Hello! I've been thinking of making some simple animations with my drawings, and I'm wondering - what programs do you guys use for creating animated pictures? I've heard of many artists animating straight in Photoshop - what are some alternatives (preferably free or more accessible programs)?

Flash is a good alternative, so is After effects.

Animated gifs can be created with GIMP, which is a sort of free Photoshop alternative. Things like resizing the canvas and some other things are fiddlier than in Photoshop, but it shouldn't be too hard to learn how to use it if you're knowledgeable of some of the basics i.e. what layers are. There's also a ton of tutorials for GIMP on the Internet - including how to make simple animations. If by "simple animations" you mean things like making them smile or blink, then yeah, that's possible with GIMP. As examples I've got this, this and this. Three old things from a time before I moved on to Photoshop.