[apu]

My slide decks are always in PowerPoint because I usually need to make some complex technical animations that are impossible to do in Latex. So then I just use PowerPoint's shapes, etc. to do it.

(I can't wait for some web-based presentation software so I can finally ditch Powerpoint, but right now, with the extremely limited palette of animation ability on all of them, I'm forced to stick with PowerPoint.)

For papers, posters, and other static media, I use Inkscape, which I love. And every once in a while, for a system architecture diagram that I need to crank out really fast, I'll use Dia, which is much less flexible, but ideal for that task.

[keenerd]

I always used whatever real animation tool (Anim8or, Blender, python+svg+ffmpeg) I was most comfortable with and rendered the animation to a non-looping GIF. Embeddable almost anywhere.