Tools I use for Editing - Part 2

One of my other favorite tools to use is Adobe Flash. It's a tool designed for animation and I do a little bit of animation (I'm still learning how to use the thing).

Actually, I do most of my animation in Premiere (since I'm more familiar with it) but I'm sure I could save a lot of time if I just learned how to do it in Flash. I mostly create animated GIFS in Flash and export them to Premiere to complete the whole animation. I don't actually make animated "GIFS", more like animated "AVI's". With AVI's I have more control over the animation. The only drawback is that with AVI's, the animation will only repeat itself as many times as I tell it to and with GIF's they'll endlessly loop.

To give you an example of what I mean, lets say I need an animation of Lester running. I'll take footage of the game, import it into Premiere, export frame by frame the entire sequence of Lester running, import each frame into Paintshop Pro and cut out Lester from each frame. I'll then take the cut outs and paste them onto transparent backgrounds so I can import them into Flash.



In Flash is where I'll create the animation sequence of Lester running. When complete, I can paste Lester on any background in any scene I want. I can choose to export him as a GIF where he'll endlessly run or I can export him as an AVI but he'll only run for as many frames as I choose to. But again with AVI's, I have more customization in Premiere like to slow down or increase the frame rate without having to manually adjust it in Flash and re-exporting again. It's also easier to crop, say I have a run and jump sequence animation. If I decide later on that I just want him running and not jumping, I can crop it out if it were an AVI but not when it's a GIF. I hope that makes sense.

I used to be a lot better with Flash when Macromedia owned it but now that Adobe has taken over, it has a different feel and the controls are a little different so I forget how to do a lot of things. So again, even though it takes longer, I prefer to do most of my animation in Premiere itself.

Flash doesn't have nearly as many bugs or problems like Premiere does (at least it doesn't for me). I never had it crash yet...but dealing with video is more complicated than making simple animations (that's all I do with Flash).

Flash is also expensive but worth it if you use it a lot. If you want an alternative, cheaper animation program...well, I'm not really familiar with any other programs lol but here is a list I found that may help you. My friend Miles plays around with Blender and he's pretty good at it.