[Michael Szalapski]

Don’t export your video (unless you’re exporting flash stuff) use the Render Queue. There are LOADS of options in the Render Queue for outputting video at various levels of compression and various formats. Read the manual on how to use it.

– 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]

Chris is wise, do what he says. If you happen to have ParticleIllusion you can dowload an emitter from Elvis Deane’s page that will help.

Also there’s a quicktime plugin that does this as well.

Or you can buy the Artbeats Film Clutter volume 1 or 2 and overlay some of it over your footage.

Or you could mix and match all of them together!

Chris is good, Chris is wise, if you want your effect to look really good just put a lot of work into what Chris said and you will succeed.

– 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]

If you make a long, narrow precomp with a solid and text and whatever you want your blower thingy to look like you could then put some sort of page curl effect on it.

– 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 can also isolate/effect a range of colours with the hue-saturation tool. Instead of instantly putting saturation down, pick from the drop down list “blues” or something, then you can adjust the range to whatever you like.

– 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 was going to respond by saying, “You could pour real ink…” but I won’t.

Instead I shall point you towards Wondertouch’s ParticleIllusion where you can achieve many things! In ParticleIllusion 3 you can set your particles to “don’t erase” – download the demo and check it out. (I believe the default library has some de emitters in it.) With a bit of magic I’m sure you could come up with some sort of dripping ink look.

– 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]

Hey, check out the Tutorial here on the COW on how to disintegrate people using Wondertouch’s ParticleIllusion. If you used a smoky kind of particle emitter instead of dots you could get what you wanted with this. You would probably want to keyframe the saturation down to 0 in After Effects so it goes from the person’s colour to white.

Chris’ instant cut isn’t a bad idea though. You’d just need a puff of smoke; much easier. You’d still want ParticleIllusion for the puff.

– 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]

It would probably be easier to animate the webs in your video program. (After Effects would make it a snap.)
However you’d still want ParticleIllusion for the puffs of dust as your knocked badguy goes sprawling, for atmospherics, or for the Green Goblin’s pumpkin thingies.

Or for, like, a zillion other things.

– 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 try using a clever combination of filters including Mr Mercury. I don’t have AE on this computer or I’d try to figure one up for you.

– 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]

To get the bubble to burst watch how a real bubble bursts.
It basically just disappears and a few little speckles go falling down.
Simply make your bubble disappear and use some particle program to represent the tiny bits of foam. (Trapcode’s Particular and Wondertouch’s ParticleIllusion are both excellent for different reasons; go buy them both right now)

– 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]

Have you checked the tutorials for how to do this in After Effects without plugins? As I recall Chris Zwar wrote a good one.

– 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.