Which software for animation?

Don’t want to over complicate things. If someone asked you to recreate the flowers/rain animated illustration, where would you start? Rain Garden Animation Should I utilize the animation abilities within InDesign, Illustrator or Photoshop, or do I move on and look at After Effects? I’m not looking to create a Pixar animation, just something simple.

InDesign wouldn’t be useful for much. Illustrator could be use to create some of the artwork, which is also true of Photoshop. However, you’d need something to hook all the pieces together in a timeline. I didn’t study it all that closely, but it seems like much of it could have been done in Premiere Pro. After Effects could handle it too, and would likely be better suited for for the animations.

Adobe Animate is good for fairly simple 2d animations and has the advantage of being vector-based too. Ideally it is for web-based animation (flash, svg, html5 canvas), but it can also export to mp4. The latest version has puppet warp too, which can save time and is fun to play with.

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Thank you so much! I appreciate you spending the time to help me out.

True, Adobe Animate would be the better option and has a fast learning curve too for this kind of thing. Same for AE, if you create your graphics in AI that is and decide to animate them in AE. What you also could do is take a look at AnimDessin for Photoshop and follow these tutorials. It depends on whether you want to create your gfx in vector or bitmap. I don’t know if you have the basics down for traditional animation but if you do, AnimDessin would be easier than AE.
Some examples that are made using the extension

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Thanks so much!!! Greatly appreciated!

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I think the answer truly depends on the final format you would like to get. I mean, if you are planning to share on social media, of course, gif or mp4 are recommended, but the healthiest solution for websites is animated SVG. There are lots of great solutions out there, but I would recommend SVGator for vector animation. I have been using it for several weeks now and found no issues whatsoever. Even easier than Adobe Animate or AE.