[Graham Quince]

what the guys have said is true, if a tad sarcastic. Although I’ve never looked back since buying the ‘Make things look Great’ plugin. 🙂

Best advice is check out all the tutorials here at the Cow, everything you asked about is covered by those.

Graham

https://www.quinceweb.com – web design
——–
https://www.shiveringcactus.bravehost.com – Free FX for amateur films

[Graham Quince]

I just want to second CrazyTalk, we use it where i work to create fast turnaround, hi(ish)-impact animations to get people’s attention

Graham

https://www.quinceweb.com – web design
——–
https://www.shiveringcactus.bravehost.com – Free FX for amateur films

[Graham Quince]

One last option is CC Ball Action. If you set up your image file correctly, then CC Ball Action will break it up into ‘molecules’and twist the image too. If you have transparent sections to it, you’ll get empty sections of the DNA strand.

Graham

https://www.quinceweb.com – web design
——–
https://www.shiveringcactus.bravehost.com – Free FX for amateur films

[Graham Quince]

I’d also suggest a close up of blood dripping from a dead hand. maybe also a close up of the pool it makes. That way your one shot has become three, which gives the audience less time to see it’s fake.

Graham

https://www.quinceweb.com – web design
——–
https://www.shiveringcactus.bravehost.com – Free FX for amateur films

[Graham Quince]

yikes! that’s a bit beyond me I’m afraid.

but yeah, that’s what my own research had shown as well. Shame

Graham

https://www.quinceweb.com – web design
——–
https://www.shiveringcactus.bravehost.com – Free FX for amateur films

[Graham Quince]

We’ve produced several of these type of training videos and deliver them mainy via CD-Rom. Created in AE, embedded in html pages, for easy import to intranets.

Flash is great for interactivity and you can make some complex resources with it, whereas with AE and Encore you’d be limited to simple multiple choices quizzes. But if it’s just video you’re wanting, AE is the way forward.

Graham

https://www.quinceweb.com – web design
——–
https://www.shiveringcactus.bravehost.com – Free FX for amateur films

[Graham Quince]

Sometimes AE and Photoshop don’t work in quite the same way. You could create your gradient in photoshop and import it. Then use the gradient as a track matte for an adjustment layer???

Graham

https://www.quinceweb.com – web design
——–
https://www.shiveringcactus.bravehost.com – Free FX for amateur films

[Graham Quince]

I’m guessing you’ve duplicated your square to get individual animations??

If that’s the case, then it should be pretty easy to create a second small size compostion, with one static sqaure in it. Add a new solid, slightly larger than your square. Draw in a tail shape using the path tool. You can set keyframes to animate it by hitting the M key and clicking on the shape setting. Then apply Stroke to make it visible.

Now then easy bit. In your original comp, highlight one of your sqaures and hold down the ALT key. Now drag the square-tail comp on top of that layer. The sqaure is replaced by your tail comp and retains all the movement keyframes.

For a swarm, think about trying Particle Playground, or Foam.

Hope that helps

Graham

https://www.quinceweb.com – web design
——–
https://www.shiveringcactus.bravehost.com – Free FX for amateur films

[Graham Quince]

I have seen this first question asked before and for the life of me can’t remember the solution. I think there is a javascript way of producing ASCII code cartoons from video. From there, you’d need to screen capture with a piece of software like ScreenFlash or Camtasia.

For your second point – there’s a tutorial here at the Calf/Cow about crrating an audio meter by Talid Al Khatib which is hopefully what you’re looking for.

Hope that helps

Graham

https://www.quinceweb.com – web design
——–
https://www.shiveringcactus.bravehost.com – Free FX for amateur films

[Graham Quince]

I’d check out the bezier warp filter.

You’d need to pre-comp your cut out person, moving down the screen, then apply the filter in the main comp. Drag the target around to get an idea of how it works. But it should be fairly straight forward.

Graham

https://www.quinceweb.com – web design
——–
https://www.shiveringcactus.bravehost.com – Free FX for amateur films