it is also a frame-by-frame animation app like a flipbook.

Anime Maker
Anime Maker

Pros:
All the basic features available to create a single-layered cartoon animation.
Adjust Animation speed
Publish your animation and communicate with other users.
Great for beginners.
Good for single-layered animations.

Cons:
Lot of annoying ads present in the app.
Can’t zoom in to see the animation details.
Does not include the landscape mode.
Does not include the feature of adding multiple layers.
Glitches present in the app like appearance of a black screen.
Some basic tool are not present like fill colour, background and etc.
Lagging problems are also reported by many users.
Does not have the feature to include the audio.

Playstore:
Status: Free (Include in-app purchases)
Offered By: kenmaz.net
Required Android: 4.1 and up
Downloads: 1,000,000+
Rating: 3.7 out of 5 (15,164 reviews)
Download Size: 9.3M

Appstore:
Status: Free (Include in-app purchases)
Offered By: Kentaro Matsumae
Compatibility: iPhone - Requires iOS 11.4 or later. iPad - Requires iPadOS 11.4 or later. iPod touch - Requires iOS 11.4 or later. Mac - Requires macOS 11 or later and a Mac with Apple M1 chip.
Rating: 3.4 out of 5 (843 reviews) 
Download Size: 19.1 MB


Now, I want to share with you one of the most reputed animation techniques “The Stop Motion Animation” in which an image is captured on every motion of a character and object. The images are then combines to for a slideshow. The slideshow is played at a high speeds giving an outcome of a high quality “realistic animation movie”.

+ Stop Motion Studio

Stop Motion Studio is an app exclusively designed for stop motion animation. In this app, the camera enables you to take a lot of photographs of moving objects. The app then combines the photographs to create an animated movie for you. Do check it out, I really loved it. If you don’t have good drawing skills like me, you should definitely try this one and experience an aura of victory.


Stop Motion Studio
Stop Motion Studio

Pros:
No prior animation skills required
Fun animating using Stop motion Animation technique.
Frame rate can be chosen according to your needs.
Easy to use and control.
Have a Simple interface to use.

Cons:
Camera needs to be kept still for every photograph taken.
Some users reported a difficulty in exporting the videos.
Onion Skinning is not present.
Do not have the option to save the videos to gallery.
Lagging problems are experienced once the project size increases.
Crashing problems experienced by some users.

Playstore:
Status: Free (Include in-app purchases)
Offered By: Cateater
Required Android: 5.0 and up
Downloads: 10,000,000+
Rating: 3.9 out of 5 (107,623 reviews)
Download Size: 93 MB

Appstore:
Status: Free (Include in-app purchases)
Offered By: CATEATER, LLC
Compatibility: iPhone - Requires iOS 9.0 or later. iPad - Requires iPadOS 9.0 or later. iPod touch - Requires iOS 9.0 or later.
Rating: 4.6 out of 5 (28.7K reviews) 
Download Size: 145 MB


The Best 2D Animation App For You

Now the question arises that:
Which is the best animation app that I should you?
The answer is not that straight forward and the best animation app will surely depend on what you want to animate, type of animation that you want to create and the purpose for creating the animations. So let me brief you about it a little bit here.




For Purely 2D Cartoon Animation: Use Draw Cartoons 2, Anitales, Poppy Toons and Stop Motion Studio.
For 2D Storytelling (Kids Stories) Animation: Use Draw Cartoons 2, Anitales, Stop Motion Studio and Poppy Toons.
For 2D Drawing/ Sketching Animation: Use FlipaClip, Picsart Animator, Rough Animtor, Animatic and Animation Desk.
For 2D Explainer Videos: Use Draw Cartoons 2, FlipaClip, Picsart Animator, Rough Animtor, Animatic, Animation Desk, Animemaker and StickDraw.

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