From still images to moving

[pa007]

I have a quick question and this comes from someone whose background is rooted in still graphic work and a touch of art, how big is the leap from still to moving images and are traditional animation skills necessary (I assume they are beneficial). I've done character design before and I've storyboarded (I do this for a lot of work, whenever there is any kind of narrative) but I have never really got past that stage. Similarly with film work, I even cut it all together (does that even make sense) but I always struggle to refine and finish anything to an acceptable standard. SFX programs have left me particularly clueless, they are just full of option and I never know where to start.

Also is the learning curve steep? Every piece of software I have ever used that has anything to do with animation has been unintuitive and relatively complex. I understand that animation is not a dreadfully simple process an so this goes with the territory but am I just going wrong somewhere?

Final question: software. Where do I go for my animated fix, do I stick with the adobe products or do I go elsewhere? Apple's stuff is looking pretty impressive at the moment but I already own the complete Adobe suite so...

Basically, where do I start with this multimedia lark? I don't want to offer it as a service particularly (I don't think I have the time to get anywhere near good enough) but I am interested in figuring out how it woks just out of interest, and practically speaking if I ever worked on and animated or filmed piece, it would be nice to know about the process and how it knits together.

Any thoughts or comments would be much appreciated.

Pete.

[Sgaspar11]

Hey Pete,

Keyframe animation is something that takes a bit to get your hands wrapped around but it is a heck-of-a-lot of fun. :-)

Google for keyframe animation best practices to get some resources there.

If you are looking to build animations into web sites Flash works well for it...it's all keyframing by hand, but most programs are.

If you want to get into the video/film arena...you want to use AfterEffects hand down. AE is an AWESOME program that can do some very cool stuff...any cool overlay on a TV show, or the "lower thirds" where peoples names show up on the news, are/were most likely made with AfterEffects.

Personally, it is one of my favorite programs.

[ToddKopriva]

This is a big topic, so please pardon me if I just make some generalizations and then point to some illustrative specifics.

If you're looking to take still images and animate them, there are a lot of simple yet compelling ways to do so using After Effects along with Photoshop and/or Illustrator. A lot of cartoons on television are made in Illustrator and After Effects. Angie Taylor, who is primarily a character animator, goes into a lot of detail on using After Effects with Illustrator to do character animation in her book _Creative After Effects_.

Here's a video that shows how to take a single still image (from Illustrator) and animate it with the Puppet tools in After Effects:

video tutorial for Puppet tools

Here's a link to the section in After Effects Help about the Puppet tools:

"Animating with Puppet tools"

Another very simple way to do animation in After Effects, starting with only still images, is to place cropped and masked still images in 3D space and animate camera moves, pans and zooms. Here is a simple tutorial in which Bob Donlon shows how:

"Son of Ken Burns"

Here's a link to an award-winning movie made with only Photoshop and After Effects, using this very simple technique:

Missing Pages (amended version)

You asked about simple animation, so I tried to point you to some resources for simple animation in After Effects. That said, After Effects is a toolset that can help you do incredibly complex and intricate animation, too. There are specialized applications that are better for narrow parts of the animation workflow, but I think that you'll find that the breadth and depth of After Effects make it an indispensable addition to your animation tool chest. (Gosh, I sounded like a salesperson there. But I mean it. Really.)