However, just because you have some solid go-tos doesn’t mean you still can’t kick them up to that next level.Īnd, to be honest, it can sometimes be as easy as a few clicks to truly give your animations that extra level of dynamics. When you utilize the myriad of templates and quick guide tutorials, you have quite a few options always at your fingertips.
Looking for more post-production video tutorials? Check these out.Trying out some new After Effects animations? Use this tutorial to up your motion graphics game with some quick and simple tips.įor those who have worked in Adobe After Effects long enough to know, creating sleek and professional motion graphic animation for simple things like text, titles, and lower thirds can actually be pretty simple on paper.
Just drag-and-drop the 8-Bit Game preset into that folder. In your After Effects CC version folder, you will see a User Presets folder. Just navigate to your Documents folder, then Adobe, and then the After Effects CC folder, for your version of After Effects (the preset works with After Effects CC 2018and up).
Installing the 8-Bit Game preset is easy - on both Mac and PC. Installing the After Effects 8-Bit Game Preset I recommend viewing each one, then selecting the one that looks best.Ĩ.
The blending mode you choose will depend on the final look you want. Set it to one of the following four blending modes: Darken, Lighten, Difference, or Exclusion. Then, in order to not have the pixel grid appear on the alpha channel part of the footage, navigate to the Blending Mode option for the Grid effect. If you are going to apply the 8-bit game look to footage with an alpha channel, I recommend applying the effects (or preset) directly on the footage. I recommend setting the Smart Blur radius to a value between 3 and 6. Smart Blur will preserve more contrast, but it will take a lot longer to render. Alternatively, you can substitute Smart Blur in place of Gaussian Blur. This will help reduce the flickering, but it will also reduce some contrast. I recommenced a blurriness value between 4 and 8. Now apply a Gaussian Blur to your video footage. Apply the 8-bit look to an Adjustment layer above your footage. When applying the 8-bit look to video footage, you may encounter a lot of pixel flickering. (Using Posterize Time is optional, depending on the look you are going for, and may not be necessary for more modern 8-bit animations.) This will add a little bit of stutter to the movement onscreen. Apply Posterize Time to the Adjustment layer, then I recommend setting the frame rate between 6 and 15. An easy way to do this is with the Posterize Time effect. (When CC Block Load is set to a Scan value of 3, each pixel block it creates is 8px by 8px.)įinally, I recommend limiting the frame rate to better emulate the appearance of a retro video game. This should now leave you with a perfect grid around each “pixel block” on screen. Finally, set the Anchor values to 0,0 and set the Corner values to 8,8. Set the Blending Mode in the options to Normal, and set the color to a dark grey. Apply the Grid effect to the Adjustment layer. This helps create the illusion of a low-resolution screen. Now, we need to add some grid spacing between each pixel. Set the Map White To option to a dull green tone to replicate the original Game Boy Screen. Next, you can apply the Tint effect to the Adjustment layer if you want to limit the color-palette to something more black and white. The great thing about the CC Block Load effect is that it always creates perfectly square pixels, regardless of the aspect ratio of the composition. You should now see a pixelized version of your image. Then, set the Scans value to 3 and uncheck the Start Cleared option. Make sure the Completion setting is set to 0. Now, to create the blocky-pixel look on our image, we need to apply the CC Block Load effect to the Adjustment layer. (15 if you are creating a full-color look, and closer to 5 if you are creating a monotone look, like an original Game Boy screen.) For a retro game look, I prefer to set the Level between 5 and 15. The Posterize effect will limit the number of color tones on your image. (This can be above motion graphics, animation, footage, etc.) Then, apply the Posterize effect to the Adjustment layer. Posterizeįirst, create an Adjustment layer above all of the other layers in your composition.
Now, let’s walk through - step-by-step - creating the 8-bit look in After Effects. By downloading, you agree not to redistribute this project file.
This project file is free to use in any personal or commercial projects.