[Michael Szalapski]

ParticleIllusion from wondertouch is brilliant for creating explosions and other things.

Trapcode’s Particular isn’t too shabby either.

Shatter would be useful to you as well. That comes with AE.

Here’s what I would do, get pictures of destruction to a building and build them onto what you’re wanting to destroy, make it look already destroyed. Then put a perfect image over the top of it and use shatter to blow it away leaving the destroyed building.
Use ParticleIllusion to add fire, smoke, dust, extra debris, etc.

– 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]

Or Trapcode’s Shine.

– 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]

Fully stabilize it, then add in your own bumps with a little wiggling position?

– 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]

Search posts and include archives. This has been answered in pretty good ways.

– 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 would put your stroke in a different composition over your picture composition. But your frame rate could still be 25 or 29.97, you just only make a few pictures and time stretch it over your timeline.

– 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 would put your stroke in a different composition over your picture composition. But your frame rate could still be 25 or 29.97, you just only make a few pictures and time stretch it over your timeline.

– 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 wouldn’t have a different image for each of the 30 frames per second. I would suggest you have about 2-5 frames per second. This makes it more believable as a drawing. I would do each frame in colour in photoshop (make an “action” in photoshop so you only have to push a button to get it to do what you want).

Then import your image sequence into AE put an adjustment layer over your image sequence and use channel mixer or hue/saturation to take out the colour.

Then animate a mask on that layer to remove it.

Sorry if that doesn’t make much sense I’ve had a weirdly stressful day and my brains not entirely working.

Signed
Confused in Devon, England

– 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 wouldn’t have a different image for each of the 30 frames per second. I would suggest you have about 2-5 frames per second. This makes it more believable as a drawing. I would do each frame in colour in photoshop (make an “action” in photoshop so you only have to push a button to get it to do what you want).

Then import your image sequence into AE put an adjustment layer over your image sequence and use channel mixer or hue/saturation to take out the colour.

Then animate a mask on that layer to remove it.

Sorry if that doesn’t make much sense I’ve had a weirdly stressful day and my brains not entirely working.

Signed
Confused in Devon, England

– 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]

Effect>render>Audio Waveform

or

Effect>render>Audio Spectrum

– 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]

Keep in mind that the examples of which you speak, many are done in proper real 3d programs – not in AE’s 2.5d.

Lighting will take practice. Use a good output monitor to see what you’re doing, the computer screen is not good for judging.

– 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.