Learn to create a captivating retro title sequence in Adobe After Effects with this step-by-step tutorial, including creating a starfield, compositing the animation, and creating a game over screen.
Zap back to the 90s in this retro arcade inspired animation! Learn how to add some old-school video game charm to your projects with this fun tutorial from Noble Desktop!
Creating a Starfield
- Create a New Solid.
- Name the new Solid “Starfield.”
- Add the CC Star Burst effect to Starfield.
- In the Effects Control panel, adjust the Speed to 1.
- Change Grid Spacing to about 6.
- Now, set the effect size to 80.
- Go back to the Effects panel and type in “Fractal.”
- Add Fractal to the Starfield layer.
- Within the Effects Control panel, change the Set Choice to Julia Inverse.
- Toggle open the Color options.
- Set Palette to Escape Angle.
- Activate the Overlay option.
- Using the Pixelate It plugin, hit the Pixelate It button. The plugin is located at https://eyedesyn.com/product/pixelate-it/.
- Select the Starfield layer and the layer below it.
- Right-click on either layer and go to Make Precomp.
- Name the new Precomp “Starfield Precomp.”
Compositing the Animation
- Go Back to the Main Composition.
- Place the new Precomp just underneath the text layer.
- Move the Playhead to about three seconds in.
- Trim the Starfield Precomp layer to three seconds.
Game over Screen
- Double-click the Game over Precomp to Go Inside It.
- Place the Starfield Precomp on top of the Game Over text.
- Set the Starfield Precomp Track Matte to the Game Over text layer.
- Select the triangle layer.
- Toggle open the Opacity option.
- ALT-click the stopwatch next to the Opacity setting.
Within the Expressions panel, type in: blinkRate=5; n=Math.sin(time*blinkRate); if(n<0) 0; else 100;
- Select anywhere else in the interface to deselect the Expression.
- Select the triangle layer again.
- Hit the Pixelate It button to pixelate the layer.
- Go back to the main comp.
- Hit Spacebar to preview the animation.
Video Transcription
00:00:00:00—00:00:08:05 Tziporah Hey, guys. This Tziporah Zions from Noble Desktop and in this tutorial, I'm going to show you how to make this awesome retro title sequence in Adobe After Effects.
00:00:08:05—00:00:17:16 Tziporah So this tutorial is a bit involved, but if you've been watching our other tutorials, you'll be all right. I'll break this effect down for you. So even if you're a newcomer to After Effects, we can still make something cool together.
00:00:17:18—00:00:29:23 Tziporah We'll be starting with making the star field here using CC Star plus a fractal effect for the colors. The pixelated look comes from this cool free plugin I've got called Pixel eight. We'll link that below, especially since we're going to be using it all throughout this project.
00:00:29:23—00:00:35:17 Tziporah After that, we'll be making this game over screen, using a track map and some duplication to get that star effect into our letters.
00:00:35:17—00:00:40:08 Tziporah Want to also show you how to add the expression to get this arrow here to blink in and out like an arcade cabinet.
00:00:40:08—00:00:42:09 Tziporah Finally, I'll show you to put them all together.
00:00:42:23—00:00:44:04 Tziporah now? Why is this important?
00:00:44:04—00:00:51:15 Tziporah Well, first of all, it's a cool effect. But besides that, this is a great way to see how you can build a full sequence at a separate composition parts.
00:00:51:18—00:01:03:22 Tziporah Not only that, since we're reusing some compositions, you're going to learn how to make use of already created compositions. On top of that, know you can use plugins for cool visual effects and learning how to use a blink expression is a great way to expand your. You know how.
00:01:03:22—00:01:08:24 Tziporah We're going to be providing a file for you guys below in the description and we'll have some solid already.
00:01:08:24—00:01:11:25 Tziporah Set up some text and shapes already for you to animate.
00:01:11:25—00:01:19:01 Tziporah That way we can cut out the super basic steps. Get right to the cool part. If you find yourself unfamiliar with how we made these shapes in text.
00:01:19:02—00:01:29:01 Tziporah I recommend you check out some of our other tutorials either here on YouTube or Instagram or TikTok. We cover both the basics like text solids, etc., as well as some more detailed tutorials.
00:01:29:01—00:01:32:27 Tziporah All right, so this is a duplicate of the file that you're going to be provided
00:01:32:27—00:01:37:04 Tziporah So the first thing we're going to be doing is making a new composition. So a new composition.
00:01:37:04—00:01:39:16 Tziporah Let's call this Starfield.
00:01:39:16—00:01:42:18 Tziporah Now we're going to be making layer new under new solid.
00:01:42:18—00:01:49:10 Tziporah And I'm going to be calling this star field solid. Okay.
00:01:49:10—00:01:52:10 Tziporah Go over to our effects and Presets panel
00:01:52:10—00:02:06:03 Tziporah type and see Starfield. There we go. Or Starburst. Good. I always get the name wrong. Anyway, so we put Starburst here and. Whoa. You can see already what it does.
00:02:06:04—00:02:18:28 Tziporah I'm going to press play. So you could see Starburst does it makes this field of like round dots that look like they're coming at you. So it does give the illusion that you're flying through space.
00:02:18:28—00:02:24:03 Tziporah Oh, I forgot to step. So command here, Control. The star feels solid,
00:02:24:03—00:02:26:01 Tziporah So command your control. Do the layer
00:02:26:01—00:02:31:27 Tziporah and the bottom one. Just get rid of CC Starburst because you want a background layer. In order for this to work.
00:02:31:27—00:02:32:27 Tziporah to layer
00:02:32:27—00:02:34:06 Tziporah salt settings
00:02:34:06—00:02:36:21 Tziporah and change the color to white so you can see it.
00:02:36:21—00:02:37:07 Tziporah So
00:02:37:07—00:02:38:19 Tziporah there we go. That's how you fix that.
00:02:38:19—00:02:54:01 Tziporah When it comes to this effect, you can like change how far the stars are. Scatter like that. You can adjust speed to make it faster. Grid spacing. So how many stars per squares in the grid that After Effects uses
00:02:54:01—00:03:00:18 Tziporah the size of the stars? We're going to be using the basic settings here. So I'm just going to hit reset.
00:03:00:18—00:03:03:24 Tziporah Well, I might scatter them a bit, I think, to 150.
00:03:03:24—00:03:25:29 Tziporah All right. Now we're going to add colors in a very interesting way to see Starfield go over to effects, type in a fractal. Now, a fractal essentially is a geometric pattern that repeats itself endlessly. That's more of the, you know, math definition. But for our purposes, just think of it as making a lot of interesting geometric shapes.
00:03:26:02—00:03:27:21 Tziporah We're going to grab this,
00:03:27:21—00:03:29:27 Tziporah put it on our starfield solid,
00:03:29:27—00:03:33:18 Tziporah and you can really see what it's doing. Now. It might be a little hard to tell,
00:03:33:18—00:03:40:12 Tziporah but essentially it's kind of overlaying a geometric pattern in different colors over our stars.
00:03:40:12—00:03:45:14 Tziporah I personally want a specific effect. But if you like the way this looks like, you know, by all means, keep it.
00:03:45:14—00:03:47:17 Tziporah But you go over here to effect controls,
00:03:47:17—00:03:49:28 Tziporah change, set choice. Sorry,
00:03:49:28—00:03:51:16 Tziporah change. Set choice
00:03:51:16—00:03:53:03 Tziporah to Juliet Inverse
00:03:53:03—00:03:58:13 Tziporah without going into the math. Julia Fractal is a swirly looking fractal like a hurricane shape.
00:03:58:13—00:04:02:02 Tziporah Like I said, the type of fractal isn't too important, but I like this one
00:04:02:02—00:04:04:02 Tziporah get different colors. Toggle one color,
00:04:04:02—00:04:09:20 Tziporah go over to palette and you can just use the different settings here
00:04:09:20—00:04:11:15 Tziporah to get different colors.
00:04:11:15—00:04:12:02 Tziporah So
00:04:12:02—00:04:14:26 Tziporah this one's really cool. I'm going to go for something a little more subtle.
00:04:14:26—00:04:17:04 Tziporah The one called Apple, I think is pretty interesting,
00:04:17:04—00:04:20:11 Tziporah and to get the color to cover the entire composition toggle open.
00:04:20:11—00:04:20:26 Tziporah Julia
00:04:20:26—00:04:22:16 Tziporah We're going to set the magnification to four.
00:04:22:16—00:04:22:29 Tziporah There you go.
00:04:22:29—00:04:25:29 Tziporah Now, the last thing is, we're going to go down to window
00:04:25:29—00:04:27:24 Tziporah and go all the way down,
00:04:27:24—00:04:28:09 Tziporah down.
00:04:28:09—00:04:34:13 Tziporah now, if you've installed the pixelated plug in that we've linked below the description, it'll appear here.
00:04:34:13—00:04:35:08 Tziporah Just hit that.
00:04:35:08—00:04:38:29 Tziporah This is a free version, so it comes with only one setting. But honestly, that's all we need.
00:04:38:29—00:04:40:26 Tziporah Select Starfield Solid
00:04:40:26—00:04:41:18 Tziporah Pixel.
00:04:41:18—00:04:42:09 Tziporah It's pixelated.
00:04:42:09—00:04:43:02 Tziporah cool is that?
00:04:43:02—00:04:49:19 Tziporah Now you'll see many effects pop up in effect. Controls panel. Those all come from this pixelated plug in.
00:04:49:19—00:04:51:24 Tziporah You don't really need to mess with this too much.
00:04:51:24—00:04:55:01 Tziporah Let's head back to our main composition here by clicking that
00:04:55:01—00:04:58:03 Tziporah There we go. I had excellently closed my project panel Anyways.
00:04:58:03—00:05:02:12 Tziporah Go to your project panel, grab Starfield and drag it down into your main composition.
00:05:02:12—00:05:04:03 Tziporah Put it on a countdown text.
00:05:04:03—00:05:08:27 Tziporah You'll notice that the countdown text also has the pixelated property applied.
00:05:08:27—00:05:13:14 Tziporah Now, in the main comp, you're going to want to move your play head over to about like 2 seconds,
00:05:13:14—00:05:14:12 Tziporah 3 seconds in,
00:05:14:12—00:05:15:17 Tziporah click your Starfield comp
00:05:15:17—00:05:15:27 Tziporah and hit
00:05:15:27—00:05:17:25 Tziporah alter option key right bracket.
00:05:17:25—00:05:19:00 Tziporah So you can see that trims it.
00:05:19:00—00:05:20:08 Tziporah Same thing for the countdown text.
00:05:20:08—00:05:21:03 Tziporah Reason being
00:05:21:03—00:05:22:17 Tziporah once the animation keeps going,
00:05:22:17—00:05:27:04 Tziporah it'll automatically go over to the game over screen because that's at the bottom of the layer stack.
00:05:27:04—00:05:28:26 Tziporah once these two layers end
00:05:28:26—00:05:30:17 Tziporah that we could see what's at the very bottom,
00:05:30:17—00:05:31:24 Tziporah which is this game over screen,
00:05:31:24—00:05:33:20 Tziporah double click to go inside the game over screen.
00:05:33:20—00:05:40:01 Tziporah Now we're going to be putting the starfield into the text and we are going to be adding the pixelated fact, a blinking effect.
00:05:40:01—00:05:40:25 Tziporah let's see what we got
00:05:40:25—00:05:43:25 Tziporah So once again, grab that starfield comp that we made.
00:05:43:25—00:05:45:24 Tziporah Drag it right under the text layer here.
00:05:45:24—00:05:56:27 Tziporah Now we're going to be making a track map. If you don't see track right here, just hit toggle switches and modes. And basically what a track map does is that it takes one layer and it kind of shoves it into the shape of another layer.
00:05:56:27—00:05:59:05 Tziporah And you'll see what I mean when we make it.
00:05:59:05—00:06:00:02 Tziporah But to demonstrate.
00:06:00:02—00:06:23:25 Tziporah We go over to track Mount on Starfield, we hit the dropdown menu here, select text, and there you see now the stars are inside of the text. Now, one thing I want to point out to you is that if I hit the Starfield, this would be completely invisible. There are cases where you might want to duplicate the text or whatever the container is and put it underneath the footage.
00:06:23:27—00:06:27:05 Tziporah If you still want that background to appear,
00:06:27:05—00:06:30:25 Tziporah like let's say you've got some transparency in, in the footage,
00:06:30:25—00:06:34:19 Tziporah but you still want the entire text to appear. So just something to keep in mind.
00:06:34:19—00:06:37:21 Tziporah Now let's select the triangle.
00:06:37:21—00:06:49:28 Tziporah this is made with Poly Star, which is an option underneath the shape tool over here. We do have an entire tutorial on that. I believe it is a menu tutorial on Instagram or TikTok.
00:06:49:28—00:06:54:16 Tziporah we also have a tutorial on basic After Effects tricks that explains how to make triangles.
00:06:54:16—00:06:57:24 Tziporah So for this I want this to blank like in an arcade.
00:06:57:24—00:06:59:02 Tziporah hit T for transparency
00:06:59:02—00:07:01:14 Tziporah opacity as the program calls it.
00:07:01:14—00:07:25:22 Tziporah Alter option. Click on the little stopwatch here now are going to be typing in an expression. We also have a tutorial on expressions, but to keep it quick, expressions are bits of code that can automate certain processes in adobe After Effects. So instead of key framing the opacity going in and out like indefinitely, we can just tell the program to do it on its own.
00:07:25:22—00:07:48:27 Tziporah If of edit this right, then I want to zoom in on the expression, but I will also dictate it if you do that. And you know, so you can also read it off the screen or hear my voice, whatever works for you. We're going to type in blink rate and the AR in rate is capitalized and this is telling program.
00:07:48:27—00:07:55:10 Tziporah How often do you want this thing to blink, blink in and out. So hit equals five and
00:07:55:10—00:07:57:26 Tziporah Now we're going to put an equation
00:07:57:26—00:08:08:19 Tziporah for the opacity so n equals space mass. We're telling the program now do a little bit of math.
00:08:08:21—00:08:41:11 Tziporah So sine if you remember trig, that's where a sign is from. So time, asterisk. So that asterisk means multiplies blink rate. So that is the property we defined before this bit of code next line. If so, we're giving it a F or actually just giving it a f else command.
00:08:41:11—00:08:48:15 Tziporah parentheses and is less than zero. So close those parentheses,
00:08:48:15—00:08:49:08 Tziporah zero
00:08:49:08—00:08:49:28 Tziporah semicolon.
00:08:49:28—00:09:09:22 Tziporah ls 100. So basically we're telling the program to go between zero and 100 on the opacity. And it wants to use the time of the program. That's where the time is to kind of mark how to separate that up.
00:09:09:22—00:09:13:27 Tziporah Basically, as time goes along, it's going to blink from 100 to 0 back again.
00:09:13:27—00:09:16:07 Tziporah Okay, click anywhere to activate that.
00:09:16:07—00:09:22:21 Tziporah can't. Oh, I got an expression error because I forgot to put semicolon next to blank. Right. Just to put that in.
00:09:22:21—00:09:48:14 Tziporah Also I found a few more problems. A blink rate here has to be capitalized the same way as one. Great. Over here. The zero was needed a space over here. The seconds are needed space next to this parentheses and all these lines needed a semicolon. If you're encountering any problems with the code, that's normal. I do to.
00:09:48:15—00:09:50:05 Tziporah Everyone does when they're writing code.
00:09:50:05—00:09:52:12 Tziporah But for reference, I'll put this up on the screen so
00:09:52:12—00:09:54:04 Tziporah So you can check your code against mine.
00:09:54:04—00:09:56:17 Tziporah All right, click anywhere in interface, hit spacebar
00:09:56:17—00:09:57:22 Tziporah All right, It's blinking
00:09:57:22—00:09:58:18 Tziporah now. We're almost done.
00:09:58:18—00:10:01:21 Tziporah I'm going to select my text. I want to pixelate some stuff now.
00:10:01:23—00:10:03:23 Tziporah Pixelated. It's pixelated.
00:10:03:23—00:10:06:00 Tziporah like my triangle pixelated.
00:10:06:00—00:10:20:20 Tziporah The text over here is just in a font that happens to have a pixelated effect on it. I prefer the pixelated effect. I think it's cooler, but if sometimes things come out funny looking then I'll just use the font instead.
00:10:20:20—00:10:22:12 Tziporah Head back to our main composition
00:10:22:12—00:10:25:26 Tziporah And look at that. Now we made the whole thing.
00:10:25:26—00:10:53:05 Tziporah So different ways that you could apply this is that you can replace the text. So put anything else that you want here besides you know the word skip over. You can make this into a YouTube channel, intro an outro. You can replace the fractals other colors, you can fill in shapes with the starfield. And hopefully what you took away from this was the ability to make several little different compositions and how to layer them all together to make a cohesive animation, which is incredibly important.
00:10:53:05—00:11:12:09 Tziporah The After Effects, in fact, that's probably how most of the motion graphics that you see around get made. I know they can look quite complicated and overwhelming, but very often it's a bit of like a magician sleight of hand where it's just a lot of different compositions working together to make a cohesive animation. So yeah, that's all for this tutorial.
00:11:12:09—00:11:24:12 Tziporah you have any questions or suggestions for other tutorials, let us know in the comments. Let us know about any motion graphics projects that you're working on. We'd love to hear about them. This has been surprising for double desktop.
