There are many versions of adobe flash but the most popular one is Flash professional 8, it is a bit old but many people still use it today to create really good animations. Many animations like Grand theft awesome, madness combat and animation vs animator where made in flash professional 8. It is a highly recommended animation software for beginners but it can be difficult to use at times.
Examples of flash
Pivot
Pivot is a stick figure animation software which allows you to move the joints on multiple stick figures and make an animation out of it. You can download add-ons for pivot to add in more stick figures or weapons or anything you want which the normal version doesn't have to offer. Like flash it is highly recommended for beginners and pivot is a bit easier than flash.
Examples of pivot
Anime studio
Anime studio is a powerful advanced animation tool. It comes with a debut version and professional version as well as a character creator. I don't know a lot about Anime studio unfortunately so if you know more about it please tell me
3D animation
Source filmmaker
Source filmmaker is one of the most popular 3d animating software's on the internet. Many people use it to construct a video or just anything you want, its all possible and uses valve's source engine to manipulate the videos, because it uses source you can make maps in Hammer editor and import them to sfm or you can use any map you want that was intended for source. All the models are from source, this is why it is such a powerful 3d filmmaking tool and I would highly recommend it to anyone interested in animating but it is very difficult for beginners.
Examples of SFM
Blender
Blender is an extremely powerful 3d animating and object making tool. This is not recommended for beginners and only the pros know how to use blender, even though it is a difficult to learn software it is still amazing and its free which is crazy
you can read more about it on
wikipedia3DS max
3DS max is a extremely powerful 3d animating and object making tool that is made by autodesk. This is also not recommended for beginners as it is very difficult to learn much like blender. 3DS max allows you to edit every aspect of what you want to make and has very powerful graphics much like blender.
you can read more about it on
wikipedia
Stop motionmy favorite technique has to be stop motion, everyone can make it, everyone can do it.
Brick film
Brick film is what it says, its when you use legos to make a stop motion film. The thing I like about it is that everything customize able, its lego its what your imagination is at.
Claymation
Claymation is when you use clay to make a stop motion. Much like lego it is very customize able and it allows every part of the character you make to move and its what your imagination is at. My most favorite film of claymation has to be Klay world
Papercraft stop motion
This one is starting to get a bit of popularity ever since
PixelPapercraft was created. Most of the time people use minecraft models to create their stop motions but there are many other models you can create with papercrafts. It is also very customize able
Game based animationGame based animation is animation that is either done in-game or a software that is based off of the game but doesn't use it's engine to turn it into an animation software (Eg. mineimator) (SFM does not count as it uses a modified engine of source that was specifically made for animation creating)
Rage engine (GTA IV) 
The rage engine that runs GTA IV was used to create many machinima's, it can use custom animations (As seen in the image above) to create a story. GTA IV based machinima is best used with the simple native trainer which allows the player to tweak the game in every way
Gta sa an studio
GTA SA was also another game that was used to create machinima, SA is possibly the most modded grand theft atuo game to date as it has it's own standalone CLEO mod called san an studio which allows players to use every skin, animation, etc that is in the game to create a story. Now since San Andreas is a bit outdated this isn't as popular as it used to be but it's still worth checking out
Sims 2 Studio
The sims 2 was a big game that people used to create animations and machinimas as EA included a recording feature in the game. Players could customize their sims in every way they wanted for their movie and would then start making sets and everything they needed to create the story they wanted. Because the sims 2 is limited, the machinimas on youtube aren't always the best and might have flawed animations. The sims 2 uses Poseboxes which allow sims to go into different sorts of animations including walk styles, combat moves, etc.
Sims 3 machinima
The sims 3 continued sims 2 machinima but this time with more updated content. The sims 3 has better graphics and better options for the player to customize sims and the animations this time are better than the sims 2. The way machinima is created in the sims 3 is the same way as the sims 2 but the sims 3 is very customizable and is an open world game, CAW a software included with the sims 3 allows players to create their own world but it is very difficult to use but it allows people to make very good machinima's.
Mine imator
Mine imator is a minecraft version of SFM that allows people to create animation in minecraft but it isn't a very good tool but is good for beginners to animator
Garry's mod
Garry's mod is also another game used for animation and it has endless capabilities. Content creators such as Kitty0706, Dasboschitt and Dr Face have shown how good Garry's mod can be if they know how to create a animation within it
and that's about it so share your animations and stop motions in this thread!
