[Fernando Mol]

Sorry, that tutorial is about masks.

Is your illustration very complex? Maybe is a memory problem.

If you don’t have to animate each part of your images why don’t you just export it as a bitmap from Illustrator and import it to AE?

[Fernando Mol]

There is a video tutorial from Aharon Rabinowitz
called “Importing Paths Into After Effects”.

Maybe it can help you.

[Fernando Mol]

Check the tutorial of Aharon Rabinowitz: “Changing Shortcuts with After Effects”, in the After Effects section.

[Fernando Mol]

Well, Josh, those are a lot of specific questions. I will try to answer two.

Is it helpful and necessary for a coder to know some of the basics of PHP and JavaScript or should that be left to the programmers?

You need to recognize the different codes, even if you are not good writing them. You should be able to tell the difference from javascript to PHP the same way you can tell CSS from an HTML tag.

Or should I try to master everything there is to know about CSS and such and that will be good enough?

In the end, your final goal should be to master everything (and rule the world!). But don’t hurry too much or you will miss the sunset.

[Fernando Mol]

Well, about the “you are young” part, I was not intended to say you lack of experience in life, is just that maybe I have seen too many Clone Wars episodes recently and Master Yoda sometimes get too much into my head. Anyway, 31 (or any age) is as young as the flexibility of your both your spine and your mind.

My native language is not English, so I’m not sure of the terminology, but to my eyes there’s a difference between a coder and a programmer because if you write HTML or CSS you are not actually programming, you are placing and styling content. You are coding.

If you use javascript, PHP or other languages that add interactivity to the web experience, then you are a programmer. The mind works different in each case, even if for the untrained eye you’re just writing nonsense lines of text in both activities.

[Fernando Mol]

To make web pages you need a…
-Programmer
-Coder
-Designer
-Writer
-Salesman

Also it will be better if you have a…
-Photographer
-Video producer
-Animator
-3D designer
-Salesman

So the answer is yes, you can make a team in a web design company, but you will rarely accomplish the task of having a happy client with just the programming and coding skills. Remember the web is about the people and graphic design is not about fancy graphics.

You are young, just let yourself go doing what you love. Your path will reveal itself in the proper time.

[Fernando Mol]

You need certain knowledge at least for the installation, but many programs come with good support.

One free and popular option is osCommerce, but there are many.

[Fernando Mol]

Can you upload a still image to evaluate the shot?

[Fernando Mol]

Sorry, but I don’t see your code, I just see your snippet (I am browsing in Firefox).

Very nice pictures, anyway.

[Fernando Mol]

An Online store is a very big topic.

If you already know how to make an application and manage the payment (paypal and google have some relatively simple solutions) you need to choose what you want to give back to the buyer.

Will it be a membership? You should register them in a database so they can access and download your special material via username and password. Or are you going to send them a link to directly download the material?

The level of difficulty is big if you are just familiar with HTML and CSS. You need to work with some programming language(PHP, Cold Fusion, ASP…) and you need to know how to use databases.

Even the most popular “ready made” tools to do this require you understand a minimum of any the required language.

PHP is a popular language and it’s free, but not intuitive. You can use a MySQL database that is free too. Many web hosting services support them, but you need to check with your provider.

What is your level as a programmer?