Animation appears to be very complex, but when broken down to it's components can be very simple. There are zillions of tutorials out there demonstrating how to animate just about anything. Good Tutorials is an excellent source to find animation tutorials. This thread will start off with some basic simple animation and as it develops, it will demonstrate some of the more complex animation techniques. For a peek at things to come check out these Animation Tutorials
Simple Animation
The key to this technique is placing an object in a starting position on one frame, making a second frame with an ending point and tweeing between the two frames. Basic animation is simple using the following steps. For a detailed explanation using screen shots of each of the steps use This Simple Animation Tutorial by Ace.
1. Open a new document with a white background. Rename the background as layer One.
2. Open a second layer; add a picture or an object.
3. Open the document in Image Ready.
4. Using the Animation Tool Box, open the second frame.
5. In the First Frame place your object in the starting position.
6. In the Second Frame place your object in the ending position.
7. Use the Tween button to create the animation between the two frames.
8. Save the Image Ready document as Optimized.
The Results should look like this:
![Posted Image](http://www.metcoverart.com/images/tutorials/FlamingSkullAnimaTutorial.gif)
The following screen shots illustrating how the technique was applied to make the skull move across the page.
Frame one with the skull in the starting position: FlamingSkullAnimationOne
Frame two with the skull in the ending position: FlamingSkullAnimationTwo
Using the tween button with 5 frames the starting and ending positions: FlamingSkullAnimationThree
By adjusting the times at the bottom of each frame, the speed of animation can be altered. In the flaming skull animation all the times were set to .01 seconds. In the image below the time on the starting and ending frames were set to .05 seconds with the tweeing frames set to .02 seconds.
![Posted Image](http://www.metcoverart.com/images/tutorials/FlamingSkullSlow.gif)
This screenshot demonstrates the change in timing: FlamingSkullAnimationFour
A variation on this technique can be used to make the same object blinks in different positions without the tweening effect as it moves. Three frames were used to position the object in three different places in the design. The tweening button was not used so that the effect created is that the object is blinking between different frames as illustrated in this image:
![Posted Image](http://www.metcoverart.com/images/tutorials/harmonyhavocanimated.gif)
These screen shots illustrate how this technique was altered to make the music note blink in different positions in the signature.
Frame one with the music note in position one: HHSimpleAnimationOne
Frame two with the music note in position two: HHSimpleAnimationTwo
Frame three with the music note in position three: HHSimpleAnimationThree