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 - supports multiple TTS providers through Jellypod's Speech SDK - renders via HyperFrames - lets you upload or generate characters and backdrop scenes - includes default characters/scenes so you can try it quickly - open source

It runs from source today. AI features use bring-your-own API keys, but the app itself is fully inspectable and local-first in the sense that there’s no hosted backend or telemetry.

Here are some fun examples of the the types of videos you can create:

https://x.com/deepwhitman/status/2046425875789631701

https://x.com/deepwhitman/status/2047040471579697512

And the repo:

https://github.com/Jellypod-Inc/cartoon-studio

Happy to answer questions and appreciate any feedback!