Scores of sites offer you thousands of free animations. You can use them on your web site or send them as digital postcards.

There are also many animation software packages available for download with no strings attached. Some of them are absolutely free, some are shareware and some are free with limited functions (with the option of more once you make the payment). There are some free trials that either expire after a certain period of time or are made available only with some critical options disabled.

Here is a list of some of them:

Adobe AfterEffects (Adobe). License: Free Trial. Motion graphics and visual effects for film and media.

Animator-9 3.6 (Key Technology). License: Free. Generate animated GIFs from your digital camera.

AniS 1.0 (Tom Whittaker). License: Free. Simple image manipulation for the web.

Jumpwel (Phildes0. License: Free. Basic object manipulator for use in HTML; uses Java applets.

Macromedia Flash (Macromedia). License: Free Trial. A leading player in 2D vector animation.

Macromedia Director (Macromedia). License: Free Trial. Create interactive ShockWave content.

Sqirlz Lite 1.1d (xiberpix0. License: Free. Animated image distorter that exports in AVI format.

Sqirlz Morph 1.2c (xiberpix). License: Free. Animated image morpher and blender.

3D Studio Max 7.0 (Discreet). License: Free Trial. Version 7.0 of the award-winning 3D modeling and animation software package. Also comes with trials of Character Studio and Mental Ray.

Cyberdelia (Askoh.com). License: Free. 3D Animation with support for exporting into Macromedia Shockwave.

FreeCAD 8.0 (Askoh.com). License: Free. A beginner