Hey guys

I see some are working with Blender. Not the easiest program but with some tricks it can even do the same as After Effects.
Here is an animation done with Blender:

apocalypse now	Small | Large

But for an animation one really don't need any fancy software. your favorite NLE will do it for you.
In the following link these animations were made with just a handfull of drawings. By putting them in your NLE (in my case PE7) and tweaking it you can go a very long way. Have fun.

Babbit	Small | Large

Best regards

Guy the Caveman

I love the smell of napalm in the morning... it smells like... victory.

Jeff

How to do a simple animation...  This in PE7 but it should go for all editing software using keyframes

e.g. the walking fox at the end of this movie:

Visit to the Trou d'Haquin	Small | Large

1. I made three drawings with the fox walking, one left, one neutral and one right







The background is green so I can use a green key to make it transparant.
The walk cycle is just trial and error, but is rather simple.

2. Open PE7 and import the three drawings in this order: left - neutral - right.
Change the duration of three pictures to two frames each.

3. Copy the three pictures and paste them after the first three in this order:
left - neutral - right - neutral - left - neutral - right - neutral - ....

repeat this many times till you have e.g. 15 seconds of walk cycle.

4. export what you have as a dv-avi file. This will make working with the animation much easier

5. start a new project and here I imported a picture of some stalagmites which will be the background
and the dv-avi file of the walk cycle.

6. stack the dv-avi above the picture which is the background and add a green key to the dv-avi.

7. add a position key on the x axis on the first frame of the walk-cycle so that the fox is outside the left border of the frame.

8. add a position key on the x axis on the last frame of the walk cycle (e.g. 8 seconds) and position
the fox outisde the right border of the frame.

9. let it play, you'll have one happy fox walking from left to right with a minimum of work. Add some music
and sound effects. Sound is the real magic and makes your animation alive.

That's all folks. You can also use other key frames, like scale, rotation and so one, use your fantasy!!

To finish another animation made with Blender:

piggy bank animation	Small | Large

Best regards

Guy the Caveman

Okay, so now I understand how your screen name came about. BTW, I found that in Blender you can generate a transparent background which will save you from having to color key anything. You will need to render the animation to a format that supports an alpha channel. I don't have the details at hand now, but will look them up if anyone needs more info. I added an animated stuffed animal to a wedding video, placing the family's iconic toy on the guest book and having him move around. It only took 2 months of work.

Hello Chris

I liked your movie! Very nice site to make the characters. I make them in Paint Shop Pro as vector drawing. This format is easy to tweak and change.
A question: how is Vegas compared to Premiere Elements? The problem with PE7 are some anoying bugs. There seems to be even more bugs in PE8. Also it crashes sometimes. So how is Vegas? This will maybe
my next NLE.

Thanks

Guy Van Rentergem aka the Caveman

It really is a matter of choice! I am pretty much used to using Vegas since I started editing. One of the things that I really like about it is the way it works around sound.