[Michael Szalapski]

Just a note in case it helps:
If you want a rectangular (or circle) mask put around your footage simply doulbe-click on the mask tool in the tools pallette.

– 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’s much more accurate than your computer screen but it’s not *really* accurate. It depends on the level of work you’re doing. If Jaguar has hired you at thousands upon thousands of

[Michael Szalapski]

Or you could get a windscreen, a hose, some lights and a camera.

– 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]

Living in the UK as I am we don’t have Bud Light or advertising for said product. I haven’t had a chance to look at the Sunkenlust thing either.

But if you want a drawn/watercolour look you could do worse than duplicating your layer, blurring it a bit, and changing the blend mode to darken.

– 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 highly suggest you upgrade as 6.5 rizzocks the hizzouse. However I have a solution for you that needeth not ye upgrade. (And thou mightest have saved thyself much worry if thou hadst searched previous posts for “Jumbotron”)

Take your footage and apply Effect-Stylize-Brush Stroke
Set the parametres such:
Stroke angle: 0
Brush Size: 3
Stroke Length: 1
Stroke Density: 0.5
Stroke Randomness: 0
Paint Surface: Paint on Transparent
Blend with Original: 0

Then apply Effect-Perspective-Bevel Alpha

Now toy with all your settings and y’all’ll never know what could happen.

– 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]

Put a copy of your background layer in a precomp and blur it.
Then use that precomp as the source layer for your displacement map. I would suggest that you also turn your precomp greyscale.
This way you can also more easily edit your displacement map to compensate for buildings, cylinders, 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]

What’s wrong with the Advanced Lightning effect?

– 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]

In addition to the ones previously mentioned there are also:

Zaxwerks:
Invigorator – Not only can Invig use the comp camera, it can also use the comp lights!

AE:
CC Ball Action
Card Wipe
Card Dance

I’m sure there are more…

– 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’s a nice site. I, personally, like menus that make a bit of noise.

One niggly little problem though, what’s an armer? On the ‘Video Game Advertising’ page it says on the right, ‘Armer taken.’ If you mean the protective body wear adorning soldiers through the ages then it should read ‘Armour…’ or if you’re from the States (as I assume you are), ‘Armor.’

If you mean one who arms (like an enlisted man responsible for the upkeep of small arms and machine guns etc.) then it should be ‘Armourer…’ (again minus the u if you’re a Yank.)

– 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]

Sorry; I forgot to include the other options for your text expanding, rather that just being a mask reveal.

You could combine a scaling up to 100% and a mask reveal.

You could use shatter and reverse it. But tweak with the settings so instead of exploding out it just breaks up and falls away. That way, when it’s reversed, it’ll be falling up, out, and into place.

You could use line text for each line and have the line they’re following all twisted up into your circle and then keyframed to straighted out.

Don’t forget subtle things like changing the colour and opacity a bit.

Oh, I almost forgot; there must be a way to do sommit like what you want just using the new text animating functions within AE 6.5. (I haven’t had a chance to learn that yet, but as soon as I get some free time I plan to. I’m guessing it’ll save me a lot of time in the end.)

– 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.