A free 2D path that starts in Krita's animation workspace

You can draw a shot and export it without paying for a seat. The steps this guide will walk are the steps in Krita’s manual. The other programs are listed with the version we checked. This is not a claim that a Krita frame sequence drops into Pencil2D, OpenToonz, or Synfig through a menu we never opened.

The app is Krita. Our row records the download page as 5.3.4.1, released Wednesday, 7 October 2026, for Windows, macOS, and Linux, GPL-3.0. The manual pages are the animation chapter and the Render Animation reference. The copy we read is labeled Krita Manual 5.3.0.

What you are setting up

The manual says Krita’s animation, from the 2015 Kickstarter, is frame-by-frame raster animation. Keyframes hold the important poses. The frames between them are drawn, not generated. The way in is the Animation workspace. In the walk-cycle introduction the manual tells you to choose Window → Workspace → Animation, which puts the timeline at the bottom.

Four dockers matter. The timeline shows frames and layers, and a layer you add there also appears in the Layer docker. Onion skin draws the neighboring frames. Animation curves are for minor tweening. The storyboard docker is for planning. The manual’s warning for anything longer than a few seconds is memory: Krita keeps the frames in RAM. The status bar’s resolution label shows that use, and the page says not to fill the bar.

Before the acting, the same chapter wants an outline, then a short storyboard, then an animatic in a video editor. It names Kdenlive as one option and says Krita does not have extensive montage tools. For a first piece it suggests 12 frames per second and clips of about 10 seconds, which is 120 frames. File → Import Animation Frames brings those storyboard frames onto a layer. File → Incremental Backup is the copy it tells you to keep when a hard section is done.

Duplicate the frame. Do not blank it.

A new frame is not created by drawing. The walk-cycle section says the layer is not animated until you add a frame on the timeline. Right-click and choose Create Duplicate Frame when the drawing has to survive. Create Blank Frame drops the layer content. The manual flags that pair on purpose, because the blank command is the one that throws the pose away.

An onion-skin icon shows up once the layer is animated. Turn it on and the previous frame is red, the future frame is green. Both colors are editable in the onion-skin docker. The layer you draw on has to be partly transparent. Krita treats white as paint, not as empty. The walk-cycle setup tells you to fill the canvas with a background color so the animation layer can stay transparent enough for onion skin to read. A fully opaque paint layer will not show the frames underneath.

The manual’s first exercise uses the Move tool, shortcut T, on a duplicated frame. If another drawing disappears from the timeline, pin that layer. From 4.3.0, new layers are pinned by default.

Render, then stop at the editor door

File → Render Animation is the export. The reference says a video export writes a PNG sequence first and then encodes it, so a bad frame can be replaced without starting over. Export as Image Sequence forces PNG. You set the folder, a base name, and the first number. Only Unique Frames exports keyframes only. Leave it off to get one image per frame-rate step.

Since 5.2, the page says, a small part of FFmpeg is bundled, so a separate download is not required for a basic render. You can still point at your own binary. The bundled containers it names are WebM, Matroska, and OGG, with codecs including AV1, VP9, VP8, H.264 via openH264, and Theora. Widths above 1920 and frame rates above 30 are flagged. Transparent pixels render as black unless an opaque layer sits at the bottom. This guide is the desktop path. The Android note on that page is a different exporter, and it says not to install FFmpeg there.

After that, the animation chapter tells you to compose the sequence in a video editor. It does not document the clicks. Our directory has two editors we checked, and the handoff stops here. Kdenlive is GPL-3.0. The download page said latest 26.08.2, with a Windows installer and a Linux AppImage, and it did not state a date or a macOS build we recorded. Shotcut is GPL-3.0, version 26.9.27, for Windows, macOS, and Linux. GitHub release v26.9.27 was published 28 September 2026.

The other free apps are not the next click

Pencil2D is bitmap and vector 2D animation, GPL-2.0. Stable v0.7.2 was last updated 13 March 2026, for Windows, macOS, and Linux. A manual URL we tried did not load, so there is no click path. OpenToonz is BSD 3-Clause. The project site lists Windows and macOS, not Linux, on the page we read. Release v1.8.0 was published 19 June 2026. Synfig Studio is vector 2D animation, GPL-3.0, and the homepage says 1.5.5 was released 22 March 2026 for Windows, Linux, and macOS.

Use Krita when the shot is drawings on frames. Read the other project’s own manual before you move a file. October notes that are not in the 5.3.4.1 hotfix are in the 22 October desk roundup.