Preview

Want access to the full AE project files and assets for every tutorial on Aetuts+, including this one? Join Ae Plus for just $9/month. You can view the final effect preview video below.

This is a Premium Tutorial. To view you must Join Premium.

Tutorial Sneak Peek

Once you’ve joined, log-in to the Premium Dashboard with your username and password to immediately access your Plus Content. Navigate to Ae Premium via ‘Premium Categories’ in the sidebar. You’ll be able to grab the tutorial videos, project files and assets in the members’ area.

Preview

Want access to the full AE project files and assets for every tutorial on Aetuts+, including this one? Join Ae Plus for just $9/month. You can view the final effect preview video below.

Tutorial

Step 1

Start by creating a new composition with your settings. I made it 1280*720, 5 seconds long at 25Fps and called it Main.
Import your logo and bring it inside the composition.

Step 2

Select the logo and precompose it. On Pre-compose dialog select "Leave all attributes in ‘Main’" so that the new composition would be the size of our logo. Call it Logo. Open it.

Step 3

Now we need to think ahead a bit. We know that if we apply any filter in Photoshop to our logo, it’ll look the same on all frames because the color data remains the same. So we need to make it change for each frame.
Apply Brightness & Contrast effect to the logo. Set Contrast to 60. For Brightness, apply this expression : wiggle(25,50) which means that we’re shifting Brightness randomly for each frame.
Save.

Step 4

As we preview, you can see it’s flickering really fast. For this particular effect we know it’s too rapid because the look we try to emulate usually involves around 15 frames per second. What can we do? We lower the frame rate down to 15 fps for this composition. You can do it by going in Composition Settings.
Save.

Step 5

Next, we’ll create that thing growing behind the logo. Go into Main composition and create a new solid. Call it Particular. Apply Particular to it.
We’ll use Aux System so we need only few particles to be emitted.
Under Emitter, change Particles/sec to 300. Now set a keyframe for them at frame 0. Then move forward to frame 1 and lower Particles/sec to 0.
Set Velocity to 300 for faster burst. Preview and see the result.
Save.

Step 6

Don’t change anything under Particle, go straight to Aux System. Change Emit to Continously. This will make trails of particles behind the initial ones.
To make them bigger and denser set Particles/sec to 30 and Size to 40. Change Life to 5 and Type to Cloudlet.
At last, open Color over Life pull-down and set it to White to Black gradient. Hit Flip to reverse the gradient.
Save.

Step 7

Go to Physics>Air>Turbulence Field and set Affect Position to 100.
Now we can precompose our Particular layer. Call the composition Streaks. Drag it under Logo layer.
Go into Streaks Composition Settings and set its Frame Rate to 15 as previous.
Save.

Step 8

Now the background itself. I’ll use a paper texture. Place your texture inside Main comp and call it BG. To give the texture more detail, apply Curves and crank up the contrast a bit. Then apply Brightness & Contrast effect and add wiggle(25,30) expression to Brightness.
Save.

Step 9

We need to create one last element. In the Project panel, duplicate Streaks comp and call it Streak edges. On Particular layer, apply Find Edges effect.
Make a new White solid and put it under Particular as background.
Save. You’re almost ready to start exporting for Photoshop.

Step 10

Now you can go into Main composition Settings and change its Frame Rate to 15 also.
You’ll have to render each element separately so that you have a lot more control on their look. Start with Logo. Go into its composition and do it from there.
For each element you’ll have to do two things – first, save a preview image by going to Composition>Save Frame As>File…
Second, render the whole animation as Filmstrip. You can do it by adding the animation to Render Queue and changing Output Module to Filmstrip by clicking on it.
Filmstrip is a format that saves the animation/video on a single image and also encodes their time data on it so you can later playback it on necessary software.
Hit Render. Do the same with Streaks, Streak edges, BG. To render BG separately, just solo it by enabling Solo switch.

Step 11

Now you need to download and install this application – http://www.filterforge.com
It lets you to create and use all sorts of filters applying them through Photoshop.
At this point you should have rendered the following files: 4 Filmstrip files and 4 PSD’s for each element.

Step 12

Open Logo_preview.psd through Photoshop.
Then, open Filter>Filter Forge>Filter Forge…
After application opens you can start browsing through presets. Go to Creative – Old Drawing .03. You can select one of the presets and then adjust their Settings.
See the screenshot for my settings.

Step 13

Hit Apply. Now you can open Logo Filmstrip file. When ready, click on Filter Forge under Filters. This will automatically use those settings you used on the preview image. It’ll now apply them on each filmstrip frame so the whole process is pretty time consuming.

Step 14

After filters are applied, save the new Filmstrip through Save As…
Repeat Step 11 and Step 12 with remaining elements changing filter settings on your own.

Step 15

Bring the new Filmstrips inside After Effects. Take logo and background strips and place them accordingly in Main composition. I renamed them Logo strip and BG strip.
Open Streaks composition and bring in Streak_strip_2.fml. Place it under Particular and set its TrkMat to Luma so it would cut down the background.
Next, bring in Streak_edges_strip_2.flm and make a Black Solid under it. Set the solid’s TrkMat to Luma inverted.
Save.

Step 16

Switch back to Main. Bring in Streaks comp (rename it to Streaks matte) and put it on top of Logo strip. Set Logo TrkMat to Alpha Matte.
Now select Streaks comp and offset it 1 second forward in timeline. When at 1 second mark, select Logo strip layer and duplicate it by pressing Ctrl + D. Then press Alt + [ to trim the front part.

Step 17

Do some color correction and you’re done.

To view all the contest details and submit your own wallpaper entry, Click Here.

Preview

Want access to the full AE project files and assets for every tutorial on Aetuts+, including this one? Join Ae Plus for just $9/month. You can view the final effect preview video below.

Pixel Bender is a new plugin technology introduced by Adobe in CS4 that works across all the adobe CS4 apps. This means the same plugin can be used in After Effects, Photoshop and Flash. And they are installed and used just like any other plugins. You can get the Quaternion Julia plugin for free from subblue.

File Type: Plugin
After Effects Version: CS4

You can’t have video without audio… it just doesn’t work. That’s why in high school it was A/V club, not just V Club… although that does sound pretty rad. Anywho… if you want to complete an animation, short film, commercial or whatever… you have to have good audio, and that means scores and sound effects! I have found some of the best places around the web to purchase packages, find individual songs, and even snag some free tracks for you and your work!

• 

  SmartSound.com

  A division of SonicFire Pro’s awesome scoring software, the SmartSound library lets you pick from thousands of songs and hundreds of albums in their library. They also offer tools to trim your tracks to a custom length and you can also utilize an FCP Plugin to do that same task of automatically fitting your timeline.

  Visit Website

• 

  Pump Audio

  The awesome thing about pump audio is that anyone can contribute to the pickings. They accept music and tracks from artists from all around the world. This is NOT stock music… these are actual songs from indie artists. The way Pump Audio sees it is, you don’t want to lay a lame, generic track over an edit you have poured your heart and soul into right? Well, then… why settle?

  Visit Website

• 

  Shockwave-Sound.com

  These guys have been around for the past nine years as one of the pioneers of the online royalty free stock music industry. They have everything here… you can go into a song, pick different lengths, versions, sound effects FROM those songs… whatever you might need. There are always new tracks added every week, and they even have a service that you can request voiceover talent.

  Visit Website

• 

  Non Stop

  Wow, Non Stop has a pretty hefty credit list when you check it out… Harry Potter, Monster VS Aliens, Wall-E, Chronicles of Narnia… the list just goes on. There is no wonder Warner/Chappel wanted to acquire them in 2007. They have over 700 in their library of music and by registering over at CUEgle you can preview every bit they have… this stuff is absolutely amazing.

  Visit Website

• 

  Digital Juice

  Digital Juice is known for having just huge deals and amazing products that you get the best bang for your buck. They have two different kinds of audio products, StackTraxx and SoundFX Libraries. First, the StackTraxx are now on their 50th volume and come with 20 music tracks at varied lengths, and are usually $50 singly, but you can get a pack of five for $80, and a pack of 10 for $150! That is insanely cheap for stock music! As for the SoundFX libraries, they only have 4 collections right now, but each collection has over 11,000 elements and only costs about $250! If you are looking to buy a large pack of music or sound effects… this is probably one of your best bets.

  Visit Website

• 

  Video Copilot

  Andrew Kramer and his team only have two products in the audio realm of things, but they are still pretty heavy hitters, and placed at a good price. The first, Designer Sound FX has been out for a couple years, and is still a pretty good package. It comes with 500 royalty free sound effects, and especially for use AE users, tutorials and project files for their killer promo video. Next, Pro Scores is more in the scoring department (hence the name) and includes orchestral music tracks and epic musical elements. There are also layered music tracks, tension building elements, and of course some killer tutorials. Both products are priced right around $100.

  Visit Website

• 

  SampleSwap

  Finally the free stuff! Now, if you aren’t big money and can’t afford large packs, you might have to grab some free elements online and create your own beats and scores. That’s where SampleSwap comes in. They have 5.5 gigabytes of sounds from techno and drum’n'bass beats, to sound effects and instrument sounds to complete whatever your task may be.

  Visit Website

• 

  StockMusic.net

  This site is pretty straighforward. $30 bucks a track, $200 for 10 tracks, pay once… use them forever. They have thousands of tracks in every single genre you could think of, and they are trusted by some big names in the industry. Chances are you have probably heard their work used somewhere on television or in the movies. I’m sure you didn’t miss the blockbuster, Black Dawn with Steven Seagal… yeah they had a hand in that one.

  Visit Website

• 

  Audio Jungle

  We can’t leave out one of our most useful sites on the Envato Network! It might seem like a shameless plug, but Audio Jungle, like all the other sites in the marketplace network have some of the most competitive prices in the business. The way they work, is you can deposit money into your account, and generally get files for a little cheaper than if you were to buy them outright. There is also a fantastic affiliate program that you can sign up for to earn money for all the marketplaces as well. Anyone can submit files, but only the best and highest quality get accepted.

  Visit Website

• 

  Royalty Free Music Clips

  This guy seems like he is doing a similar thing to me with his blog, and rounding up as many free music clips, stock sound effects and whatever else he can find from around the web. This is a great site to subscribe to and grab what he has to offer as it becomes available. He takes the hassle out of searching for you and provides it one, easy to find location!

  Visit Website

• 

  Partners In Rhyme

  Partners in Rhyme have been delivering royalty free music since the AOL days… 1996! That’s a long time… and they have a collection to prove it. They have different CDs available for purchase (most from $70-$100), and they provide an awesome flash player so you can preview every track before you shell out your cash to buy.

  Visit Website

• 

  Free Music Archive (FMA)

  The Free Music Archive is an editor’s paradise. You can never have enough stock music to pick and choose from, and you can never have enough FREE files either. This site is run by the WFMU, the most renowned freeform radio station in America. They are able to stick music created by artists online for use in productions, podcasts or whatever for those of us that can’t afford to by large packs of stock music. Make sure you bookmark this page, creator or consumer… it’s a great site to be a part of!

  Visit Website

• 

  Film Music Moby.com

  You know about that musical artist Moby right? Well he has a portion of his website with free music he created for filmmakers to use in whatever they see fit, as long as it is non-commercial, and non-profit. This is obviously all professional stuff, and all you have to do to access it is create a free account on the page after the jump!

  Visit Website

• 

  Freeplay Music

  More free stuff! Man, you gotta love sites like this! FreePlay has 6339 tracks as of the time of me writing this, and is growing every day. All of the tracks are downloadable absolutely free if you are just fooling around and this stuff is non-profit/non-commercial. If it is, however you need to go about purchasing licensing, where you can find all that information on their website.

  Visit Website

If you enjoyed this post, please give it a vote on Digg or a stumble to say thanks!

QuickTip

Overview

• Core Training Value: You will learn the fundamental 12 Principles of Animation and how they can be used within After Effects to give all your future projects more life.
• Difficulty: Beginner

This is a Premium Tutorial. To view you must Become a Premium Member.

Premium Tut Preview

Tutorial Sneak Peek

Once you’ve joined, log-in to the Premium Dashboard with your username and password to immediately access your Premium Content. Navigate to Ae Plus via ‘Premium Categories’ in the sidebar. You’ll be able to grab the tutorial videos, project files and assets in the members’ area.

Overview

• Core Training Value: You will learn the fundamental 12 Principles of Animation and how they can be used within After Effects to give all your future projects more life.
• Difficulty: Beginner

This is a Premium Tutorial. To view you must Become a Premium Member.

Premium Tut Preview

Tutorial Sneak Peek

Once you’ve joined, log-in to the Premium Dashboard with your username and password to immediately access your Premium Content. Navigate to Ae Plus via ‘Premium Categories’ in the sidebar. You’ll be able to grab the tutorial videos, project files and assets in the members’ area.