How the line boil effect works, how to apply it to your own footage, and what each setting actually changes.
What grain actually is, why it should sit on top of every other effect, and the amount that reads as film rather than as noise.
Why edge-aware effects look deliberate and uniform ones look like a filter, how sensitivity changes what counts as an edge, and why noisy footage breaks it.
The Turbulent Displace method for boiling lines in After Effects, why the default settings look wrong, and the one expression that fixes the frame rate.
Generated animation comes out too clean and too stable. The specific artifacts that give it away, and the passes that put a hand back into it.
Tape did specific things to an image. Which artifacts matter, which are overused, and the order to apply them so the result reads as a recording rather than a filter.
Pause a generated clip and it holds up. Play it and something is wrong. The reason is in the motion, not the images, and it is specific.
What it means to animate on twos, why most hand-drawn animation is not drawn at the full frame rate, and how the choice changes the feel of a shot.
What chromatic aberration actually is, why it shows up in old film and comics, and how to add it to video without it looking like a broken 3D movie.
The free tools available on macOS for turning footage into something that looks drawn, what each one is actually good at, and where each one stops.
A step-by-step method for adding a hand-drawn wobble to any video on macOS, including the settings to start from and the mistakes that make it look wrong.
What Max Shift, Region Size, Randomness, Hold Frames, Variations, Edge Weight, Chunkiness, and Wave Type each change, with the range worth using for each.
The four effects that separate hand-made animation from digital video, and the order to apply them in so the result looks drawn rather than filtered.
Line boil is the shimmer you see in hand-drawn animation, caused by every frame being drawn slightly differently. Where it comes from, why it reads as alive, and how to add it to digital video.
The same studio makes Halfsies, a daily game about cutting things exactly in half by weight. Three objects a day, one attempt per object, scored on how evenly you cut. It is free on iPhone.