Which animation package best for traditional?

[tashtego_jwm]

Hail All!

Ok, so I'm getting back into my art and currently taking a 2d class at junior college. I own Flash CS4 which came with my Creative Suite, but am looking to purchase a more robust animation package in the near future. I am currently tinkering and learning Flash as well as Pencil. Toon Boom Animate looks promising, but then there's also Digicell Flipbook and PAP. I do enjoy the rough pencil look of the Pencil program, but there's only so much it can obviously do. Flash is almost too clean due to vectors for my personal taste. I can't see my hand in it if that makes any sense. I'm trying to work in the time to download the trial version of Animate.

I've read a lot of people's differing opinions all over the net (some rather ugly flame wars), but wondering what people here think. I'm committed to learning Flash since I already own it, but just wondering which software to look for in the future. Thanks, and all help appreciated.

[Zwickel]

Ive been using flash for around 7 years and it's really great, it has some painful stuff such as the time it taked to paint with the bucket (ugh) and some bugs.

If you have the Creative Suite and you learn how to use all of the programs, you'll see how robust it really is. Illustrator is great for making vector characters and certain elements as well as typography design for titles, etc.

Toonboom is also vector based, but that's what you see on TV most of the time now.

I say learn your creative suite well, and add Toonboom to your collection, and you'll be good.