Some of you may remember Pete Warden’s After Effects plugins that were a mix of some interesting video effects. One of the plugins were able to give you an interesting halftone effect. If yo miss that halftone effect and want to revive it as a plugin, the code is available as open source.
Joe Clay remembers that particular halftone effect fondly, and always wanted a way to reproduce it in After Effects. His latest tutorial shows how he put together a quick and simple one, that works quite well.
When you think of a dot pattern in After Effects you probably think of ball action, and that is the basis for the halftone pattern. The final effect uses Ball Action plus a stack of other native effects in Ae to get the job done. The effect stack also uses a gradient ramp that can change the dot size, and a turbulent noise for that classic printed look.
You can watch Joe walk through how it’s all put together, or you can download a preset file that you can use at any time.
