Animation help plz

[trunksu]

I have a jpg and I want to add leaves falling down so i can make it for my dvd menu. i have no idea on where to start. i think you can do it with flash but does any1 know of a easier way.

[redwudz]

Do a search for 'Animated gifs' on Google. That would be more in line with what you have in mind. There are a bunch of sites that may give you some ideas. My avatar is a simple animated gif. Much easier than MPEG. You can probably convert to MPEG if you need when you have it finished.

[guns1inger]

Try WAX2 from Debugmode. It is a free compositor, similar in some respects to After Effects. Animated gifs have their place, but for DVD menus they are entirely wrong. At full res they take up too many resources, most authoring software wont use them correctly, and they are limited to 216 colours.

Another piece of software worth looking at is particle illusion from wondertouch. It actually has (either built-in, or as a downloadable set) falling leaves.