[Michael Szalapski]

Type your text in AE.

Make sure your text layer is selected in the timeline.

Go to Effect-Render-Ramp

That should give you a gradient. You’d need to adjust the control points, colours, etc. but it should give you a starting point. (Try adding an Effect-Perspective-Bevel Alpha, then Effect-Image Control-Colorama and choosing one of the gold presets; instant, shiny 3d, sort of! Animate the angle of the light in the bevel and watch coolness unveil.)

CC Lightsweep which comes with AE 6.5 will get you that sweep of light across your layer, in this case your text layer.

– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great)

No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

[Michael Szalapski]

Yes, blur would reintroduce the banding. If 16 bit didn’t help just add noise.

– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great)

No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

[Michael Szalapski]

Create an 8×10 Photoshop document at the resolution you want, take note of the pixel size of the resulting document.

In AE make your logo in a comp of the same pixel size (it will be much bigger than 720×480). Render it out as a jpg, tiff, photoshop file, targa, whatever.

Import into PS, tweak, and print.

– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great)

No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

[Michael Szalapski]

There are SO many different ways to approach this.

You could set all your layers up in 3d space and move your camera up or down. This would be easier if you parented your camera to a 3d null and moved the null up or down. You might find the 3d Assistants helpful on this as far as distributing your layers in 3d.

You could set your layers up, all parented to one layer and move them past the camera.

You could emit your layers as particles.

You could even use Card Dance or Card Wipe.

There’s probably more too.

– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great)

No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

[Michael Szalapski]

Check out Trapcode’s page on Particular, download the demo to try it out. At the bottom you can also download the Pyro Pack, a collection of AE projects that use Particular for fire, smoke, and explosions.

– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great)

No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

[Michael Szalapski]

I’m not entirely sure what you’re meaning by this. Are you saying you want smoke, that has depth, to travel in an “S” shape? Trapcode’s Particular plugin should be able to do that, no problem.

– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great)

No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

[Michael Szalapski]

And if you want a bunch of cards why not use Card Dance, or Card Wipe?

– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great)

No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

[Michael Szalapski]

You could use expressions to do it. Parent nulls to your text and have different emitters’ positions pickwhipped to the nulls.

– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great)

No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

[Michael Szalapski]

You could use expressions to do it. Parent nulls to your text and have different emitters’ positions pickwhipped to the nulls.

– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great)

No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

[Michael Szalapski]

I had an issue similar to this with a piece that had been shot outside.

I simply made it part of the piece’s “look.” Flickery text, logos, etc.
Worked a charm. heh

– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great)

No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.