Animating line drawings?

I recently watched a video on Vimeo that had a simple but cute hand drawn animation for the intro. Here is a link to the video: http://vimeo.com/53869615 I've never explored animation, however I wouldn't mind trying some simple animations with line drawings but not sure where to start. I'm mainly curious about the workflow on how one would go about creating an animation like this?
1) How do you compose the drawings?
2) How is the background animated to show motion relative to the car? I can't imagine one would draw each frame over and over like a flip book? At 24fps, for a 20 sec clip that would be 480 frames?
3) Would it be much simpler to create the drawings in Illustrator to be animated in After Effects?
I appreciate any advice! Thanks.

Look up Andrew Kramer's blueprint tutorial. it covers all the basics from using masks to the Scribble effect. Beyond that you sure can find all sorts of variations on the theme, but most of them will involve some form of mask animation and stroke effects, complemented by conventional layer transform animation to create parallax for the illusion of motion. In any case, many of your questions will fall into place once you actually start using AE and understand its basic principles. Not much point in getting wound up in theoretical considerations before that and asking a hundred people about their favorite technique will result in 100 different answerrs and only confuse you further.
Getting started with After Effects
Mylenium

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Line drawings distorted by Adobe Reader's Thin Line Enhancement feature

I am working with InDesign CS6 on an engineering textbook with approximately 1300 line drawings. When a pdf exported from InDesign is viewed in Adobe Reader XI, the line widths of the drawings are distorted by Reader's Thin Line Enhancement feature. The default setting for Thin Line Enhancement in Reader is on. I understand that Reader's user features cannot be controlled by a document. Is there anything I can do in InDesign to would reduce the effect of Reader's Thin Line Enhancement on the image quality?
(Ironically, the art work drawn in Illustrator in a pdf and exported from InDesign looks fine in Google Chrome, but wretched in Adobe Reader!)

Thank you for your response. The textbook is to be printed and presented as an ebook. The print version is not a problem nor is the ebook version when viewed in a pdf viewer other than Adobe Reader, or in Adobe Reader in the non-default state with the Thin Line Enhancement feature disabled.
I attempted to resolve the Adobe Reader Thin Line Enhancement problem by increasing line widths and ensuring that interrupted lines segments were aligned. Sadly, the overall size of the illustrations limits the the maximum width of the thinnest lines and Thin Line Enhancement problem persisted.
The reason I ask if there is anything which can be done within InDesign to counter the distortion of Reader's Thin Line Enhancement is the following observation. An MS Word document with the same illustrations embedded as png graphics and saved as a pdf does not suffer the Thin Line Enhancement distortion when viewed in Adobe Reader. I am hoping that whatever is done when MS Word saves a document as a pdf can be replicated when InDesign exports a pdf. Unfortunately, I am constrained by my publisher to link rather than embed the graphics. I have experimented linking eps, Illustrator, and pdf graphics files but they pdfs exported from InDesign were distorted when viewed in the default configuration of Adobe Reader.
I must disagree with your assertion that the only correct way to view the pdf is in Adobe Reader. Adobe Reader distorts the images unless the user has disabled the Thin Line Enhancement. I believe that I am a typical user of Adobe Reader in that I was unaware that the feature existed until recently. I mistakenly presumed that what may have been distorted graphics were simply poor quality graphics. Given my choice, I would hope that none of the future readers of the text use Adobe Reader, but, unfortunately, I know that many will. That is why I am attempting to resolve this problem.

Convert photos to line drawings

Would like to convert photos to line drawings to use as coloring books. Any help for a lightweight user would be appreciated.
Thanks in advance

Try the following:
Duplicate your image (Control J, or Command J)
Set your foreground and background colors to black and white (press D) for default
Then go to:
Filter
Filter Gallery
Sketch Folder
Photocopy
Slide the detail slider to 1 and the darkness slider to 50
Depending on your photo you may wish to adjust these sliders for
different results.
Because you duplicated your original photo you also have the option of lowering the opacity of the sketch layer to reveal the partial color photo below.
Anothering interesting twist is if you add a normal WHITE mask to the sketch layer then paint with a BLACK over parts of the sketch to reveil the colored photo below (half sketch and half photo).
Attached is a link to a free plugin for Photoshop called THREDGEHOLDER, it does pretty much the same thing but even quicker.
http://www.littleinkpot.co.uk/FreePlugins.htm
Hope it works and have lots of fun in the process!

Black line drawings print as purple at certain areas

Hi,
We have a HP designjet 110 plus in our office as a network printer. We have been experiencing some problems when we print black line drawings. Several parts of the drawing will print as purple instead of black (meaning a line/area of shade will be partly purple and partly black). The purplish areas are pretty much consistant through a single drawing, butwill be different from drawing to drawing. I have temporarily set the printer to print with black ink only, but the printing time doubles. Is there anyway to fix this problem? Thanks.

This forum is focused on consumer level products. For the Designjet you may have better results posting in the HP Enterprise Designjet forum here.
Bob Headrick, HP Expert
I am not an employee of HP, I am a volunteer posting here on my own time.
If your problem is solved please click the "Accept as Solution" button ------------V
If my answer was helpful please click the "Thumbs Up" to say "Thank You"--V

Tracing line drawings

I trying to trace scanned line drawings so that I get only one path per line going up the middle of the line and not a path along each edge of the pencil or ink line and a fill between. What I hope to do is convert each line in the artwork to a single path in Illustrator.So far I havent found the right settings. Using Illustrator CS3. Someone told me Coreldraw can do this but I enjoy using Illustrator.

Ron,
Quick, before James tells you that you are a masochist:
1. Cut the path at the ends of each edge,
2. Select both edge paths,
3. Object>Blend>Make and Object>Expand,
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Can anyone tell me what vendor provides an animated line
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farecast.com Line
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Thanks!
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i would try to achieve this with tweened mask.
first, draw the complete line on a layer above the JPG.
then on a layer just above the line, draw a rectangle that
covers it completely. convert it too a symbol (F8.) Right clicl on
the layer and set this layer to Mask.
Add enough frames to all layers for your desired animation
length.
On the Mask layer, add a key frame at the last frame.
On the Mask layer, on the first frame, scale the mask
rectangle Horizontally so that it only masks the first part of your
line.
Right click on the Mask layer and Create Motion tween. you
may have to adjust the Center poitn of your recangle mask (the
small white dot) to get it to scale up correctly.
you should see the rectangle scale out to cover the whole
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Creating an animated line

Hi, I have full cs3 prod prem. I have a composition I am doing with some hookup wiring diagrams. I want to create an arrow simulating the cables (in different colors) that hook up part a to b to c etc. This is for a video presentation.
Originally, I was thinking to do line segments and apply after effects keyframes etc. I wish there was a simple effect for this.
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The idea is an arrow from an output box, then segments that animate a hookup line to the next devices input ( connecting a patch cable).
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thanks, but the link you provided doesn't really talk about what I'm trying to do.
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I've got a stroke that animates with Trim Paths and I just want to add a circle or arrow to the end. This doesn't even involve any animation. I've got that, just need to know how to get the little dot at the end of my line...

Connect Dots with an Animated Line

Hello,
I am working on a Motion project where I am attempting to have small random dots appear on a map, and then have those dots attach to one another with an animated line.
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Mark,
Thank you for your reply.
I must confess, I'm somewhat of a novice when it comes to the paint tool in Motion. Could you elaborate a bit on the solution you've posted. Will it enable me to easily connect hundreds of dots?
I have drawn two paint strokes, one hard with dots, and the other a line, but I'm afraid I may be misinterpreting your answer because I'm not getting the desired result. I'd greatly appreciate a bit more detail.
Thank you.
JJ

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Hello BrotherBob
Thanks for you rquick reply.
I've checked those settings and the Brush Dynamics were off, on all brushed.
Also, wet edges, airbrush and smoothing are 'greyed out' and appear to be locked.
Still the same effect, the square brush works, the round brushes don't!

Need help animating line art/paths

Help please...
I am trying to animate a line, to have it tween/morph between a line and a question mark and then back to a line. I've drawn my two shapes in Illustrator as line art (as paths, not as closed shapes), but I'm not seeing the paths as a mask when I paste them into my Solid Layer. The parts of my drawing that have closed shapes come in and form a mask, but not the individual lines/paths, not matter how thick I make them. I can see there is a path in AE if I click on the shape, but it does not come up as a masked area.
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hi, i took some screengrabs also, so that you can perhaps see what i might be doing wrong...i inlcuded the original shape, from Illustrator, as well as what happens when I paste in AE. for my shape, blends won't work from Illustrator, I need the line to move in a certain way that Illustrator won't do using that feature. thanks very much .

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I just created a line chart and, under Build In, I don't see a "grow" option. Are you using Keynote '09?

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I like to convert to SD in FCP because it's easier to jump around and try things within one application.
So if the titles aren't working well at SD resolution, I can tweak them. If I want to crop things
differently, I can play with the motion tabs. When I use Quicktime Same Settings to export the SD sequence, I get a master file that looks like my FCP project.
At that point, I can focus on compression as a separate problem. I can try different Compressor
settings without having to go back to FCP. Having a single master file also makes it easier
to do alternate versions for the web or ipod.

How do you animate line drawings? On the fly.

I know there are many tutorials on paths and animating on paths. However my application is a bit different.
I have a embedded hardware device that we created that, when feed certain input it will output Cartesian coordinates. Since these coords are computed while the device is receiving input there is not way I can "pre compute" a path to animate on.
What I am trying to do is have each line "grow" or "animate" to its new endpoint vs just a jerky instantly drawn line to its new endpoint. Perhaps a better word for this is a gradual "transition". I have the "velocity" of the line being drawn too btw.
You can see a video here of the "jerky" verison:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/rileyporter/6852883154/in/photostream
Please let me know if this question makes any sense.
Riley

The API documentation itself has some sample code. And it has links to a tutorial:
http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/uiswing/components/list.html
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http://java.sun.com/products/jfc/tsc/tech_topics/jlist_1/jlist.html
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The only way I know of doing this with previous versions of
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Converting PDF Line Drawings back into CAD Formats?

Hi there
First of let me say Hi! I'm Ryan Holden, a design engineer working for General Motors Europe in the UK. Sorry to register and come straight at you with a question but I'm at a bit of a loss and I've always found forums the best way to get advice.
I have an issue at work. I have been sent some drawings by a supplier that I need to make changes to. The drawings have been saved in a PDF format but were generated using the CAD software CATIA V5 R18 (if anyone is familiar with that?).
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Hi there
Thanks very much for your help. I must admit I was not optimistic that it was a faesible task and this has pretty much confirmed it. I don't have access to the original CAD file anyway so it makes it a moot point.
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GME Engineering Millbrook

Animating line drawings?

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