GrayMachine’s Harry Frank has a look at how stacking effects in Ae can give you a greater sum than the whole of its parts. In Harry’s example, each effect individually is not really a big deal. However start to stack the effects together, and it is easy to see how powerful iterating different effects can be in After Effects.
Here Harry shows how to create a circular displaced form that animates. At first glance, it seems like it might be an impossible task to create with native Ae effects alone. Step by step however, you can see the final effect come together taking a contribution from individual stacked effects.
Using the stacking effects technique, Harry uses the Beam effect, displace, Colorama, Curves and Polar Coordinates which all come together to create a wave displaced circle.
