Multiple assets (some clip art from 123rf.com some original) were assembled and laid out in Adobe Illustrator.

Layers were the exported to After Effects to build up special effects such as transparencies and slight weathering as well using AE's easing functions to create more realistic animation.

After rendering in After Effects, animation was exported in to 150 individual frames.

Those frames were brought into Photoshop, reassembled and exported as the above .gif animation.