html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd" A promo for Howler, showing the range of other features in the digital painting app. Howler 2023 is now free, and developer Dan Ritchie is raising money to make the current version freeware. The creator of versatile digital digital painting, animation and video processing tool Howler has made Howler 2023 free to download.Developer Dan Ritchie now aims to raise $3,000 to release the current version as freeware. An idiosyncratic natural media paint package with a lot of unexpected features Originally released over 20 years ago, Howler – originally Project Dogwaffle – is an idiosyncratic, inexpensive digital painting and content creation tool.Its core strength is natural media painting, but it also features basic 3D rendering capabilities, primarily for landscapes and foliage, and animation features including a timeline, onion skinning, frame repair, retiming, and an exposure sheet for lip sync animation. Developer Dan Ritchie himself comes from a 3D background, having worked at pioneering broadcast VFX firm Foundation Imaging on Star Trek: Voyager. He later began developing plugins for LightWave, some of which were integrated into Howler. Ritchie comments that “throughout its life, Howler has been more than just software — it’s been a canvas for natural media painting, a robust toolset for animation with features like onion skinning and keyframing, and a powerhouse for image editing and performance optimization. “Many of these technologies were ahead of their time, reshaping the creative world.” Howler 2023 now free, but you can donate to get the current version released as freeware Although Ritchie continues to release updates to Howler – the latest, Howler 2025.5 – adds a new text crawl system for animated titles – development has recently been hampered by health problems and the recent theft of his main development laptop.“As I face health challenges and personal hardships, it has become clear that I can no longer sustain this journey on my own,” he wrote in a post on Patreon. “To preserve Howler’s legacy, I hope to make it freely accessible to the wider community. This is my goal — but it comes with exit costs.” To give new users a taste of what the software can do, Ritchie has just released Howler 2023 for free, but now aims to raise $3,000 to release the latest version as freeware. The money will be used to cover back taxes and web hosting for the freeware release. Anyone who wants to support the effort can back Ritchie on Patreon, or simply buy the software: at the time of writing, you can buy the latest version for just $12.99. Read Dan Ritchie’s Patreon post on raising $3,000 to release Howler as freeware Buy the current version of the software from the Howler website Download Howler 2023 for free Have your say on this story by following CG Channel on Facebook, Instagram and X (formerly Twitter). As well as being able to comment on stories, followers of our social media accounts can see videos we don’t post on the site itself, including making-ofs for the latest VFX movies, animations, games cinematics and motion graphics projects.