I just love Express Animator. I'm 74 years old and the mind doesn't work as quick as it use to. I didn't feel the sample animation was sufficient. It would have been better if we could have seen it put together. After playing with that and several others, aiming for GIF files, I decided to do an MP4 movie.
I gathered some graphics together, build a few and most importantly, downloaded a main character from the internet; Sammy Snail (my doing). I made a blue over green background representing grass and sky. I used PhotoImpact Pro v13 to make graphics with transparent backgrounds. I use Wave Pad from NCH for the sounds (talking). I put it together in Express Animator 3.2 and I'll include an image of the Express Animator screen shot. Basically, in order of rank, Grass is in the back, the railroad tracks next, then the sky, sun, train, snail, bare tree, left eyelid of the snail, a Dotted Oval Bubble, "Hi, I'm Sammy" sound clip made with Wave Pad, "Sorry" sound clip, "Well I guess" sound clip and sound background "Slow Journey".
In the image, the grey bars (in the composition pane) are sound, the maroon are text, the salmon are objects unless selected, then they are blue.
Green is objects made in the New Object menu. Rectangle for grass and sky. Ellipse for the sun and custom shape for the eyelid.
I'll try to put all the parts in a Zip file. I used 16 X 9 screen shape and output as 1920 X 1080 (HD). I'll put this up on http://www.larry-richards.name under Visual Basic Downloads. Later, I'll make a download section for graphics.
The files will be stored in "Sammy Snail.Zip".
After creating an MP4 output, I wrapped it in Video Studio X9.5 to create a title and credits screen. Total size is 78 MB.
Let me know how you like it, and if it helps any.
OleSmokey
Larry Richards.
