I’ve followed the same general direction as you suggest Chris but used Particular to generate the basic movement with a Mosaic preset on top. The preset was a great start point as it uses Fractal noise, Mosaic, Median and Tri-Tone which is perfect as I have a palette of 3 colours. I then added posterise time onto an adjustment layer for the whole comp. 

Much easier to create than I had imagined. 

Cheers.

On 14 May 2014 11:48, Chris Zwar <chris@chriszwar.com> wrote:

Well these sorts of questions are always fun… here's thinking out loud:

- I'd be thinking about how these types of images are generated.  I'd work greyscale and then use colourama at the end.  You could eyedropper the reference still to get the same colours.

- The images are quite low res, and I'm guessing quite low FPS.  So I'd use the mosaic effect to make it blocky, and posterise time (either the plugin or as a time remapping expression) to reduce the frame rate of the animation

- There's a subtle bend in the graphics.  There are a few options for this in the distort effects, including CC bender, CC bend it and the old stock favourite Polar Co-Ordinates.

- I'd do the actual keyframeable animation in a pre comp.  It could be as simple as white blobs on a transparent background.  You might be fine with animating masks on a solid, or using several small solids.  But start with a simple base composition that has just the bits you need to control.  Then add noise and grunge in another composition - you can always use fractal noise, turbulent displace, roughen edges to create a grungy version.  Remember - greyscale is fine.  add colour at the end, that's how the real stuff is done.

So:

1) Base pre comp with the main elements

2) Grunge version

3) Add mosaic effect and posterise time

4) Bender / bend it / polar coordinates

5) Colourama

Have fun,

-Chris

On 14/05/2014, at 6:03 PM, D <dow.hanson@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi,

I think I vaguely remember this coming up once before on here. I need to create and animate a Doppler radar weather type  graphic. Similar to this:

http://www.crh.noaa.gov/images/arx/top10/fayette0525.png

I need to be able to control its centre point and also the position of colours. The centre of the 'storm' would move between predetermined points over time. 

Feels like a job for Particular but I'm unsure of the most efficient way of going about it. I have 27 different positions for the 'storm' to move between in a minute so ideally the only manual key frames I'll be pulling will be positional. 

Suggestions for start points appreciated.

Thanks.