[Ryan Hill]

Sponge almost dried watercolour onto highly textured paper. Smear. Scan in. Layer as you see fit.

[Ryan Hill]

Yes, looping would be up to the player.

I’ve found that the hardest thing to get people to understand with Flash is the concept of key-framing, so if you’re good with AE you’ve already got that part down.

[Ryan Hill]

Oh, I knew this sounded familiar. It’s the wiener dog guy.

I only feel qualified to give you advice now that in the past month I’ve successfully keyed someone wearing a white shirt against an off-white background using the methods I just described.

But I admit I’ve never tried keying anyone in the water. That will probably have a bunch of its own problems. However, you just want sillhouettes, which means you can be a little more forgiving with a pixel here or there.

I’m not sure I understand what you want to use motion tracking for.

[Ryan Hill]

For shots where the camera is still, you can use difference matte to compare the current frame with a background. You’ll get less trouble from the background that way, but you’ll still get some noise from the water itself. To clean up noise like that, I’ll often apply two simple chokers, one with a positive value, one with a negative.

Multiple layers can be very helpful in this, too. If I’m having a hard time pulling a key, I will make three layers. For one, I will set it up to make sure the foreground figure doesn’t have any holes, and then apply a simple choker until its outline is smaller than my desired outline. Then I do a second layer for a more precise outline, but I don’t have to worry about filling in the holes. If this one has too much noise outside of my foreground figure, I make another layer with a positive simple choker to remove the noise, followed by a negative choker, so its outline is larger than I want. Then I use that as a track matte for my other layer.

Of course, all this depends on you applying a luma key instead of just threshold filter. You can then stick a white layer behind everything.

[Ryan Hill]

It doesn’t sound like an explosion. More like:
https://www.creativecow.net/articles/eriksson_emanuel/sand/index.html

Or under CUSTOM SHATTER MAPS on this page:
https://www.creativecow.net/show.php?page=/articles/unguren_ben/shatter/TUT_shatter_4.htm

[Ryan Hill]

Then you want to apply a key effect to the petals. It depends on what the background behind the petals looks like in the video of the petals. Is it a solid colour? What colour? Is the camera locked off during the shot? How are they lit? All these things will affect how you can key the petals.

[Ryan Hill]

To extend on that, because you might be able to see through the blurred layer, you can use it as an inverted track matte on the non-blurred layer.

You could use the write-on effect, but maybe something else would be easier.

Also, see this article on markers, which could be a good way to get your timing right:
https://www.creativecow.net/articles/ebberts_dan/audio_sync/index.html

“I put the layer markers in by selecting the layer, starting an audio preview by hitting the

[Ryan Hill]

Oh, right. I forgot. You need to animate the transition.

There will be a property in the transition effect that is set to 0%. Set a keyframe where you want it to start, go to where you want it to finish, and change it to 100%.

If you just want to drag and drop, there’s other programs that are more geared towards that sort of thing. I’ve used iMovie and that’s basically what that’s like, but then I was frustrated that I couldn’t do anything more complex. Premier is more powerful, but also more complicated than iMovie. It’s a trade-off. After Effects leans towards the complex but powerful side of the spectrum.

[Ryan Hill]

Put the layer you are starting with on top. Put the layer you are ending with below it. Apply the transition filter to the top layer.

[Ryan Hill]

How high is the scale going now?

I don’t remember what scale “convert audio” normally uses. But find the highest that your values are going right now, then make your scale expression into
(current expression)/highest value*100

Or if you meant to apply a ceiling instead of scaling the whole thing, use
Math.max(current expression,100)