I'm looking for a small and light program that allows me to create simple animations for the purpose of visualization. I want to be able to create animations similair to this.
Usually, I do animations like these in PowerPoint, however it's way too bloated/slow for the simple animations I want to do. I'm looking for a faster alternative that is more focused on creating simple animations.
I found the difficulty curve of after effects very steep. It's enormously powerful but it's a keyframe based, timeline animation tool. A lot of the really obvious properties are buried in "twirl down" menus.
If you're just looking to import images and move them around, you could try Flinto https://www.flinto.com/ - it's great for very simple animations where you set a start and end state in separate screens, then it tweens the motion for you.
It also has the advantage of really simple interactivity because it's a prototyping tool.
Animation is usually a very heavy thing. There are no programs I can think of that are very light in the way you are describing.
I would suggest checking out Adobe After Effects. You can import images and with a very simple keyframe animation, you can move them. You can download a free demo of After Effects on the Adobe website to get a feel for it.
Check YouTube for tutorials on "Keyframe Animation in After Effects" and play around with it.
You could create SVG animations with CSS, SMIL or Javascript. It will be responsive, lightweight and you do not need heavy software to create it, just your browser and any code editor. There are several javascript libraries available for free, for example Snap.svg.
Actually you just need the browser if you use an online code editor like Codepen.
If you need the animations for a video, I really like a lot HitFilm Express. It is a compositor and it is also a video editor.
The animations are done in the compositor. It is similar to After Effects.
If you need simple animations for a webpage, one really lightweight and simple program... also free is Express Animate https://www.nchsoftware.com/animation/index.html
Check synfig if it suites your needs / expectations
