Choosing your tools

Throughout the series, I will be using a number of applications to create the assets and to complete the projects. They are not used because they are cool, I use them because they follow one of my core tenets in the creation of motion graphics for the web. Use the right tool at the right time to do the right job. To get my students to understand this concept, I ask a couple of ridiculous questions. Would you use a hammer to drive a screw? How about this, would you use an atom bomb to light your barbecue? In both cases, you will achieve the end result, but did I do the job efficiently? To me, Photoshop is a hammer, Illustrator is a wrench, and After Effects is a screwdriver, they're simply tools in my toolbox. If it takes you ten minutes to complete a task in Photoshop and only six minutes to do the same thing in Illustrator, then maybe Illustrator is the right tool. Then again, there may be a feature of Photoshop that is aimed squarely at the task at hand. In that case, Photoshop will…