Here’s a more detailed explanation of how I did my animated opening credits.  I tried to go straight through the process, but there was no way in the world that all of the steps would fit into a video that was a reasonable length, so these two videos are just the basic steps for text and image animation.

For image animation:

For text animation:

Some things I left out of the videos:

> To import images, audio files, or video files to the list of project files go to File –> Import. I made my images in Adobe Illustrator, and After Effects has a specific way of importing stuff made in other Adobe programs, so I don’t know how well something made in GIMP or what have you might transfer.

> If the sound file you want to use is from a video clip, you can turn off the original video footage by clicking the eye icon next to that layer.

> To save the project, go to Composition –> Add to Render Queue.  Then click on the Render Queue at the bottom left of the window.  I don’t know if After Effects does this for everyone, but when I render a video the default is to remove all the sound.  To make sure the sound is included in the final project, click on Output Module: Lossless and a window comes up where you can check a box to include audio. (example in screenshot below; click it for a more readable size)  After all your settings are fixed, click the render button.  This part takes forever — my video was a little under two minutes and it still took nearly two hours to render.

After Effects is crazy complicated — if any of this is unclear I’m more than happy to try to explain further if anyone wants.