What are some good...

[MetaMew]

free art/animation programs you'd recommend?

 

[Fiery Blaziken]

The Gimp and Photopfilter are good, have a lot of features, and are free.

 

[Eileen]

Paint.net is a good photoediting program and much easier to use than The Gimp. It requires .net 2.0 Framework though.

http://www.eecs.wsu.edu/paint.net/

 

[ShiningClefairy]

I just tried Paint.net and PaintFiltre and I definitely recommend The GIMP over either of them. Any difficulty in usage can be adjusted to. Once you're adjusted to it, you have the most powerful free image editor out there.

People only say it's complicated because they won't dare abandon their pirated version of Photoshop. I'm used to The GIMP and Photoshop seems complicated to me now.