An Introduction

Hello there. My name is Kyrie, a 14-year old student. I usually spend my pastimes animating my thoughts using different programs. My dream is to one day become a 2D animator, either for a major studio or one founded by me.
My inspiration all started when I saw a video on YouTube where this guy animated a whole 4-minute cartoon by sketching each and every frame on paper, scanning it in, coloring all frames with photoshop, and assembling them using Adobe After Effects. Not only is that tedious and hard, it is also amazing once completed. So I tried my own animations using just photoshop and Windows Movie Maker. It didn't turn out like I wanted it.
But three months later, I meet this girl over deviantART named Lara, whom also animates traditionally. We talk about our animations and share skills. I really learned a lot from Lara. One thing I learned was that Flash was the best animation program out there. To this day, we're best friends and we both have dreams of being professional animators. We plan to go to college together to study 2D animation, and we even tried combining our animations to make a feature-length movie. (We failed at that, though. =P)
But even after discovering Flash, since the program is overpriced, I've been trying to find other alternatives to Flash. So far, I've been experimenting with different programs. Have I found one as good as Flash yet? Not yet..