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DoInk is a free online drawing and animation tool that runs right in your browser. You can treat it like Microsoft Paint and use it to do just a quick doodle, or take advantage of its layer cloning and vector-based designs to create relatively advanced animations.

I chose the latter, and put together a pretty slick looking animation in just a few minutes. Adding additional frames is simple and intuitive, and the app saves everything you’re working on in the background (and in the cloud) so there are no local files to worry about. You can also hop between projects at any time, just like you would in a software app.

DoInk feels a little bit like a desktop application, but runs entirely in Java.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

The app does a great job at cloning individual frames, and will show each one that came before it as a “ghost” that remains in the background while you work on the new one. If you notice one or more of them needs to be a little longer you can also begin cloning it several times right from the timeline that sits in the bottom of the screen. This lets you make minute adjustments like moving a character’s mouth, or background imagery to create a realistic looking animation.

When done with any creation you can share it with the DoInk community, e-mail it to a friend, or embed it on a blog or social-networking profile. I’ve embedded one below that behaves like a YouTube video and won’t start until you hit the play button. You can also publish anything you’ve made straight to YouTube, which is a nice touch.

(via Delicious)

Redball jumper by JoshLowensohn, made at DoInk.com

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DoInk lets you draw, animate in your browser

GoAnimate is browser based animation studio. It lets you build multi-scene animated creations, complete with support for music, transitions, and user-uploaded page elements. I spent most of this morning playing around with it and the results are about on par with what you’d find on one of those animated greeting cards.

Like most video editing applications GoAnimate centers around a timeline. Everything is drag and drop, so you can pick out characters, props, backgrounds and special effects and simple put them on the canvas where you see fit. Each “scene” can be edited to last as long as you want, and you can drag finished scenes around the timeline to re-order them. Basically everything is setup to let you quickly clone and continue your work with minimal effort.

The short I made consisted of nine scenes and took about a half hour to make, however most of that was me learning how to use the tool. Part of the process is picking out ready made characters and customizing them which is fairly intuitive and similar to working on a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation. As the author you can move objects up and down, and program in things like automated object movement and transitions.

GoAnimate lets you stick cropped heads onto ready-made animated characters quickly and easily. The results can be rather humorous.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

One cool feature is that you can upload pictures from your hard drive, facebook, or Flickr and turn them into props, backgrounds, or human heads. These heads can be stuck onto the bodies of pre-made characters, so with just a few head shots you can make your very own animated faces by splicing scenes together.

While simple to use the tool is not without its shortcomings. For instance, you can’t set up several character movements or actions within one scene. This means attaching a speech bubble to a character requires its own scene instead of being able to time out multiple speech bubbles in one scene using delay. I know this seems like a small quibble, but it means adding in more scenes when you could simply mark out the action on a separate timeline.

The tool also feels a little cramped on larger screens as it doesn’t scale to match the extra width. This too is a small quibble, but after having played with Flash game creator PlayCrafter yesterday (story), tools that account for this extra space make it far easier for people who are serious about using them as an alternative to desktop applications.

GoAnimate is completely free to use. You can see an example of the test one I made below.

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GoAnimate puts powerful animation tools in your browser

The Met Office Hadely Center, British Antarctic Survey, and the U.K. government on Monday introduced a Google Earth application that visualizes the anticipated temperatures changes from climate change over the next 100 years.

The Northern hemisphere today in 2008. Click on the image to download the animation

(Credit: Google Earth)

The animation uses a color scheme to show the differences in temperatures layed over a Google Earth image.

People can also click on icons on the image to get more on how the data was compiled, stories from people affected by climate change, and information on the projected regional impact of climate change.

The initiative was launched by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown at the Google Zeitgeist conference on Monday.

A projection from the same perspective 50 years from now, showing the highest temperature change (red) in the Arctic.

(Credit: Google Earth)

vnunet quoted British Environment Secretary Hilary Benn saying that the collaboration was done to help people understand climate change better.

“This project shows the reality of climate change using estimates of the change in the average temperature where they live, and the impact it will have on people’s lives all over the world, including here in Britain,” she said, according to the vnunet report.

“By helping people to understand what climate change means for them and for the world we can mobilize the commitment we need to avoid the worst effects by taking action now.”

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Google Earth app shows effects of climate change