I posted this message many months ago. Since then I've been working a lot on this series of movies and I have 3 completed. The 4th will be finished in a week or two. They are mostly created with SketchUp. I also use a video editor and overlay drawings onto the SU backgrounds (Corel VideoStudio and Photoshop). All these movies are at TreasureInside.net
All moving characters are done with drawings, with frames about 1 or 2 per second. This gives it a rough look and a very unique style in our world of hi-tech 3d animation. Animation nowadays is often 25 or 30 fps with a full range of colors and details.
I hated Antics and stopped using it (uninstalled it!) as soon as I was finished with that first movie, Plain Sight. Content is very hard to work with. Motion is difficult to control. Camera and timeline options are not at all intuitive. I tried other animation software and had big difficulties with all of them. (Of course, someone else may be very successful with a system that I could not learn.)
I ended up going back to SU, which I know well and use a lot for my work. The only good thing about Antics (for me) was that I could create elaborate sets and props with SU and then import them into Antics. You can see this in Plain Sight. I created the sets and props for my other movies with SU, just the same. SU has excellent camera animation control. I only had to find a way to animate things on camera. I do this with the overlayed drawings. (And, as you can see, I'm no great artist. I end up with a funky childish doodle that makes a great style.)
Joel
