4 questions

[romanh38396473]

I have a few questions before purchasing.....

As an individual still developing animation skills what is the learning curve for Animate?

What is the monthly cost?

What type of animations does Animate make?

What companies use it?

Do you need illustrator to create animations?

[Colin Holgate]

1. Steep.

2. See this page:

Creative Cloud pricing and membership plans | Adobe Creative Cloud

Roughly speaking, $20 per month for just Animate, normally $50 per month for every application, and if you order it today it would be $40 per month

3. Anything.

4. Lots.

5. No.

A couple of my Adobe buddies are expert pro animators. I will see if they can drop by to give more useful advice.

[_keyframer · Accepted solution]

As an individual still developing animation skills what is the learning curve for Animate?

Animate is relatively easy to open and get started rather quickly when compared to other animation programs. It can be as simple as starting a new document, grabbing one of the many drawing tools, making a few strokes, inserting a blank keyframe, turn on onionskin and make more strokes. Repeat this and you'll have an animation.
You can also create an object on the stage, say a circle, convert it to a symbol (F8) and using a 2nd keyframe and a motion tween, move the object across the stage.
You can also get very advanced by taking advantage of "nesting" animation inside symbols and essentially layering animations over animations for unique effects.

I don't want to get too advanced on you but I've been using this program for almost 20 years and have not grown tired of using it. It's a blank canvas and it's as simple or as complex as you want it to be.

I always say, whatever you can draw you can animate.

What is the monthly cost?

See this:
Creative Cloud pricing and membership plans | Adobe Creative Cloud

What type of animations does Animate make?

Animate is a 2D vector based animation tool. it also supports the importing of images and PSD and AI files. I think my portfolio might help explain the myriad of styles that can be created using Animate:
www.keyframer.com

What companies use it?

Impossible to list them all. Animate used to be called Flash and has been around for almost 20 years. it has been used by animation studios for TV, web, games and beyond. Advertisers use it. Creative agencies use it. Hobbyists use it. Independent professionals use it. It's ubiquitous.

Do you need illustrator to create animations?

No but if you already use Illustrator, you can import AI files directly into Animate while retaining layers. Animate's drawing engine is pretty cool as is tho.

Good luck!!!

[Colin Holgate]

Thanks for the quick reply _keyframer. I feel less bad about my answers now!

[Asymetrical]

Hey romanh38396473

While learning how to do traditional animation is hard no matter what tools you use (and here's some important principals to keep in mind: 12 basic principles of animation) one of the nice things about using Animate to do it is that it's instantaneous and you can instantly see your drawings are too fast to understand what's going on or are not clear. I find it extremely useful and have taught many on how to use Animate. Here's a partial list of series produced using Animate so you can see the scope of what's possible is pretty large.

List of Flash animated television series - Wikipedia

[Colin Holgate]

Proud to know you two.

[Asymetrical]

Aw shucks, back atcha, Colin!