Cartoon Studio – an open-source desktop app for making 2D cartoon shows
Hi HN — I built Cartoon Studio, an open-source desktop app for making simple 2D cartoon scenes and shows. The basic flow is: place SVG characters on a scene, write dialogue, pick voices, and render to MP4. It handles word timestamps, mouth cues, and lip-sync automatically. This started as me playing around with Jellypod's Speech SDK and HeyGen's HyperFrames. I wanted a small tool that could go from script to video without a big animation pipeline and next thing I knew I was trying to create my own South Park style show and here we are. :D A few details: - desktop app built with Electron -…
Cartoon Studio – an open-source desktop app for making 2D cartoon shows launched on April 23, 2026 with 15 votes, #1,070 of 21,248 launches that month and more than 90% of that year's launches.
In plain words
Cartoon Studio is an open-source desktop application for creating 2D cartoon videos without requiring extensive animation expertise. Users place SVG characters on scenes, write dialogue, select text-to-speech voices, and render to MP4, with the software automatically handling lip-sync and mouth cues. Built with Electron and supporting multiple TTS providers, it streamlines the workflow from script to finished video by eliminating the need for complex animation pipelines.
written from the facts on this page · September 2026
From the sources
An open-source desktop studio app for making 2D animated cartoon shows. - Jellypod-Inc/cartoon-studio
An open-source desktop studio — script in, MP4 out. Bring your own API keys; no telemetry, no cloud. Heads up — no pre-built binaries yet. Code signing and distribution are still being sorted out. For now, run from source. Works on macOS, Windows, and Linux. You only need Node ≥ 24 (the repo pins 24 via .nvmrc — run nvm use to match CI). ffmpeg and Chrome are bundled via postinstall . git clone https://github.com/Jellypod-Inc/cartoon-studio.git cd cartoon-studio npm install # also downloads chrome-headless-shell (~190 MB) npm start npm start boots a Vite dev server for the renderer and an Electron process for main + preload, with HMR on the renderer. The postinstall script downloads…from github.com
In the maker’s words, at launch
Hi HN — I built Cartoon Studio, an open-source desktop app for making simple 2D cartoon scenes and shows. The basic flow is: place SVG characters on a scene, write dialogue, pick voices, and render to MP4. It handles word timestamps, mouth cues, and lip-sync automatically. This started as me playing around with…
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