[Keith Carmichael]

Thanks so much, guys, but if I had Automatic Duck that’s what I would use!

I should have added inability to afford automatic duck as one of the unfortunate limitations.

John, the issue is that I want to get the PROJECT with its edits into AE, not just the exported, edited sequence.

[Keith Carmichael]

That looks like a transparent layer with possibly some glitches or just very weird preferences for how it is displayed.

Can you just fill it with white and move on with your life? You can have PS start you off with a white layer in preferences someplace.

[Keith Carmichael]

yeah, that didn’t take me long at all. Use a low frame rate for less work and a choppier feel.

See how the shape of each layer is determined by the LAYER MASK, and not by the layer itself. I did all the drawing on the layer mask, then ran Mosaic and Threshold ON THE LAYER MASK.

Now you just have to do it around 12 times a second! 🙂

[Keith Carmichael]

it takes a lot of work to simplify footage that much and still have it be recognizable.

If you really want to use footage, some tools that might help you are:

1. Filter > Pixilate > Mosaic
Mosaic pixilates your image into squares according to the averages of the pixels in each square. If you use it on real footage, it will make it look blurry and unrecognizable–you have many more steps ahead.

AE also has most of these filters if you plan to do it there.

2. Image > Adjustments > Posterize
Posterize will reduce the number of colors in your image. You don’t have a lot of control over which colors are selected, though, so be prepared to replace them.

3. Filter Gallery… Cutout
I like cutout more than posterize, since it reduces the number of colors to a pallete more like that of the original… no idea how this would work over many frames of moving footage. You’d have to do it before the mosaic, or do the mosaic again when you’re done.

4. Layer > Layer Style > Drop Shadow
Once you have a small number of colors, you’ll need each color on its own layer. if each layer has a drop shadow it will look like they’re sitting on top of each other. Real 3-D layers are annoyingly, impossibly hard to do in Photoshop.

HOWEVER,

All told I think it would be easier to do a crude animation and then use effects to make it look blocky–to me that looks like what happened here, no matter what anyone says. (who moves their arms like that when they drum??)

–fill a layer with the color you want
–add a “hide all” layer mask
–use a white brush to draw a body part on the layer mask
–run Mosaic on the layer mask (Filter > Pixilate > Mosaic)
–run Threshold on the layer mask. (Image > Adjustments > Threshold)
–add a drop shadow to the layer.

[Keith Carmichael]

1. Maybe you can copy a smart object into itself! I don’t have time to give it a try, but you could.

2. But probably it won’t work.

3. So the only way is to do it by hand, like you’re doing it. There are many ways to soften the edge of a layer. One way in cs4 to Cmd-click the layer, add a Layer Mask that Reveals Selection, then open the masks panel and add a feather to the mask.

4. but I think you’ll get better results if you put the layer with the largest TV on TOP. So each layer is a TV with a hole where the screen is, like this. (checkerboard indicates transparency.) As long as you use a soft eraser to erase the TV you’ll be fine.

[Keith Carmichael]

Vector Art! Like the iPod people!

[Keith Carmichael]

Somehow the smoke is STRETCHING when I do that….

Or I THINK it’s stretching… It’s hard to tell because it’s so… smokey.

Thank you for the help though, I take it that IN GENERAL you can size up a comp without changing the pixel dimensions of the layers.

In this case I think I will just start again from the beginning!

[Keith Carmichael]

Oh, you mean scale the layers in the precomp DOWN, so they don’t hit the edges of the precomp anymore?

But right now the layers have the correct pixel dimensions, they just hit the edges of the precomp because the precomp is too small.

[Keith Carmichael]

Thanks Art…

Actually though, none of those things were true, but I did find out something interesting.

It turns out that certain layer styles like color overlay actually sit ON TOP of other layers if those layers are clipped to the bottom layer.

Whew that was hard to explain.

Let’s say you have the word “puppies,” and then you have a layer with puppy spots on top of the word with a clipping mask, so the word has puppy spots.

But then you decide you want the word to be red in BETWEEN the puppy spots. So you put a red overlay on your text. (Why don’t you change the text color? I don’t know. Maybe it’s rasterized.)

The RED OVERLAY on the BOTTOM layer will sit ON TOP of the text layer AND the puppy spots layer above it. Puppy spots are gone!

I know, right? But that’s how it is.

[Keith Carmichael]

You have of course checked that you’re not using the pencil tool by accident.