[Graham Quince]

I’ve found the best approach to cartoonifying people is to animate a cartoon sketch of them (rather than trying to cartoon a whole video).

There’s AI cartoon generators out there that can take an image and cartoon it (not sure if firefly now offers this). But what you get is a static image. Which if you then use to face tracking on your actors, you can translate their movements onto the cartoon.

That’s the AE solo approach. If you have character animator, it does all that for you.

[Graham Quince]

I think what you’re describing sounds like it could be solved using a Proximty expression.

Check out this tutorial from Michael Tierney

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEEd-YuBHn0

[Graham Quince]

You might be better off faking the candle flame – that way you have total control over it.

I just quickly found this tutorial, there’s possibly better ones, but it is pretty good.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a17nhrchYi4

youtube.com

Realistic Candle Flame Burning in After Effect | Fire | After Effect Tutorial | Sarveyam Creations

Sarveyam CreationsSarveyam Creations Tried to Show You How to Create a Realistic Candle Flame Burning Animation in After Effect Easy Use and Create Realistic...

[Graham Quince]

I’m not sure there is a good way to remove either of those microphones. You’ll create a lot of work for yourself and over the course of an hour anything you do will probably show up in a few frames -which will immediately distract the viewer. Imagine some blurring or arm warping just long enough to get the viewer’s attention. Content aware fill would be the tool to try, possibly with Photoshop’s generative AI to fill in the background. You might also be able to use the wire removal effect as well.

If you are under pressure to hide the mic, I’d suggest disguising it with graphics or a CG prop. To be honest though, the staging of the whole scene suggests that viewers will understand this is an interview. If the director/producer says they care about how the set looks, they really should have thought of that before. Personally, just from the still, the blue product label on the screen in the background is more distracting.

[Graham Quince]

It might also be worth checking out the face tracking tools (they appear in the tracker when you draw a circular mask around the model’s head). These give you more position options – although it’s splitting hairs really as you still have a lot of manual work to do.

[Graham Quince]

I published a video a couple years back, talking through all the steps you can take to solve a render fail. Maybe it can help you:

https://youtu.be/J7xhG1bNRVU

[Graham Quince]

I managed to recreate your project and I can see the issue. I think I can see two solutions:

#1 Duplicate your text layer and have the cursor on this one (and not on the other) then either use a strobe effect or keyframe the opacity to blink the duplicate on and off

#2 Use a shape layer to make the cursor. And link its position to the text using this expression:

var Y = thisComp.layer("Text file").transform.position[1]+effect("Y Adjust")("Slider");
var X = thisComp.layer("Text file").transform.position[0]+thisComp.layer("Text file").sourceRectAtTime().width+effect("X Adjust")("Slider");
[X,Y]

I added a couple of sliders just to make it easy to properly align the cursor, but sourceRectAtTime does the hard work here.

I used loopOut(“pingpong”) to control the opacity:

if (thisComp.layer("Text file").effect("Cursor On/Off")("Checkbox") == 1) {
    loopOut("pingpong")	
} else {
    0
}

[Graham Quince]

I’m so pleased you figured it out (I wasn’t sure from your description what was happening) and thank you for posting the solution too, for the next victim of brain farts.

[Graham Quince]

Motion Island went to through the painstaking task of making galleries of gifs showing all the animation presets (and I think most of the effects), if that helps:

https://blog.motionisland.com/after-effects-presets-text-animation/

I know it’s not Bridge, but , at least you don’t have to use Bridge 😉

blog.motionisland.com

After Effects Text Animation Presets Preview Gallery

Browse and preview quickly the After Effects Text Animation Presets on our animated thumbnails gallery, You can find the text animation presets on the Effects & Presets panel of After Effects.

[Graham Quince]

When I saw the question at the top of this thread, I was all ready to jump in with layer styles, but then I saw the dates. 2005 ! The cow really is an institution.