Hi, Apropos to nothing much, here is some info about a Python 2D animation API I recently released:
It's called "Things" and uses Inkscape as an "extended IDE" for drawing the frames and graphics that you then animate with the API. It uses python-cairo and rsvg and a bit of xml (urgh) under the hood, but you only have to deal with simple things like tweens and frames and properties to do the animations.
The animations can be played in a window or exported frame by frame out to png or svg files. This lets you create Ajax throbbers and animated images by taking those files into some other process like imagemagick. You could also import the files into other software; like Blender or video apps.
With Things you can: 1. Contain Things in other Things. Example: a bird flying -- the wings moving on a tween would be inside the Bird Thing which would in-turn be tweening along a path across the screen. 2. Follow paths. 3. Clip Things to any path. 4. Animate size, position, alpha, rotation and tint. 5. Detect the mouse -- buttons, drag/drop etc. 6. Display frames from 'loops' which you draw (each frame of) in Inkscape. 7. Draw any graphics that python-cairo is capable of. Including pango text, gradients, paths, images, etc.
So, the idea is to use Inkscape for the visual design and Things for the animation thereof. Once this is done, you could distribute your "thingum" script, or use the export feature to take the animation to other places.
If you visit the links in my sig, you will find the code, help for the API and a PDF tutorial.
It's been written on *buntu GNU/Linux and it's probably best to try it on same. There are a few dependencies, but nothing you can't apt-get. The script will (I hope) help you locate what you need -- just run one of the demo "thingums".
It's early days, and there will be bugs, but it's quite nice to see it actually working.
Enjoy! And forgive all bugs, I am not much of a coder ;) \d