[Michael Szalapski]

Sparks are always good for something robotic when it kicks off and goes to that Great Rust Bucket In the Sky. Use Particular or ParticleIllusion or even Particle Playground to achieve them. Also death is seen in the eyes (not that I’ve seen death up close…very often… and anyway you can’t prove I did it!!!) so I’d try to do something to the eyes (unless they’re closed…)
Smoke, like sparks, is also good for electronics when they bite the bullet.

A lot of effects are sold by the sound. Make sure your sound is up to snuff.

Sparks, smoke, lightning (as suggested above), and sound should get you there. But there are always more things you could do to add to this 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]

Is your rock face going to be moving, talking etc. or is it going to be still? (Basically, is it going to be a talking statue or someone turning into ice?)
If it’s someone turning into stone or ice then just create a stone (or ice) version of your person (in their final position) in Photoshop. (There are some tutorials on this available on the web including this one from Worth1000.
Then all you have to do is transition somehow from the live person to the statue.

That would be the simplest way to do it. If you want it to look realistic (as much as a human being turning into stone can be considered real…) then you’ll have to have quite a few frames of StoneIce person to transition into so you’ll have some movement.

You can check in your manual or the help files for how to do a gradient transition like I mentioned.

– 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]

Glad that you got it sorted.
But just so you know, you’ll get a lot more options if you use the Render Queue instead of the Export function. Just go to
Composition-Add to Render Queue

– 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]

Are you talkin’ to me? I’ve never even heard of Invader Zim. I live in the UK, would that affect my hearing about this Zim thing? It sounds interesting.

– 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 you could use particles. I’ve seen Trapcode’s Particular used to make some very ethereal lines of light floating in the air.
Even if you use 3d Stroke you could use particles to add to the effect.

Subtlety is key.

– 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 check out some of the tutorials right here on the cow! Jayse’s Surreal Clouds Without plug-ins, or Richard’s Flying Through Clouds.
I quite like Jayse’s.

I believe Ayato’s got a tutorial as well… yes he does.

You can also do a forum search here, clouds have been discussed before. (Don’t forget to check the archives 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]

If you have Wondertouch’s ParticleIllusion or Trapcodes Particular or even AE’s particle programs you should add some dust and debris flying around the base of your twister. (A bit of dust and debris along the whole length of it wouldn’t hurt either.)

– 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 try the morphing as suggested. Another idea is to create your rock/ice face and use a gradient wipe transition to reveal it over your real face. Generate some fractal noise to use as the gradient.

– 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]

Photoshop layer masks are not the same thing as an AE mask; they’re more like Alpha channels.

It works for me. When I import it into AE I get the trasparency. If, for some reason it’s not working for you then I would just merge the layer with its mask and save it into a seperate file for importing into AE.

Unless you want to have a changeable mask in AE, in which case… hang on, I’ll think of it.
Ah, I’ve got it: On a PC ctrl-click on your layer in the layer pallette (I’m not sure the mac keys, you’ll have to figure it out yourself if you’re using one) you should see those lovely little marching ants around your layer. Then go to the paths tab (probably on your layers pallette) click that little arrow on it. Select Make Work Path. You can then double-click it to make it a proper path. You can copy it and paste it into After Effects then and apply it to your layer.

I hope that made sense and didn’t confuse 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]

You said: My resulting TGA-sequence is flickering like the old movies from 1920. Only solution I found out, is to convert the whole QT-DV Material…

I’ve thought of another solution:
Make your design like the 1920’s old movies. That way it’s supposed to blink and flicker like that. No worrying about expressions, the Wiggler or ANYTHING!
It’s not a bug; it’s a feature.
😉

– 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.