Hi all, I am new to the forums so I hope this is posted in the right place. I've been doing amateur 2D vector-based animation for several years and am finally thinking I should make more content for my work (in education) and maybe even go for a YouTube channel soon.
Here's the problem: I'm currently animating with Macromedia Flash 4.
Yep, before it was Adobe, even; the program that was released in like 1999. The program that only imports WAVs for sound files. Ugh. I've managed to make it work for my purposes for more than a decade, but it's time to move on. (Feel free to say whatever you want about how ridiculously behind the times I am. I know it's true.)
I've read a lot of articles about 2D programs for animators but honestly EVERYTHING is so much newer and better than what I have that I'm not sure what's really best for my purposes. I'm going for something with a vaguely similar interface to what I already know and I mostly plan to keep doing vector-based animations, not much hand-drawn stuff. I animate on my laptop which is decent but not boasting any crazy processing power. [Specs: Lenovo G560 with Intel Pentium P6100 (2.0GHz), 4GB DDR3 Memory, 320GB HDD, Intel GMA HD, on Windows 7 which is soon to be upgraded to Windows 10.]
Does anyone have recommendations for a good program for an amateur who would still like to put out sort of nice-looking work online? I know Adobe's recent animation programs work all right but I hear Flash is on its way out, right? I'm not really even sure what questions to ask here, so any thoughts are appreciated. Thanks. I hope no one was too annoyed with how new and clueless I am.
