The best software for countryball animation

Two ways to animate a countryball

Before comparing programs, know the two main approaches. Rigged animation puts bones or a puppet inside the drawing, which you pose and keyframe. Frame-by-frame animation means drawing every pose yourself. Most countryball videos use mostly rigging or tweens, with frame-by-frame for special moments.

Comparison at a glance

Moho (formerly Anime Studio Pro)

Moho (opens in a new tab) by Lost Marble is built around vector drawing and bone rigging, which suits countryballs very well: rig a ball once, then swap flags for every country. Moho comes in two editions. Moho Debut is the cheaper, beginner edition; Moho Pro adds the advanced rigging and production features bigger projects need. Both are sold as a one-time purchase rather than a subscription, and there is a free trial.

The program was called Anime Studio Pro until 2016, so many older countryball tutorials use that name. Our Moho bones tutorial shows the core rigging workflow, and our Beginner and Advanced courses are taught in it.

Adobe Animate

Adobe Animate (opens in a new tab), the successor of Flash, combines vector drawing, classic and shape tweens, frame-by-frame tools and a camera layer. It's a natural choice if you already use Adobe apps. It's only available as a Creative Cloud subscription, with a free trial.

In early 2026 Adobe announced that Animate is in maintenance mode: it stays available to new and existing users with bug and security fixes, but gets no new features. It works well today; just know that it won't change much. See Adobe Animate countryball basics for a first project.

Free options

• OpenToonz (opens in a new tab) is a free, open source 2D animation suite based on Toonz, software used in professional animation studios. It handles both frame-by-frame and cut-out style animation, but the interface takes patience to learn.
• Krita (opens in a new tab) is a free, open source painting program with a built-in animation timeline. It's excellent for drawing backgrounds, flags and thumbnails, and fine for short frame-by-frame clips. It has no bone rigging, so longer countryball videos get slow.
• Blender (opens in a new tab) is free and open source. Its Grease Pencil tools let you draw and animate 2D strokes in a 3D scene, and it has a ready-made 2D Animation project template. It's very powerful, with the steepest learning curve on this list.
• Alight Motion (opens in a new tab) is a mobile app for animation and motion graphics with keyframes. It's free to download; the free version adds a watermark to exports, and a paid membership removes it and unlocks more features. A good way to start if you only have a phone or tablet.

How to choose

• You want to make countryball videos regularly and don't mind paying once: Moho. Rigging saves the most time for this kind of character.
• You already have Creative Cloud or prefer tweens and frame-by-frame work: Adobe Animate.
• You want to spend nothing: start with OpenToonz or Blender for animation, and Krita for artwork.
• You only have a phone or tablet: Alight Motion.

Whichever you choose, the fundamentals are the same everywhere. How to draw a countryball and how to animate countryballs apply to every program on this list.

Practice exercise