Best practices to build animations as neat, small files.

[Kris Rost]

I supplied them according to their specs. The had nothing to say about codec. Their specs were handbrake specs…

my question was asking about building art and animations, about creative process guidelines for leaner arts before rendering… not compression or output of the finished rendering. I am looking for some tips and tricks for building animations for a lighter file size before render output?

Could I have created the illustrator art differently for an AE project to make a smaller file?

For instance…the first draft of the animation was 38 seconds…then the client made changes and the animation became 58 sec to slow the voice over down with longer pauses. The first 38sec had no problem embedding…@12Mb. The 58 sec version was 2x the size and the app choked…but we were eventually able to get it to embedd. Could/Can I do something to make the art works a leaner And smaller file to render?

Thanks for your response.

[Ivan Myles]

[Kris Rost] “Could I have created the illustrator art differently for an AE project to make a smaller file? … Could/Can I do something to make the art works a leaner And smaller file to render?”

Simplify as much as possible in the artwork and the animation. For example, minimize gradual changes in-frame (gradients) and frame-to-frame (fades, rotation, zoom) where the encoder can’t reuse the image easily. Here are a few ideas:

– avoid gradients and subtle color variations; use solid colors or simple repetitive patterns; use fewer colors
– panning is OK but avoid rotating the camera (either pivoting or rotating axially in the plane)
– use clean cuts and avoid fades or cross-fades
– avoid slow zooms
– reduce the number of unique items; repeat the same objects in different places, and use fewer of them
– go retro: blocky, low-resolution graphics with simple motion

You mentioned that there are zooms in the animation. Try to simplify by holding frames at a small number of intermediate zoom levels and jump from one to the next (“stutter zoom”). Alternatively, use a pop-up bubble to show specific areas at higher magnification in front of the same unzoomed background.

[Kris Rost]

Perfect!

I am not sure the dev guys really knew all the options. We will look into this and have go!

Thank you very much.

[Kris Rost]

All my imagery was flat vector shapes…so I was good there.

Your suggestions about zooming was Great!

I had a text fade in and one graphic fade in… maybe

Anyway I am going to try all of these suggestions on sandbox versions.

Thanks a lot!

[Ivan Myles]

You’re welcome. Also, if there isn’t a lot of motion/change then consider using a longer keyframe distance for the final encoding (60-75 frames). Try a few settings and check for differences in file size and image quality. Note that once keyframe distance is greater than one second of footage the reduction in file size will be relatively small.