How to do my video project ?

Question

hello, my name is jerome, I live in France and I'm 17.
I saw on youtube a beautiful video ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uq3qnzA5_Dg&feature=g-like&context=G1249eALTukgbgAAAA ) and I would like to learn to do the same "video annimation".
I'm a beginner, and I never used any Adobe's software...
Could you tell me please with witch software can I do the same ? (maby a GIF software ?)
Thank you, have a nice day

Answer 1

Hello Jerome,
Looking at that example, it appears that much of it, might have been done in a program, like Adobe Illustrator, and then assembled in Premiere, or more probably in Adobe After Effects, which is somewhat similar to Premiere, but with some big differences - rather than being a video editing program, it is a "compositing" program, and is very often used to composite images for animation.
Some of what we saw, can be completed in Premiere Elements, but the origination of the art, i.e. the forest of dead trees, the walking man, etc., came from another program.
In the case of both the trees, and the man, they were created with what is called an Alpha Channel, which separates them from the background - remember the opening shot of the trees? We see the clouds and sky between the "trees," so there is Transparency around those trees. Same for the man. Had he been a real human, he would have been shot against a greenscreen, and then the background would be Keyed out. In the case of drawn objects, the background is set up to be Transparent to begin with, so any is held back by the Alpha Channel.
Now, there are ways to easily animate some things in PrElements, such as the clouds passing by in the opening scene with the trees. That could be done by Keyframing the Fixed Effect>Motion>Position (for the clouds), over time. Same for the image of the man, before we see his legs moving - a Still Image of the man could be easily Keyframed on the same Effect>Motion>Position.
However, when we see his legs move, that becomes a bit more difficult, in that it would require many more Still Images, with the legs in different places. In PrE, if given enough Still Images, with the legs in different places, one would just use a Cross-Dissolve Transition between them, but for more fluid movement (not loooking so much like Stop Motion), the Tweening capability in After Effects would be very, very handy.
There is a lot going on in that piece, and I would venture that several different programs were used to create what we saw.
Here is my "guess" list:
Adoboe Illustrator for creation of the majority of the elements
Adoboe After Effects for compositing those elements and then animating
Adobe Premiere to do the final editing of output from After Effects, to get the final
I would drop the creator an e-mail, introduce yourself, express your interest in doing similar in the future, and ask how that was created. Were it my creation, I would tell you everything, in hopes of helping you get started.
Good luck,
Hunt