interesting,   no one has mentioned the new adobe animate system
I'm surprised because it made such hype-train waves when first released

http://blogs.adobe.com/animate/welcome-adobe-animate-cc-a-new-era-for-flash-professional/

• My Spotify  My Twitter  My Twitch
  
• My NFT    My Marketplace My Blog
  
• Music Sync Licensing

☯🐉

"To define Tao is to defile it" - Lao Tzu

it works surprisingly well,
did a few cutout projects of the boss to mock him/test it.. he loved it.

.

Adobe Animate is still Flash under the covers, with all the same problems that Flash has always had.  Still some people use it to great effect, so it is worth mentioning in this thread.  It might be worth noting that Toonboom Harmony is very similar to Flash, except it doesn't enforce everything having to be a symbol in order to animate it, which has always been one of Flash's biggest issues.  Symbols are great, but making it a requirement to be a symbol in order to animate it just seems overly rigid. 

AfterEffects is much more difficult doing character animation although in all reality, the OP wanted to do South Park style animations, which are quite simplistic in whatever app you choose. Their itty bitty little arms, with no real elbow to speak of... their itty bitty little legs with no real knee to speak of... their simple round or oval shapes with little to no complexity.  

Synfig is similar to Toonz, and has been around for quite some time. 

http://www.synfig.org

This was done with it.

https://morevnaproject.org/anime/

I do have after effects, which is a possibility, once I dig into the new animator tools, but i was hoping to find something to make workable photo fitting animated characters quickly. So I don't think I added that qualification, but there it is. Thanks for the recommendations so far. Toonboom is out...I'm not interested in that kind of quality! It is great...but too much in every way! Anime studio is a possibility. Hopefully we can find a "crazy talk" for bodies solution. Or...does cta pro 1 have the photo fitting? That might work!

CTA1 does have the photo fitting, although I don;t know how easy or difficult it is to get a hold of.  But if you have a photo that could be put through a photo fitting process, then in all reality you could cut it up yourself into the appropriate pieces, import into something like Anime Studio, rig it quickly (doesn't have to be too fancy) and start animating quickly.  You could do the same thing in CTA2 except the importing of each individual piece, positiong it and even possibly scaling and/or rotating it would be a mind numbing exercise.  Since you have AfterEffects, you can pretty much do the same thing with the puppet pins...  So you've got plenty of options without resorting to a CTA2 purchase.  However, keep in mind there is the Buddy World pack for CTA2 which might be the very thing you need.  Unfortunately, you'd have to get CTA2 to use it though.

I actually own cta 1 pro...I just never had the chance to use it...time to dig it out! I agree on the anime studio approach as well. As well as learning after effects character animator and puppet tools...since my output is going ot hit after effects at the end anyhow!

I don't often agree with sw00000p, but in this, he is 100% correct.  Video Copilot is an awesome site for tutorials as well as some great plugins.  It's how I learned AfterEffects...  Even though I've been using it for about 6 years, I still learn new things about it all the time.  I don't know that I'd tackle a full 2D character animation with it, but I'd certainly use it for post production and sfx.

Actually I took a job as a full-time after effects producer about six months ago after a decade as a graphic designer. I've actually been an AE hobbyist for about six years so now I'm gradually ramping up. But character animator and puppet pin tools are no comparison to anime studio or cta 1 as far as workflow in my opinion. I count myself fortunate to find myself in my dream job at 43 but there's a lot left to learn! I'm not above using niche products to get the job done!

Someone tell me the major differences between anime studio pro and debut? I'm thankful the price is pretty much applied to the update cost but if the smart bones aren't as big a deal as they sound like it would be nice to know!

Depending on what you're rigging, and the binding method being used, Smartbones could very well be an indispensable feature. However, for your "South Park" style animation, you may not need them. But honestly, they're pretty powerful for so many different things. And as you get better at animating, you may wish to make use of their intermediate to advanced features.