Expert: Andre Hickman - 11/7/2009

Question
I am a young animator and i am working on a website. The people who want to pay me want to have the first 3 letters first then move into the whole name. I don't know were the best place to put the dummies.  

Answer
Hey Kris,

I am not exactly sure what you are talking about in reference to dummies, but from what I am understanding your project to be, here is how I would approach it...

Get the final logo completely in place, where everything will be at the end.  Then move out to that place on the timeline and create key frames for everything.  Then move backwards in time and create your motion, by removing the letters out that won't be there at first.  Move and keyframe them all at once.  After you have a starting and stopping key frame for each letter's motion, then you can either make them all come in together like a block, or you can offset the keyframes individually, so that they float in in succession, one right after the other, in a ripple effect.

I'm not sure why you are using dummies.  The only reason that I can see using them for (unless I am just over-simplifying what you are trying to do) is if you want the letters to float in in an arching motion...then you might offset each dummy and parent them to each letter, and then rotate it, to have them move in an "orbit" into place.

The more detail you can give me on what you are trying to do, the better I can answer your question, if this did not give you a full enough answer.

Cheers,
Andre