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3D Text Animation Tutorial in After Effects [NO PLUGINS]

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[mylifewasamazinguntiliwasborn]

So why do I think Dual Destinies is a dogshit game @elzux?

It all boils down to one very simple thing - almost nothing about the game feels like Ace Attorney.

I think the first important thing to note here is that by the time Dual Destinies came out, Ace Attorney had been my special interest for over 5 years. I was extremely familiar with the original trilogy, as well as Apollo Justice and both Investigations games. At that point I didn't dislike any of the games I had played, Apollo Justice was my least favourite but I still loved the game a lot.

Now to the meat. Why doesn't Dual Destinies feel like Ace Attorney? Let's break it down.

The dialogue - lacks the usual humour and snark. The game can't keep me focused on the dialogue. In a game where reading the dialogue is required to play the game. The dialogue is so, so boring and often nonsensical that I found myself skipping huge blocks of text, just because I either couldn't or didn't want to read what was going on. It's a massive drop in quality in a series that is known for its top tier dialogue, which usually effectively furthers both the plot and the characters. Here we instead have dialogue that feels like someone who only knew Phoenix Wright through early 2010s Youtube memes had written it. My favourite example is from DD-1 where Phoenix's inner dialogue reads (Noooo, come back my beautiful contradiction!). First glance, it's okay. Maybe even funny. Second glance, hold up. Phoenix would never think that. He might have used this as a punchline after 4-6 text boxes of lamenting, not just as a single one sentence reaction to one Objection by Payne, of all people.

The characters - closely tied to the dialogue. The returning characters don't act like themselves. The new characters are paper thin and without agency. The side characters are so boring I still barely remember anyone's names. Phoenix is stupid. Why is he stupid? Phoenix is goofy, yeah. He's a silly little guy. Sometimes he's slow, although his literal character arc of the first 3 games is becoming The Best Attorney Ever. He can't be stupid 10+ years into his career. Especially remembering that he JUST tried to reinvent the entire court system in his country (more on this later). That's simply not something an idiot or an incapable lawyer fucking does. Apollo isn't Apollo. He's given three new backstories here and in result, Apollo Justice ceased to exist. He was kind even if a little sarcastic, he was unsure about himself, and he was so willing to learn. And here? Here he's just a mean prick and a know-it-all. Yeah okay he's traumatised yadda yadda then why is he like that in DD-2 as well? You know, BEFORE his bEsT fRiEnD died? Also what fucking best friend? How about you talk about his mother instead? Why turn his cute speech patterns into some traumatic goddamn mess? Literally no one asked for that. Athena is an awful character for the first half of the game, then gets some meat, and is then devolved back to 0 by giving all her agency to Simon Blackquill. Amazing. THIS is the game series praised for its strong female characters? Give me a break. I don't know anything about Athena except that she's a polyglot and has PTSD. That's not a character, that's a plot device. Simon Blackquill is kinda okay but he's also the first major overstepping a line Ace Attorney does. His character is too ridiculous. Why is a death row convict a prosecutor. Even within the AA universe it just doesn't make sense. He's just too much. Bobby Fulbright/Phantom is the 3rd worst character of the entire series. Where is Klavier Gavin. And let's talk about character designs while we're here! They're awful! Not only are the 3D models ass, but Pearl Fey's aged up design is fucking horrendous! Also this is the first game that really feels like it was made for cosplayers. The characters don't feel like characters anymore. This is an anime convention in a courtroom, now.

The plot - again closely tied to the dialogue as dialogue is the main device used to move the plot along in Ace Attorney. It fucking sucks. The cases don't make sense. It's a trend started by AJ, but DD takes it a step or a hundred further. Every case is so deeply uninteresting that even after having now freshly played the first 2 cases, I couldn't really summarise their plots for you. Where's the motivation, or the motive for that matter? Who cares? Who are these people? The only interesting case is the last one, and it's only interesting because of the last half of it. That's where the game peaks, I'll admit it's even good for a moment there. Then it's of course brought down by the whole Phantom thing (refer to section "The characters"). It's so one-dimensional, something Ace Attorney has barely ever been before. It's like Berry Big Circus: The Game. I'm miserable writing this thinking about how I still have four more cases of this to go. But most importantly: WHY give Apollo all these fucking backstories? And WHY erase everything Phoenix did in AJ? Where's the jury? Why was it buried? What happened? What? Where's Klavier Gavin?

The game mechanics - this is huge. First off, let me go back to the beginning where I said by the time DD came out, I had already made Ace Attorney my entire personality. I knew those games through and through. There's this very specific Ace Attorney logic that one either has/learns along the way or doesn't. Like when you're cross examining and you can Just Tell what to press, or what to present, even if you're not entirely sure why. The games are intuitive, so to speak. Well, not DD! DD remains the only game in the series beside PLvsAA where I have to look up stuff in a guide or save scam to save my ass. DD diverts from the AA logic so much that playing it doesn't feel like Ace Attorney. I can excuse PLvsAA, it was a PL game to begin with so I can understand why sometimes the writing would be lacking, but the 5th installment of the main series!? No way. Also, the mood matrix is easy and stupid and comparable to how Pokémon for the past 10 years has tried to one up itself with each generation when there was no need. Mega evolution was great, why would we need all that other shit. Magatama was great, we don't need Perceive or Moods or Seances. Fuck you. Sorry I'm getting really riled up now. And finally, of course, the elephant in the room. Why. Why can you not examine each location? What? What the fuck? That's where the best dialogue happens. That's where you build the characters you fucking morons. In the background. That's why we have the entire stepladder thing. You can't just take that out. The moment I realised they had done this I lost all hope for the game and haven't seen it since. But Unski, there must be something you like about Dual Destinies, right? It can't all be that bad, right? Right?

Correct. Here's an exhaustive list of all the things I liked about Dual Destinies. -The OST was only the 3rd worst in the series. This isn't entirely on the composer though, it's also that while I like the orchestral arrangements well enough, they just don't quite hit the intensity I fell Ace Attorney deserves. Yes this includes DGS. -Speaking of OST, probably the best Truth theme of the series, and also some of the best Reminiscences are here. -Aura Blackquill is a solid good character with an interesting backstory and her own agenda. She is easily my favourite character in this game, and A tier in the over all series as well. -Phenomenal, haunting artwork. If you've played the game, you probably know which one I'm talking about. -Sometimes the cutscenes weren't entirely awful. -They brought back the black Psyche-Locks. If only they could have done that on someone more meaningful.

[saturniandragon]

Adra's Project Wingman In-Depth Review: Per Mission Experience and Commentary

(Caution: extremely long read. Please have snacks ready)

Project Wingman! Or so I've heard it more described as "a love letter to the Ace Combat franchise." Another arcade flight action shooter game similar to Ace Combat, and if I remember rightly, designed and developed by Ace Combat fans. Again I've spent years and years avoiding spoilers, although inevitably I began hearing a few things about it; it's like Ace Combat, it's set in alternate history, you can carry up to 4(!) different types of ordnance, and it's orange. So I guess like NFS Most Wanted (2005). Like Ace Combat 7 of course, I'm playing with my Xbox controller.

Which brings me to the first... quirk of the game. The menu interface. You control a cursor on the screen with your left thumbstick, and you have to carefully position it to the menu buttons that you want to access. The left thumbstick doesn't cycle through the menu buttons, you have to control a cursor with your joystick. Which I find to be a little on the negative side and I decided to just use my mouse to navigate the menu. Makes me wonder if this is a side effect of Project Wingman being developed as a PC game first and console second.

The last time I was met with this kind of UI controls was in the 2019 game "Observation."

However I am very impressed that the menu background isn't just a static image or a repeated video. It looks like a real time 3D rendered scene with planes flying above the treeline. Also what looks like a massive airship or a mothership trailing slowly across the sky. My hype level is up by 3 notches. I can't wait to start playing.

No fancy animation or a CGI video as the intro. Just a text that briefly tells the story about the game's world. Very much like David Szymanski's "Iron Lung" game. Seeing Sector D2 is not a massive game studio and just an indie developer, it's perfectly fine. And what I learned is that Project Wingman's universe is alternate history Earth that experienced some kind of massive natural disaster or calamity that changed the world forever, and new nations start to rise from the ashes. The game takes place 400 years after the event.

First briefing screen. Wow this orange tint really reminds me of Ace Combat Zero briefing screen. And I can also see the map of the Project Wingman world in the background. The continent of America has changed, not dramatically, you can see the general shape of the continent, but the west shoreline has practically split off from the rest of the continent. And a glimpse of what used to be Japan, China, Philippines and Indonesia, now reduced to just a few main islands, presumably the remains of the cataclysm mentioned earlier.

Apparently our protag is a mercenary pilot who goes by the name Monarch (as in monarch butterfly, I assume), who is a part of Hitman team, under the mercenary organization known as Sicario. And our client is the Federation? Is that a country, or a union like the one in COD Ghosts? Either way it brings me back to Cipher and Pixy, who were also merc pilots. In PW, apparently we're fighting a group of pirate pilots.

First mission, destroy some kind of research material that was deemed unsafe and fell into a group of merc pirates. A few ground targets, ships, and a few air targets. Alright, no big deal. My Ace Combat experience is more than enough for this.

I'm actually impressed with the voice acting. I've heard how difficult it is to voice act in a game or a movie that doesn't sound too cringey or too monotone. The guy doing the briefing actually does sound like he's done it probably a thousand times. I wonder if they hired a professional VA or just someone from the internal dev team.

Plane hangar. They give you 2 starter planes to choose. A T-21 (apparently a trainer plane that resembles MiG-21), and T/F-4 (a trainer plane that resembles F-4). I was going to use the Fishbed but the Phantom has slightly better stats, even though I'm bored with Phantoms, so I chose it. UGBL as secondary weapon, pretty standard.

First flight. Operation Red Current. AWACS Galaxy on station and OH MY GOD I HAVE A WIZZO. AND SHE HAS DIALOGUE LINES. The last time I had a wizzo was Ace Combat 2, but he just had generic repeating dialogues like missile lock/alert and stall warning. Your plane does form vapor clouds at Mach 1, something missing from AC7, so I loved that. Once again, for a small dev team, the voice acting is well done.

First set of ground TGTs clear. Ronin moving in. "Cordium" cargo? Never heard that before. They say it's too unstable, Federation orders to just clear it BOOM. MASSIVE EXPLOSION like an FAEB just went off. Mission complete, question mark? Another flight called Master Goose comes in the AO, flashing as friendlies. I don't really trust this but hey, I'm just a merc, not paid to ask questions.

If they turn out to be a fake squadron like the 8492nd, I'm gonna be... Well I don't know what I'm gonna be.

And there's a civil war in the Americas. Country of Cascadia being invaded by the Fed for natural resources. Our client is Cascadian Air Force now I guess. Is this like Belka trying to annex Ustio in AC0?

You know what, I'm too excited to have a wizzo. I'm gonna get another Phantom that isn't a Phantom (F/E-4). Big surprise, all of the SP weapons are available for use right away, no need to buy them separately. I like this game already.

Can I just say the explosions in PW from STDMs are so dramatic. Way more dramatic than AC7, it's like they hired Michael Bay. Not a bad thing though, it's giving PW identity. So it's not just a "Ace Combat we have at home"

Mission 2, all going well, fighting Fed border patrols until a massive airship came practically out of nowhere. At least this one doesn't have drones, just SK.27s and F/C-15s. A couple MLAAs later and it's down, but then no explanation as to what we just shot down. Oh well, at least we're with Cascadian AF now.

Mission 3. Rowsdower AFB. Once belonged to Cascadia now seized by the Fed on their conquest to expand their military (ala Belka), we're on a mission to take it back. Ooh, new aircraft for purchase. SV-37. I genuinely thought I unlocked a Flanker early in the game but it's just the Swedish dorito (Viggen). And it has MLAGs, if MLAA is Multi Lock Air to Air then I guess MLAG is this game's version of 4AGM. Only single seat though, I still want to hear more of Prez's dialogues. Maybe later.

Crosstalk squadron appeared, 5 Super Hornets. Grun Squadron flashbacks from Zero, anyone? Oooooh there's a health bar on the bottom of the screen for each enemy craft. I loved it. Wasn't much hassle fighting them, and we landed in Rowsdower.

Honestly I'm kind of impressed that as a band of pilot mercs, we have our own AWACS. Anyway next mission, aid Cascadian national guards from being overwhelmed by the Feds.

Two new aircrafts. CR.105 and SK.25U. I thought CR.105 is a Foxbat at first but it's delta wing design with no canards or tail surfaces. But its speed rating is off the rails, so I guess partly inspired by the Foxbat.

I'm buying SK.25U for Mission 4. Two seats and a boat load of A2G hardpoints. I sure hope there isn't any mission update where we suddenly have to fight an entire air force! (Thank fuck there isn't)

Really this game has the Frogfoot when Ace Combat 7 doesn't? Come on PA.

Next mission, Cascadian capital of Presidia. The Feds have taken over the city. Cover retreat of Cascadian armed forces. Multirole mission with tendency towards A2A. MG-31 and F/C-16 now available for purchase. Not sure if I trust a flying brick with wings for this mission, so Viper time. Guess I have to leave out Prez for this one.

Mission 5, over Presidia. WOW THIS CITY IS SO COOL with all the low hanging clouds. Though what's with all the needle towers/structures all over the city?

Thought we were done but the Feds sent out not just one or two other massive airships but FIVE of them to try and keep Presidia in their hands. I thought I shot all of them down but Mission Over text?? Did I fail??

Debriefing says Status: Success but Stardust said Presidia fell anyway. I guess it's supposed to be that way.

So far into this game, I'm developing the sense that Project Wingman is largely inspired by the classic PS2 AC titles (aka The Holy Trinity), I guess more towards Zero. The orange tint, no checkpoint system, the absence of aircraft tree, aircraft parts, merc pilot protagonist, but they also incorporate some modern QoL features like flares.

I think I would appreciate something present in AC but not present in PW; lock range indicator. You know the HUD in AC, just to right side of the pitch ladder, is a slider with a chevron that indicates the distance required for your ordnance to lock.

Mission 6, attack the Feds from the other front by crippling their energy production sites at Apodock Fracture, apparently in Yellowstone. Also they've been hunting for some material called cordium? Is that what caused the massive explosion in the first mission?

Two new aircrafts, Super Tomcat and Fulcrum! Two of my favorite aircrafts. But I had to choose the Tomcat because I miss Prez (cmon man I've been all alone in Ace Combat for years). Fucking hell it's expensive though. Better be worth it.

Yep they're hunting for cordium. We're ordered to destroy their containers. Fucking hell the SAMs in this mission are fierce, I got hit 3 times and was down to 23 health. And two more of those fucking Fed airships?? Just how many of these things are there??

Alright, mission completed. Almost. New blips on the radar, VX-23s and SK.37s. Federation Peacekeepers. Engagement Not Advised written in large text on my screen. I hammered the throttle and fly just meters away above the ground to avoid missiles and head to the return line. Reminiscent of the first time you face Yellow Squadron in AC04.

Crimson Squadron. Fed's top ace in Cascadia.

(I learned late that you have infinite flares in this game)

Mission 7. Cascadian Coast Guard seized a Fed battleship/cruiser off the coast of Cascadia. Just me and Hitman 3 this time. We're to provide air support although I kinda don't want to fly the SK.25U just to have its LASM. New aircraft for purchase called the... Accipiter. Whatever the hell that means. Apparently based on the Harrier. Not enough cash to purchase. Back to the Tomcat.

Think I forgot to read the weather report for this mission because it's stormy as fuck and the clouds are violent. I'm not sure who has the bigger balls to fly through such extreme turbulence, me or Monarch. It's actually very scary from cockpit view, everything shaking up around you and you hear the creeking and clanking from the plane's aluminum panels like they're going to break off at any moment. Oh well it's just an anti ship mission with a couple of air targets THE FED SHIPS HAVE RAILGUNS ON THEM WHY AM I FIGHTING MINI STONEHENGE AT SEA

Ok that's over now. New mission that's purely air to air mission. Take down Fed logistic planes while also avoiding shooting down civilian airliners. Weather cloudy. Two new aircrafts, Super Hornet-C and Flanker-B. But I'm still having way too much fun in my F/D-14.

Also I just learned that the seemingly random clicking noises when I'm flying is just a noise indicator of my missiles fully reloaded.

Mission 8, Briggs Mountain Range. Wait why is that civilian airliner the same as the Fed airship that I've downed multiple times before?

Doesn't matter. STDMs, HVSMs and MLAAs. One by one shooting down Fed Globemasters. Conservative with MLAA use because I totally didn't restart this mission because I accidentally shot down a civilian airliner. Then the true airship arrives. Airship Gladeus with two F/S-15s. The fucking AAM pods on the Gladeus are a nightmare to hit tbh, but mission done. More importantly no civilian casualties.

But I begin wondering, is there like multiple paths in this game like Ace Combat Zero? Like Knight, Soldier and Merc paths that are determined by whether you shoot N.TGTs or not. That's my goal for my second playthrough.

Mission 9. Raver mountains. Covert mission to take out SAM sites so we can push without losing planes. F/C-15 is now available for purchase.

But you know what, let's take the Accipiter for a spin. What was the last Ace Combat game that lets you fly a Harrier? None. Well, Assault Horizon, but that's not a true AC game. Woah, what is this, CGP? A shotgun gun pod?? Flechette rounds?? I don't fucking know how it works but I wanna try that shit out.

Alright, near CIWS units. Time to try CGPs, and... it's disappointing. Although I think my expectations were a bit too high. Well at least they didn't lie about it being a short range weapon.

And of course I did the tunnel runs in this place to destroy the containers. I'm an Ace Combat vet after all, tunnel runs are my bread and butter.

Mission 10, now the real deal. Solana Comms Array and the adjacent airbase... without Cascadian air force to help us. It's alright I guess, Monarch is already a one man army as he is. Or one man air force.

But I'm this far into the game and I still haven't found Project Wingman's equivalent of QAAMs. Maybe there will be a "HASM" (High Agility Standard Missile) or something. I guess it's time to try the Eagle for a spin.

And my thoughts? So worth buying the Eagle. Missed out on Prez, but when you attach second and third slots with MLAAs, you get 6AAMs in game. Awesome stuff. Fed is crumbling.

Mission 11, Bering Strait. Another purely A2A mission. The most expansive A2A battle ever committed, he says? We'll see to that WHOAA THIS IS LIKE THE MAYHEM MISSION FROM ACE COMBAT ZERO ON STEROIDS

And of course Crimson squadron shows up with a fuck ton of reinforcements. Totally reminding me of Schwarze squadron battle. But I'm not going down without a fight.

55 fighters, 3 SK.37s and 2 VX-23s downed by one humble F/D-14. I tried getting a close look at a VX-23 but couldn't make out what it resembles. My best guess is that it's probably something like Chengdu J-20 but couldn't see the fine details. Is there like a PSM mechanic in this game because those guys were pulling 90 Gs every now and then

Feds have issued retreat. Crimson 1 insists on staying, Crystal Kingdom order stands. Eventually Crimson obeys, and retreats the whole squadron.

If anything Ace Combat or movies have taught me, I predict Crimson is going to go berserk within the Feds. He's gonna think the Fed is too weak and just holding him back, he's gonna take Federation's most outrageous aircraft and weapon and use them to set a personal score with Monarch. I'm calling it.

I love Prez's reaction after Crimson retreated. Like yeah bitch, you better fucking run! I love her.

Alright, mission 12. Feds is absolutely crumbling after their airforce got decimated by Hitman. Multirole mission with heavy tendency towards A2A. Something about oil rigs facilities at sea.

It's railguns again, the same one that Fed ships were firing at me on previous mission with the Eminent Domain. Hitman 3 said something, why is this rig more heavily guarded than the comms array?

Mission update came up. Unknown target marked on my HUD, but I'm not firing yet. I fly close to the unknown to try get a visual but it's too damn dark to see anything, even with gibbous moon. Then something happened.

"Project Wingman is away."

What the fuck is that?? Project Wingman?? Something rapid just took off from one of the oil rigs. It's way too dark on my screen to see whatever it is, but it's roughly triangular AND IT'S SHOOTING RAILGUNS BACKWARDS AT ME WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK IS THIS THING

Apparently piloted by another merc named Frost? Monarch shot it down with HISMs and STDMs. Frost ejected but said something about releasing data pod. I suspect this is a Federation superweapon undergoing research. That will explain the amount of AA defenses all around it although of course the game's debriefing doesn't tell me anything.

Mission 13. There's a new Fed superweapon, an airship fleet by the name of Task Force 1. It's resting in a port, we're to destroy it before it's unleashing hell, I suspect. Although something about Kingdom of Sawaiiki, one of Fed's states, will probably get in the way.

Maybe I should expect neutral/N.TGTs.

Two new aircrafts. F/S-15 and... what the hell is this? "Chimera"? At the front it resembles Su-57 nose, but the way the wing blends into the body is a bit like F-16XL's cranked delta wing, and it also has a V tail like YF-23 (maybe that's why it's called Chimera). And it's 285k to purchase, I don't even have 100k credits. Why is this available to purchase right now?

Whichever the case I can't buy either of them. I'm going with the F/C-15, I'm gonna need its MLAG.

I think this mission is where the game can do with some optimization, because my frame rate was down from 80+ to 40 near the docks where there are a fuck ton of targets. But I don't want to compare this to Ace Combat 7 because this is a game from an indie developer. I'm sure they did what they could for optimization, and I'm not gonna blame them.

Mission itself was pretty standard. Nothing super interesting although the part where Hitman 2 had to radio out a long announcement to Kingdom of Sawaiiki that we have no beef with them, and telling Galaxy afterwards that it costs "2 bucks per word" is pretty funny. I love these conversations.

Mission 14. Grimwood coast, provide CAS for ground troops and prevent Feds from regrouping. But expect bad visibility he says from the forest fire nearby. I'm gonna gamble and take the SK.25U.

Oh shit, I guess we're working with firefighters as well now. I hope I don't have to protect them at some point because I'm essentially flying a tank. That has 40mm/65mm HE ammo for its main gun.

I forgot to say but the MLAGs in this game are phenomenal. The multilock ability of a 4AGM and the range of an LAGM? Slow reload speed but I'm sold. Who needs an A-10 anyway right

Feds in Grimwood have surrendered. They burned the forests for nothing. Also I keep hearing allies calling Monarch "The Crown" now, and in earlier sorties I also hear something along the lines of "how dare you take the name of a king as your own", "not all kings are just."

I'm developing the feeling that this game is fantasy medieval action adventure but with jets and airships instead of swords and magic. No hard feelings on that, I'm a huge fan of The Elder Scrolls series. So I'm looking forward to see how much this game plays into the mythological/medieval theme. Maybe like Ace Combat Zero, with how Cipher and Pixy did the aerial equivalent of jousting? We'll see.

Also there's this level of detail and touch of realism, that I think has never been done in Ace Combat before. When an enemy jet whizzes past you above Mach 1, you can actually hear the sonic boom from their wake. That's awesome.

Mission 15, Cascadian city of Prospero, the largest trade center apparently. Get rid of its air superiority elements and secure the airport. SK.37 is now available for purchase, yet I'm still under the required price for it.

I do have to comment on the way planes are painted in PW, or at least the default skins that you use. It's like plastidipped or cerakoted or something, like how guns are these days. Nothing really spells practical camouflage/camo pattern. But hey, maybe that's just how Monarch wants to look in the skies.

Liberate Prospero they say but they didn't say the Feds would be so desperate that they would LAUNCH 50 NUCLEAR CRUISE MISSILES JUST TO PREVENT CASCADIA FROM GETTING TO PROSPERO. THEY JUST BELKAN'D THE SHIT OUT OF THIS CITY. DID THEY JUST OPEN UP A VOLCANO FROM THE GROUND?

Hitman 3 just said Calamity. Is this what happened 400 years ago before the events of this game?

Fucking hell.

Mission 16, instant continuation from previous flight. Only me, Prez, Diplomat, Comic and Galaxy now. No idea if anyone else is alive. Flew over Rowsdower, no response.

Fuck, new blips on radar. It's the merc Frost from earlier. AND MASTER GOOSE FROM MISSION 1. I FUCKING KNEW THEY SHOWED UP TOO CONVENIENTLY

"You fired up? Come shoot me down." Yeah bitch I'll shoot you down in that fancy bitchass superplane you're flying. And don't you dare copy my boy Pixy's line from Ace Combat Zero.

(Just kidding, I love the devs for having her voice actor say that)

Fucking hell, I thought a swarm of MQ-101 drones was bad, but I never thought I'd be on the receiving end of an ADMM where each individual missile is a QAAM.

Stardust again. Contract to fulfill you say? Fuck you man, there's nothing else out there now. Everyone's got our number, even Diplomat and Comic's real name. Sicario is only 4 man band now, 5 if you count Prez.

Kaiser seems convinced after Stardust offered something to us. Whatever that is. Meanwhile I guess we're regrouping on an abandoned highway as a makeshift base.

2 months later.

Mission 17. Brite Fortress. One of the safe havens outside the whatever the fuck is happening out there.

I sold my Harrier to get some cash back. I'm done with the Super Tomcat. It's time for SK.37. It's only got AA hardpoints but I need to fly something else. Oh and an MGP. I've never used MGP in Ace Combat before but I'm gonna try this one.

Woah, what is this? AOA limiter? Replaces flares? Doesn't say what it is.

Alright, Brite Fortress. Railguns and airships as usual. At this point I've been desensitized to them, because I learn that the Feds is just Belka/Erusea hybrid. As in, a superweapon maniac.

Aw shit, they have a massive tank/train/land cruiser. This thing doesn't have any A2G weapons, but it has MGP. 4 of them. And AOA limiter, more like AOA unlimiter. Let's you pull off PSM-esque move while holding down L3 and turning sharp. I like it though, it replaces your flares but it doesn't restrict you to low speeds and a complicated QTE like Ace Combat 7, and you can perform it anytime as long as the indicator is ready.

Mission 18. Aw shit, we're back to Prospero now? I really don't want to.

Yeah, figured. Crimson showed up again. VX-23s and SK.37s again. But now I can at least match their crazy AOA maneuvers.

My first try I nailed AOA limiter module pretty quickly. If used right it's essentially a "teleport to enemy's 6" button. Well I didn't use it right. Got shot down.

My second try. If Crimson is calling it personal then so will I. I will spam this AOA limiter if I have to. Even Diplomat is absolutely fed up with Crimson's shit, telling him to shut the fuck up and turning off his radio. Learned that, other than spamming AOA, you have to firewall the throttle, make sure your speed never goes below Mach 1 even when turning. Got hit by a missile once, but this time I downed them. All 8 of them.

Crimson laughing maniacally on the radio as his plane falls. What a waste of pilot, Comic, I agree. But I'm feeling that won't be the last.

Mission 19, back to Presidia. Take out Federation's naval force.

VX-23 is now available for purchase. It is like Chengdu J-20/Lockheed F-22 hybrid. Well, more like F-22 with the wings swapped positions. Can't buy this one either even if I sell my SK.37. And I love this thing already because of its AOA limiter.

Naval force destroyed. Presidia is next.

Mission 20. Now I could really sell my SK.37 now to get the VX-23, I wonder if I should do that...

Fuck it. Yolo.

Presidia is liberated. Feds are surrendering. War is over. And then...

"KINGS"

....

No.

No, Sector D2. Please, don't.

Don't make Crimson 1 pull a Pixy on me for the ultimate mission.

I called it earlier. He's gone off the rails. He took the Fed's superplane and nuked everyone in Presidia with it except Monarch. Probably intentionally, to set a personal score with me.

But I'm not scared. Well, until he fired railguns on all directions, launched Project Wingman's equivalent of ADMM, and released force fields ala Arsenal Bird/Alicorn. When I thought this game would be like Ace Combat, I didn't think it would be "Ace Combat, but 150% more fucked up."

I employed the similar strat from before. Lock the third person camera at his plane, firewall the throttle up to Mach 2 and spam the AOA limiter. He's got 3 health bars in that superplane that's probably powered by cordium. If previous missions didn't emphasize on how orange this game is, well, this final showdown does.

Everything is orange. The skies, the ground, the sun, the missiles, the railgun trails, my HUD, half the time I couldn't tell if my missiles hit him or not because my interface was loaded with directional missile proximity indicators. Thank fuck the health bar is still perfectly readable.

"You signed this deal a long time ago." WELL I DIDN'T SIGN UP TO FIGHT YOU SPECIFICALLY NOW DID I. But you've decided that it's personal so bitch, COME THE FUCK AT ME.

"I'm Cascadian. You think I take joy in killing my own countrymen?" SO WHY THE FUCK DID YOU DO IT IN THE FIRST PLACE. YOU LET YOUR OWN PRIDE CONSUME YOU AND THOUGHT THEY'RE ACCEPTABLE LOSSES IN YOUR OWN PERSONAL BEEF WITH ME. FUCK YOU.

I danced with him in the skies for probably a good 15 to 20 minutes just trying to land one or two hits on him. A deadly aerial dance that involves jet fuel, multi lock missiles and nuclear railguns.

Three health bars depleted. My camera is still locked onto his PW.MK1.

"No, not yet..."

Then all my HUD element disappears.

He's not dead yet. Two health bars now on the bottom of the screen, one for Hitman 1 and one for Crimson 1. Fuck, I have to fight him again. I grazed my VX-23 on the railgun trail and took some damage. But I still have my wings. I can still fly.

Another 10 minutes of fighting. I'm gonna fucking joust him now like Pixy. Dozens of STDMs, hundreds of railgun projectiles and thousands of 20mm Vulcan rounds.

His last health bar is depleted.

...

But my camera is still locked onto his plane. The corpse of his PW.MK1 flailing through the clouds and trailing flames.

Why am I not seeing a chute?!

"Monarch..."

God damn it, Crimson, eject! Eject now!

"When you hear the thunder..."

There's no time for speeches, damn it! Eject!

"When the storm comes for you..."

Dying will not solve anything! Fucking punch out, god damn it!

"Remember me."

...

But he was a fighter pilot to the end.

Remember him, Monarch.

Because it's just you left.

No one else. No Prez, Galaxy, Diplomat, Comic,

It's just you.

As a final send off, I leveled out my VX-23 to the horizon, pointing towards the sun, and fly off into the distance.

Contract completed.

---

Project Wingman, completed. Wow. What a game.

The story, the gameplay, the graphics, the sounds, voices, visuals, everything.

I can tell it's all been made with passion and love. And it really is... a love letter to the Ace Combat franchise.

It may as well be an Ace Combat game on its own.

I never mentioned it, but the OST is also phenomenal. Especially on Mission 11. On par with Ace Combat. Maybe even better, for an indie game. Especially the credit song, the leitmotif that's been playing throughout the game since Presidia. I'm calling it Monarch's theme.

Wow, just wow. I nearly shed a tear.

You know I once read a quote, I don't remember if it was from this game or something else, but

War doesn't decide who is right.

Only who is left.

10/10. Phenomenal game. Sector D2, you are legends. Absolute fucking legends, you hear?

There are so many people backing this game on Kickstarter, on the order of hundreds. Maybe thousands. All their names are in the credits.

And it was all so worth the money you all have invested in the development of Project Wingman.

And for me, it was worth the money I spent on buying this game.

Enjoy your victory while it lasts, Monarch.

You may not have a throne, or anything left in your world.

But you are the king.

As for me, I'm gonna play the game again and try to understand the lore better. It seems that I have a tendency to hyperfocus on the task/quest/gameplay at hand. Probably gonna turn down the bgm and sfx a little bit so I can hear dialogues better.

[marshmallowgoop]

2023 AMV Review

[2022]

After posting my first DaVinci Resolve AMV in April 2022, video editing quickly became one of my favorite hobbies, and this new life development actively characterized my 2023. Be it working on a project to mix the HD, remastered footage of Detective Conan with the old FUNimation English dub or piecing together AMVs, much of my free time throughout the year was devoted to video editing.

A broken computer for several weeks in the summer meant that I couldn't edit as many videos as I would have wanted, but I still progressed and learned a lot. I mixed 70 episodes of HD English dub, I made a YouTube channel, I participated in video collaborations (3! Here, here, and here!), and I tried so many new things as an editor, including but not limited to:

🎬 Glitching VHS effects (seen in "Mohan Kaitou" and "Poison Tree" above, and helped by my acquisition of a VCR, which allowed me to digitize my Detective Conan VHS tapes)

🎬 Karaoke subtitle files that can be toggled on and off on YouTube, created with the help of YTSubConverter (Would anyone be interested in a process post?)

🎬 3D camera typography (the "so alone" in "Corridors of Time")

🎬Follower text (the "we'd never known" in "Corridors of Time")

🎬 Solid color transitions ("I Wish That I Could Tell You")

🎬 Circle animations ("Corridors of Time")

🎬 Masked transitions ("Mohan Kaitou," "Poison Tree")

🎬 Eye zoom transitions ("Mohan Kaitou," "Child," "Monsters," "Poison Tree")

🎬 Ink splats ("Corridors of Time," "Head Above Water")

🎬 Selective red coloring ("Poison Tree")

🎬 More thoughtful compositions, and fudging sizing and placement for compositional reasons (the handkerchief transition in "Child," the movement of the scenes behind Ran in "Monsters," the liquid flowing in "Poison Tree")

🎬Changing the color of something (the red eyes in "Poison Tree")

🎬 Static masks ("Poison Tree")

🎬 Masking out objects (any [adult swim] logos from VHS footage that didn't come from my Japanese VHS tapes in "Poison Tree")

🎬And though it's not depicted in the snippet above, a CRT and curved TV screen effect for the TV at the end of the full "Poison Tree"

While I was only able to complete 9 AMVs (and the "Messed Up" AMV sadly isn't included in the snippets above, as it remains incomplete), I'm so excited to make more in 2024 with all the new tools in my toolbox!

[spinningbuster98]

Castlevania Symphony of the Night Part 1: Die Monster!.....in Japanese!!

We’re here folks

We’re finally here

And I’m playing the Japanese version! Why? Well let’s just say that there’s some content that was originally exclusive to the original japanese release which was cut from the international one. Said content was restored in the PSP version....but I decided against playing that. It’s a playable version, but it’s minor yet noticeable graphical downgrades compared to the original just bug me the wrong way

You can already spot a difference in the intro: the actual narrated text is english even in the Jpn version, and no it’s not due to me playing a translated rom, even untranslated it’s in english, just with a japanese voice over

What intrigues me is how the text itself was still largely rewritten in the international versions, yet even the japanese one calls Dracula’s Castle “Castlevania”, which I had always thought was just a quirk of the english localization and not something that was ever truly recognized by the japanese side of things, at least not until the mid 2000s when even the japanese versions started using that name as the series’ title for a time

However, while I can’t understand japanese, I can’t hear the narrator actually pronouncing the name “Castlevania” anywhere, so I’m going to guess that he’s reading from a different script?

Anyway there’s going to be...LOTS to talk about with this game, though luckily we’ll have plenty of parts to do so :)

Just to start off with something that everybody knows by now: this might just be the most beautiful sprite based game of its generation, probably of the whole decade of the 90s

Yeah sure there are a couple of weird imperfections here and there, namely Richter’s sprite still being from RoD instead of reflecting his redesign, except for one cutscene where he IS given an updated sprite (I guess that’s one point in favor of the Saturn version). This is pretty much the game that started the tradition of reusing old enemy sprites, especially guys from Rondo and a couple from Castlevania IV

But honestly? This stuff is barely even a blip on the radar here. Every sprite, every background is so detailed, so well animated, oozing with so much charm! Every enemy has their own unique death animation, there are a billion different animations for the various spells and secret moves, I could list stuff all night!

Alucard’s sprite and animations have entered into the realm of videogame legends now, which is funny because when you think about it his animations are just way too smooth compared to everything else he kinda sticks out, not to mention that the actual running animation looks silly with the way he moves his arms (not that the Belmonts in the previous games weren’t guilty of a similar running animation quirk with their ultra-manly walk cycles), but it’s just so mesmerizing to look at! He truly feels weightless, like some sort of wraith drifting through the night, with that cape, that hair, the after images etc

The funny part is that the game does implement a bunch of more typical PS1 3D effects, which you’d think would clash hard with the sprites and age the game badly but they actually end up giving it even MORE charm, because they’re usually relegated to 3D backgrounds, but the actual renders not only look pretty damn good usually, they actually help make some environments look more memorable and larger than life! The cathedral, the moving clouds, the houses in Olrox’s Quarters. The Magic Tomes that attack you in the Library technically clash so hard with the rest of the place, but the renders themsleves are nice and I fucking love watching them explode into a burst of flames as their letters just spill out from the pages!

I even love the SOUND EFFECTS in this game! I’m pretty sure that most of them are just stock effects, especially the ones for the transformations and whenever you use a potion....but I dunno they’re goofy in a good, charming way to me

And we haven’t even talked about the music! Oh God! I’ll save THAT for the next part!

[sidecharactersdomatter]

Thoughts I had during TGCF S1 Ep 3

-Previously on TGCF… and it actually recaps the first 2 episodes!

-It’s all about to come together…

-It is a ghost bride

-Zombie brides!

-Real Jerk move

-A 3D effect

-Didn’t know it a zombie apocalypse happened in Ancient Feudal China (I need to brush up on my history)

-Like moths to a lantern

-Well that trick didn’t last too long

-Oh so that’s how you stop an Ancient Zombie Bride Apocalypse

-Nice move, Pengtou, he is out cold.

-At least the mob isn’t splitting up

-Welp, now they’re grateful 

-The fact that he said he’s accepting donations, XL is really desperate, I can’t believe that quote was from the book!

-Wait a minute, he was an acrobat???  Xie Lian Pre 3 ascension life spinoff when??? (That’ll prolly never happen)

-More Naruto running

-That could explain the literal corpse brides BA DUM TSS Pun count: 2

-Well it does seem bad

-Man here comes the Bride Pun count: 3

-Nah, that was mostly Ling Wen

-Now that is an Azula level breakdown

-Seems like it Xuan Ji

-Oh another good animation

-Yep he sure had it coming

-Pei Ming sure knows how to pick em

-No Xiao Ying…

-They are not merciful with the body count in this whole series

-She was his friend

-Woah saved by literal divine intervention

-He looks just like Pei Ming

-Geez, Pei Ming this is why we don’t Ghost our Exes, Pun Count: 4

-Does anyone else think suddenly Pei Ming kissing Xuan Ji is a red flag?  No one, just me??

-Buddy, saying a woman should smile more often is obviously what you should not say to a woman (Has Pei Ming written the book, “How to offend Women in 5 syllables or less?)

-Honestly after reading the first 2 novels and watching the first few episodes of Season 2, Pei Ming is by far the most easiest Heavenly Official to roast

-Yep they totally boinked

-Horse ride

-Maybe Pei Ming should’ve let her down gently

-Man, Xuan Ji, maybe you should’ve heard of the phrase, “Plenty of Fish in the sea”

-Yeah Pei Ming’s definitely at fault to me

-That’s why we don’t break up over text Pun count: 5

-Yeah she is a mess

-Xuan Ji reminds me of that one scene in Avatar where Azula gets dumped by a guy at Ember Island

-OOOHHH Another shot fired at Fu Yao

-The way Xie Lian blinked when he realized he was still in the wedding dress XD!

-More foreshadowing

-The sound effect when Fu Yao rolled his eyes!

-FIGHT!  FIGHT!  FIGHT!

-Restoring faith in Ming Guang

-She was too young and kind…

-They didn’t make the disease look too graphic like in the Manhua

-Oh no Trauma

[gior-gio]

I've been trying to create and old animated icon for a project i'm working on, i'll dump updates here just to journal this process a bit

I have currently 0 skills with Blender, but i managed to follow a few tutorials to make way towards what i had in mind

So far i've made a globe in 3D on blender, figured out now to make It spin, figured out now to make It pixelated.

Then i did It again from scratch but with slightly different proportions and added some text and other touches on After Effects

After 48 hours of thinkering, i got this

[miloscat]

[Review] Avatar: The Last Airbender: Quest for Balance (PS5)

This show deserves better than this cheap and sloppy tie-in.

Peru-based studio Bamtang are the latest to be granted the Avatar licence, after making some decent kart racers for Nickelodeon. Quest for Balance is the result, and although it’s functional this revival game struggles to live up to the predominately Australian-made tie-in games that were contemporary with the show (and movie).

My expectations were quite high for this given the advances in technology since 2006-2010. But there are always other factors at play in game development, like budget, time, and the experience of the dev team, that are potentially lacking here. What I'm saying is the game feels cheap, from the bland level design to the simple combat to the abundance of rough edges.

Quest for Balance covers all three books of the original show... more or less. The six levels in each try to hit the major points while some episodes and events are skipped over; if you're lucky these will be summarised with a cutscene. But even the significant stuff is dealt with perfunctorily. I did like the side quests in the more hublike levels, with named NPCs and items to find that expand on the world a little bit, although it doesn’t amount to much.

The core gameplay isn’t too different from child/family games we have known such as the Traveller’s Tales Lego games. You explore a level, break objects and interact with interactables, get into fights, and solve some puzzles. Locking the fights into little battle arenas reminded me of the first two Avatar DS games, while the puzzles (maybe the strongest part of the game) recalled the third DS game. I still think I liked those better though.

These gameplay elements are often sectioned off, and the levels are mostly a flat and uninteresting sequence of rooms. There’s an inventory which I barely touched, and an upgrade system that incentivises finding goodies by improving your combat powers. I did get through most combat by just mashing with the most effective characters (Sokka and Toph as far as I could tell) but there is some depth when you’re not just getting stunlocked. Like most of the game it’s just let down by a pervasive clunkiness.

Co-op is available… most of the time. A fatal flaw is not letting a second player participate when the story requires a solo character’s involvement, as well as being unbalanced. That is, when the maximum three-character party is present, player 1 can swap between two of them while player two is locked to only one. These choices hamper its viability as a multiplayer experience (also, my spouse just thought the game in general was subpar and so left me to it).

I’d like to circle back to the cutscenes, as they represent the ramshackle feel of how the game is put together. A mere handful are in 3D, using the game models with some decent animation, which despite being prerendered can chug heavily when a lot of stuff is happening. Some are in 2D, going for a motion comic look but with distressing animated png warping. This includes a cute framing story where Iroh, Bumi, and Pakku are recounting the tale to a Ba Sing Se playwright. Others are brief in-engine dialogue scenes where the characters stand motionless. Or you might just have one of the aforementioned three recounters summarising exposition over a paragraph of text. Even with these various methods of varying levels of effort, they will at times neglect to properly set up the next gameplay portion. It’s frankly a mess.

I also have to mention the voice acting, which ranges from decent soundalike performances (eg. Katara or Toph) to… “an attempt was made”. As far as I can tell from a quick search of Behind the Voice Actors, the only VA that returned was Dee Bradley Baker for creature noises, and even his mastery in the field is undermined when you play one of the dull Appa autoscrolling segments and notice that they appear to have forgotten to apply any pitching down or treatment to his voice?? It sounds bizarre and unfinished. I do have to give the game credit for casting a higher proportion of actors of Asian descent though which is nice to see.

Let it be known that I 100%d Quest for Balance… minus some trophies like the one for completing boss battles hitless. In this janky combat engine and with the bosses as boring as they are, I couldn’t face it. But the game is just competent enough and revisiting stages is streamlined such that I didn’t mind going back for the side stuff, which is my favourite aspect anyway. On the whole though I can’t really recommend this game except to superfans; the old tie-ins are frankly of a higher standard and by virtue of having dedicated instalments for each season, do a better job covering the material on top of having more depth and variety. Plus the first one has an original story! This could have been a triumphant revisit of a beloved story, but it ended up a cheap cash-grab. Oh well.

[ablegaming]

Photosensitivity-safe games for the Nintendo Gameboy, Gameboy Color, and Gameboy Advance

I recently picked up an old Gameboy again (the original Gameboy Advance model to be specific) to see if my photosensitivity would fare better with a non-backlit screen… to my dismay I discovered that although the intensity of lighting effects is diminished there are still a lot of flashing animations that bother my eyes and give me headaches. I’ve been working on combing through the entire catalogue of games released for the Gameboy, Gameboy Color, and Gameboy Advance to find the most photosensitivity-safe games for us to play! None of the games on this list make use of any flashing animations.

For the record, I didn’t try to line this article up with the recent release of the Gameboy emulation on the Nintendo Switch Online, the timing was just a happy synchronicity. Unfortunately none of the Gameboy, Gameboy Color, or Gameboy Advance games that were recently added to the Nintendo Switch Online are photosensitivity-safe, they all make use of flashing light animations. Used Gameboys for sale can be found on eBay, at resale shops, thrift stores, and garage sales around the world.

Gameboy Dig Dug Hyper Lode Runner Megalit Motocross Maniacs (the new track record screen has flashing text, but at a fairly slow rate) Prince of Persia (the flickering candles are easier on the eyes on a non-backlit screen, also on Gameboy Color) World Bowling

Gameboy games can be played on Gameboy, Gameboy Pocket, Gameboy Light, Gameboy Color, Gameboy Advance, Gameboy Advance Micro, Gameboy Advance SP, Super Gameboy adapter for Super Nintendo, and the Gameboy Advance adapter for the Gamecube.

Gameboy Color Frogger GBC Harvest Moon GBC (the sudden flash of the bright white segue screens between buildings/areas is way too too hard on the eyes on a backlit screen, but is fine on the Gameboy Color or original Gameboy Advance. Weeds disappear-flash briefly as you clear them from the field) Harvest Moon GBC 3 (the sudden flash of the bright white segue screens between buildings/areas is way too too hard on the eyes on a backlit screen, but is fine on the Gameboy Color or original Gameboy Advance. Weeds disappear-flash briefly as you clear them from the field) Pocket Bowling (press start quickly as the title screen has flashing text, the sudden flash of the bright white segue screens is hard on the eyes on a backlit screen or rom, but is fine on the Gameboy Color or original Gameboy Advance) Prince of Persia (the flickering candles are easier on the eyes on a non-backlit screen, also on Gameboy) NBA 3 on 3 Featuring Kobe Bryant Road Rash (there are brief flashes of white screen between publisher intros, this isn’t an issue on non-backlit screens or you can look away for 10 seconds after powering the system on, additionally road lines may be dizzying) Triple Play Baseball 2001 (turn “cutscene movies” off to avoid a flashing sign after getting a homerun)

Gameboy Color games can be played on Gameboy Color, Gameboy Advance, Gameboy Advance Micro, Gameboy Advance SP, and the Gameboy Advance adapter for the Gamecube. Gameboy color games can also be played on the original Gameboy with a very limited color palette, but only the black Gameboy Color cartridges and Pokémon games will work, the see-through Gameboy Color cartridges will not work. See the “Dual Mode” column on this page for the full list: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Game_Boy_Color_games

Gameboy Advance Chessmaster Classic NES: Dr. Mario (press start quickly as the title screen has some flashing colors, colorblindness may be an issue when playing on the non-backlit Gameboy Advance screen) Classic NES: Ice Climber (falling icicles are a little hard on the eyes on a backlit screen or rom, but they’re fine on the non-backlit original Gameboy Advance) Killer 3D Pool NHL 2002 (the goal siren light is hard on the eyes on a backlit screen or rom, but isn’t nearly as intense on the non-backlit original Gameboy Advance) Madden NFL 2005 Rebelstar: Tactical Command Scooby-Doo Super Monkey Ball Jr. Tetris Worlds (avoid looking directly at the shimmering star next to the currently selected option on the main menu, there are also some flames flickering in the background of the volcano level, otherwise the core gameplay is safe) Texas Hold ’Em Poker Tiger Woods PGA Tour Golf 2002 (press start quickly as the title screen has flashing text) Top Gear Rally

Gameboy Advance games can be played on the Nintendo Gameboy Advance, Gameboy Advance Micro, Gameboy Advance SP, DS, DS Lite, and the Gameboy Advance adapter for the Gamecube.

If you know of any more photosensitivity-safe games for the Gameboy, Gameboy Color, and Gameboy Advance please leave a comment and let us know!

This post can also be read and listened to (text-to-speech) on my Medium page at: https://medium.com/@AbleGaming/photosensitivity-safe-games-for-the-nintendo-gameboy-gameboy-color-and-gameboy-advance-1cbeac012aee

[filtergrade]

How to Create Stunning 3D TEXT ANIMATIONS in After Effects Tutorial

[ivettel]

been a while since the last behind the curtain! also probably bc i haven't done anything too crazy edit-wise as of late. anyway this was a fun one! been wanting to edit the style ever since yrs dropped this mep, but i just never got around to it lol.

my ingredients: - after effects cc 2022 - red giant universe - sapphire distort - video copilot twitch

so the first step was figure out how to do the melty text effect--i knew how to do it in photoshop, but it's a little different in motion! i figured there were a few ways to do it, so i narrowed the most likely down methods to:

scale wipe + wave warp effects

text to shapes + crazy keyframing action

shape layers + linear fades or something along those lines

photoshop + liquify

and i am so sick of animating shape layers i feel like it's all i do. it literally is like 70% of what we do in motion graphics. i'm sick. i went with the scale wipe + wave warp method because fuck this LMAO. the process was like type > precompose > slap effects on > keyframe. to an exaggerated extent, this is what you get:

you could probably achieve a similar wave warp effect with ae's plugin btw! but i liked that sapphire gave me a bit more customization. once i had the movement i liked, it was a simple keyframe job.

then because i am LAZY and cannot be arsed to deal with manually separating colour channels or triplicating multiple text layers just to get a chromatic aberration effect, i stuck uni.Chromatic Aberration and uni.RGB Separation onto the precomp and fiddled with those settings until i thought it was appropriately eyestrain-y.

for the edit itself, i finally put my money where my mouth is and Thought About Form And Content. shoutout to my students for their relentless teasing. i set my comps at 12 fps to enhance the somewhat disjointed editing, and then i actually planned out the composition of my gifs instead of just throwing things at the wall and hoping something stuck. the background is black ice + a halftone overlay for the comic-y aesthetic. font is arial black (cheated with geller sans ultrabold for the "7" and "1") because #typography history and #cheeky references to the genre.

panels 2 + 3 basically employed the scale wipe + wave warp method in addition to my usual mograph bullshit (rotation, text animation, fake 3d using gaussian blur instead of adding a camera), but i changed minor things around. panel 3 especially, i gave the liquify tool a shot--and i don't like, hate it, but it was harder to map.

everything else seems pretty self-explanatory--stretch + center keyframes for the scale wipes in panel 1 (for the text effect), but aside from that, basic movement animations, basic glitches. i didn't reinvent the wheel! just added seb to it and spun.

[lionsdendoodles]

Actually rant of the day since this is something I'm extremely passionate about Is this a vent?? I mean, could this count as one? Shrug. Wall of text incoming. So! This is why I think Jaws is actually a good movie but had horror used after the fact in the absolute wrong way. Stupid disclaimer thing ig: I love sharks to death and the bias against them makes me very sad, because they're actually very nice animals. So! Jaws. I rewatched the movie last year when it was being re-aired at a local theatre in 3D. I went into it, knowing this was the movie that made people mortified of sharks, at least moreso than before. According to a few articles I read: "In the years following the film's release, the number of large sharks in the waters east of North America declined by about 50 percent." Horror and fear is a very powerful thing, obviously. It effects how we react and treat specific scenarios almost all the time. With Jaws treating well, Jaws as a big monster, a huge killing machine, audiences would obviously start to fear it when watching the movie. Now as a movie antagonist? This went absolutely perfectly! Great writing to build suspense and really get the audience hooked on what that thing is gonna do next. However, it's a matter of how that fear continued that was the bad thing. There was an ichthyologist in the movie, who actually knew his stuff for the time quite well. Doing research on sharks out of pure passion myself, nearly all of the things he said held up very well to how sharks act today. Most sharks aren't very violent, or will go after humans most of the time. In fact, there are usually around 5-10 shark deaths per year. Sharks, once biting a human, usually can tell that what they're eating isn't their typical diet, and just let go, unless they're absolutely starving. This is why a lot of attacks are simply bites, rather than someone getting completely eaten. Compared to lets say, alligators, crocodiles, hippos, other big water creatures, which can go from 10 (in terms of alligators), to 500 (in terms of hippos) deaths a year? That's definitely saying a lot. Heck, even in terms of land animals, cows kill more than sharks do, though you don't see any big horror movies about giant killer cows, now do you? If I had to explain how a shark really acts? They're just big curious puppies. If they don't know what something is, they'll put it in their mouth. They won't go out of their way to attack something unless they're sure it's food, or if it's a threat to their territory. Some divers have actually managed to get quite friendly with sharks as well, petting them and whatnot, without at all getting bit. This does vary on species, such as if you're surrounded by bull sharks, which are some of the most territorial and violent sharks out there. However sharks like basking sharks, nurse sharks, and leopard sharks are some of the least dangerous out there at all, and are just a little curious as to what this new thing in the water is. In the movie, there's actually quite a lot of information shown about how sharks act through books that the main character reads as well. All of this information is also mostly true! The Ichthyologist makes a point as well that most sharks aren't as big as jaws. He assumes a great white, however with the size that Jaws is in the movie, I can have my doubts. In fact, he also states that sharks don't act like Jaws does either. It's clear a lot of care went into actually researching sharks for this movie, so that does lead me to wonder exactly what went wrong. Did the horror aspects of the movie just overshadow all of the information, or did that information fly over a lot of the audience's heads? Regardless, while sharks may be dangerous at times, it does make me sad how the perception of sharks changed due to this movie, despite how good it actually is. I'm very passionate about the ocean and the creatures in it, and hopefully one day, I can help be one of the people to stop that stigma against those sharp teethed sea puppies

[lookatmeallthetime]

Hey, wanna make some mountains? In honor of the launch of the music video I just finished, here’s a tutorial on how to build out 2D layers in 3D space in after effects.

Getting Started

First of all, build your vector layers. You can build them as shape layers directly in After Effects, but I prefer Illustrator. Here’s the file where I organized the vectors for each scene:

I highly recommend using Overlord for moving shape layers back and forth between illustrator and AE. It can preserve layer positions relative to each other or center vector shapes in comps, group and ungroup layers, all kinds of nice things. But also, Adobe software costs enough as is. Look up one of the many tutorials about pasting vectors into shape layers and get your vectors in there!

Wigglin

I wanted my vector layers to squirm a little. Originally it was to mimic the effect of paper cut animation, but once I moved away from that look it was to keep the background feeling alive and, sigh, like its own character. Everything except for very curvy layers (like the bridge in the first scene) has Wiggle Paths > Corners applied to it as a Shape Layer effect. This tutorial by Ben Marriott helped me get the wiggle paths + posterize time cutout effect I was looking for.

In order to keep the amount of wigglin’ consistent from scene to scene, I stored all my layer styles in their own precomp with a slider effect attached, applied Wiggle Paths to each vector, then connected the layer properties with the pickwhip. I ended up with an expression like

this = comp(“Wiggle control comp”).layer(“Wiggle parent”).effect(“Detail Slider”);

Apply it to the Detail attribute of your Wiggle Paths shape effect, and you can adjust the intensity of the look across multiple comps!

Parallax

I’m guessing you’re here for the parallax effect and notes on laying out out vector shapes and textures in 3D space. This tutorial from Camp Keyframe lays it out better than I could, but here’s the short version:

1. Set all your layers to 3D

2. Set your workspace to 2 views and select top view so you can see how your elements are positioned on the z-index

3. Make a null, set it to 3D, and make a camera.

4. Parent null to camera and adjust the position so its z-index matches the z of the camera.

5. Parent null to camera and use null for camera controls hereafter.

6. Parent all unparented layers to null, adjust the null’s scale property, and unparent your layers once they’re where you want them. What we’re doing here is scaling layers as we push them back in the frame, preserving the layout of our original vector comps while arranging them in 3D space. (Even shorter version - mountains are big but far away, rocks are small but close up.)

7. Once your layers are all unparented, move your null around to text the parallax view. Now you can move your camera to pan left and your layers will respond.

Two side notes:

1. If you want an element to follow the motion of the camera, leave it parented to the null and it will stay where you put it in the frame as the background moves.

2. You see that little pixelated line in your switches? That pre-rasterizes your layers. This makes render times way faster because it’s inserting your precomp as a 2D plane, but if you want to blend scenes, turn it off to use your precomps in 3D space.

One more thing!

Even if two elements on screen aren’t touching, you’ll still get nasty collision renders if they’re on the same z-index. Select everything and press P to show your element’s position, and make sure the z is different for each of them.

Final step: textures!

Let me start by saying I did this step incorrectly on this project. If I could do it again, I’d export my shape layers to Procreate, use them as clipping masks, and scribble on them real nice and export them as transparent 2x pngs.

What I did instead was try to get spray and scribble and brush textures in Illustrator. Illustrator does not want to do this, it doesn’t like doing this, and it didn’t like me much by the end of the process. The one benefit was it was easy to name them the same as their corresponding shape layer, which made compositing easier.

Once you’ve imported them as layers, not a png series), it’s just a matter of copying and pasting the scale data (you can copy all dimensions at once if you select the attribute name rather than any one value) and position data. Make sure to set your texture layers to 3D and watch for z-index collisions!

Closing thoughts

I wrote this up in order to be useful to the community and find other folks who are at or near where I am as I learn After Effects. If this was useful to you or there’s something you think would be interesting, please comment or share your work!