I'm going to show you my simple
technique to get it CMYK halftone printf
echt using After Effects and Photoshop
that you can apply to animations and
video footage to techniques to get black
and white half tones and After Effects
but here's how to do this with seem like
a colors with all that channel separated
and we're gonna have a bit of help from
Photoshop as well let's get started
making this animation and then we're
gonna apply to the effects to it and
this is pretty simple to build so I'm
gonna start in a new comp it's two
seconds long and we've got three circles
in the middle mine cyan magenta and
yellow to highlight how the effect works
but that's not necessary for the print
effect at all
so first let's select them all and
change their blending mode from normal
to multiply which mimics now overlay ink
would look when printed and here we can
see in the middle where they meet with
us an overlap our colors have changed
with a cyan and magenta meet we get a
blue where magenta and yellow meet we
get red and we yellow and cyan meet we
get a green if we select any one of them
and move it closer you can see where all
three of them overlap we get black
exactly how they would on the printing
press so let's undo that and at the
start of a timeline I want to select
them all and keep it in that position or
isn't key on a keyboard and hitting the
stopwatch and at one second in on them
all to move closer to the center now I
want a guide for the center so I'm going
to select down here and choose title
action safe which gives me this
crosshair to use as reference and then
I'm going to select each of the circles
and then just nudge it towards the
center and adjust them so also if they
line up equally there we are now for the
animation of them coming into the center
at the end I'm just gonna copy and paste
these first keyframes featured the
layers and then I'm gonna drag these one
frame over to the very end of a comp
because after effects were only your
edit keyframes directly on this last
time here because it's not visible but
we need a keyframes to be there so we
get nice seamless loop so now we've got
a looping animation of these now let's
select all of these keyframes and press
f9 and a keyboard to easy ease them so
that that animation becomes a little bit
smoother and now let's rotate them so
I'm gonna go up to layer new and select
null object which creates a new null in
the center and let's rename that
rotation null because we always label
our layers and then select our three
circle layers and then pairing them to
that rotation now by using the pick whip
and then when they're not selected press
R to bring up our rotation Keeffe
at the beginning at zero and then at the
very end at 360 so it becomes one full
rotation and then drag that one to the
right and now we've got a looping
rotation now the last thing I'm going to
do to this is add some blur so I'm going
to go up to layer new adjustment layer
and add the effect radial blur now at
the very beginning I'm gonna keyframe
the amount at ten pixels at 12 frames in
let's go up to fifty pixels so it gets a
quite a bit more blurred there we go to
sixty let's do it let's go to sixty
pixels CPU is not gonna like that
it'll be fine and then when we get to
the middle let's select both these
keyframes and copy them and paste them
so I've got a ten pixel blur here then a
sixty pixel blur and then at the end
let's paste again so we've got a 10
pixel keyframe at the very end so here's
ten sixty ten sixty ten so now it's
blowing the most where our circles are
moving the fastest in between they're
easing and let's select all of these and
easy ease those with f9 and let's see
how that looks alright that's looking
pretty good
I really like the radial blur effect and
if you want to add something a little
bit extra you can duplicate this effect
with ctrl T and change the type from
spin to zoom so then you get it blurring
on the outside as well and that can look
pretty neat as well I might just keep it
with one radial blur though for now then
we've got our base animation now let's
add a color halftone effect now it's
gonna sound crazy at first but it's
honestly a much quicker process than it
seems with a little help from our trusty
friend Photoshop so what we're going to
do is apply the color halftone effect to
every single rendered frame of our
animation individually now that sounds
like an absurd amount of work but I'm
going to show you how we can do that to
just one of the frames and then automate
the whole process with a few clicks
which is really powerful technique that
you can apply to many effects that are
just available in Photoshop so the first
thing we need to do is render our
animation as a PNG sequence so let's go
up to composition add to render queue
and down here in the output module I'm
gonna click where it says lossless and
change the format from avi to PNG
sequence these settings are fine for us
and then output it to a folder
I'm gonna call 0 1 see my circles oh gee
and render those out now in that folder
we've got a PNG rendered for each frame
of that animation now let's select one
in the middle where there's a lot of
overlap and let's open this in Photoshop
now we're going to record a Photoshop
action you can get to that window by
clicking this play button which might be
up here in your workspace or get
and choose action down here and let's
create a new action by clicking this
icon and let's call the CM like 1/2 1001
and give it a unique color so we can see
it clearly over here and then click
record
now what Photoshop is doing now is
recording every step every edit that we
make to this image and then it saves it
as a shortcut and this can be really
handy if you find yourself repeating the
same processes over and over again so
all we need to do is go up to filter
select pixel a and choose color halftone
now we're gonna leave the screen angles
as they are because they're ready set to
the standard CMYK angles and IMAX radius
let's take this down to 6 pixels
yeah the pixel width determines the
scale of the half to in effect what's
the maximum radius of your dots so
experiment and see which works best for
you
here is what 4 pixels 6 pixels and 12
pixels looks like on this image then
click OK and we get out halftone effect
and then we need to go up to file save
as and save this image really anywhere
out of the way where we save it doesn't
matter and then close this file now even
though it's closed that action is still
recording so we need to go up to window
view action and then click stop and now
we can see here a halftone action adds
the color halftone effect saves the
document and then closes it so every
time we select this action and click
play they'll perform all of these steps
to the document open but we can take
that further and apply that to all of
our rendered frames by applying it as a
batch so let's go over to file automate
batch and here we can select what action
that's going to play
we wanted to play action CMYK halftone
one so that's good as sauce we want to
choose a folder so let's choose where we
rendered a PNG sequence and select that
folder and a destination folder let's
create a new one and I'm going to call
that o to CMYK 1/2 times entry select
folder and make sure we tick override
action save as commands and I mean that
I save action that we have an action
here will be over it in here and instead
it's just going to save it to this
folder and there some options for your
file naming but this is all we need for
now let's click OK and it will batch
this action and now Photoshop is opening
up all of those frames that we rendered
applying those effects the halftone
effects saving them and then closing
them as fast as it can and I haven't
sped up this section it's taking less
than a second for each frame and you can
even minimize photoshop and go about
your business while this renders it's
hardly longer than some Ram previews and
after-effects
there we're done re now we just need to
import it into After
so in after-effects I have a little
import folder over here and I'm gonna
press ctrl I to open up our import file
window find out color half-tones folder
we only need to select the first one and
then make sure PNG sequence is selected
and imported as footage and let's create
a composition as well and let's import
that so now we've imported that image
sequence and it's open in this
composition here's what our effect looks
like there now we can see that that
color halftone has been applied to all
of these frames so now we just need to
add a few more elements to make it look
a bit more like some printed material so
here I've added two paper textures to
match that print feel and you can see
how to make your own in my looping
textures tutorial this first one is just
a rough paper background set to multiply
so it looks like our animation is
printed on top of this and then the very
top one is some distress paper as well
set to screen so adds these white
speckles on top of everything which
makes it look like the ink is worn away
in these areas now this still looks
really smooth and digital so to make it
look a bit more printed I'm going to add
a wiggle expression on the position of
our image sequence I'm gonna alt click
the stopwatch here and type in wiggle 6
15 so 6 times a second it will move this
layer 15 pixels so we get a nice bit of
slight jittering
now at the moment it looks a bit like a
camera shake so I'm going to lower the
frame rate so I'm gonna create a new
adjustment layer and now the effect
posterized time and we can set that to
something really low at the moment it's
24 frames per second but we can set it
as low as 6 here looks really choppy but
it does make it a little bit more like
stop-motion like we've printed and
scanned these images in and we can
always change that up from 6 to maybe
something like 12 if that's just a bit
too intense for you and we could have
done this earlier in this comb here by
pressing ctrl K and then changing the
frame rate over here so it would render
out less images and take less time so
you might want to do that if you're
applying this to a much longer animation
that's gonna take a long time to render
so you'll have fewer frames to deal with
but because this is such a short
animation and the render times are
barely anything I like to have more
control at the end here where I can
decide my frame rate up until the very
last minute and this just gives us way
more options but when a client comes
back and says this looks laggy
we need to change it and of course you
can apply these effects to any animation
or even footage of your Chihuahua if you
have one and please take a deeper dive
into the project file which is available
for free down in the description I've
made a short playlist of some related
videos that'll think you'll enjoy if
you've made it this far I'll see you in
the next video and please
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