Assignment 1 Progressive Work - Toy Town

Tutorial Link: http://ae.tutsplus.com/tutorials/vfx/living-in-toytown/
I have tried out this effect as I think it looks really interesting and cute! I have actually stuck for quite a long time to get the toyish effect. At first, I thought that the problem lies with my color correction and I need to adjust for the brightness, contrast and etc. In the end, I found out that I have missed out an important step, which is to change the Depth Map Layer to "2.focal plain" for the lens blur effect on my adjustment layer (lens effect).

I have noticed that missing step only after I had summarised the tutorial, which is why I like/enjoy summarising video tutorials into simple steps. I think that by summarising video tutorials can also help me to better understand how the effects are created too! :)

Steps (summary of the tutorial):

1. Create 2 solids and rename it:
-upper
-lower

2. Apply the "RAMP" effect to both of the 2 layers.

3. For the 'Upper' layer, I have done some adjustments:
-start color: black
-end color: white
-end ramp: 500.0, 500.0
-start ramp: 500.0, 0.0

4. Adjustments made also for the 'Lower' layer:
-start color: white
-end color: black
-end of ramp: 500.0, 750.0
-start of ramp: 500.0, 0.0

5. Change the mode from "None" to "Multiply" for the 'Upper' layer.

6. Select both 'Upper' and 'Lower' layer, go to pre-comp and rename it as "focal plain".

7. Create new adjustment layer, rename as 'lens effect'.

8. Apply the lens blur effect (Effect> Blur & Sharpen> Lens Blur).
-Adjust iris radius to "15"
-Change the Depth Map Layer to "2.focal plain"

9. Go to 'focal plain' comp, select both 'Upper' and 'Lower' layer and adjust the rotation.
(to show only rotation, the shortcut key is "r")

10. Create new adjustment layer, rename as "Color Correction".

11. Go to "Effect> Color Correction> Curves" and adjust the curve to flaten out the shadows and show more whites/highlights.

12. Go to "Effect> Color Correction> Brightness and Contrast"
-Reduce contrast to around "-10"
-Increase brightness to around "22"

13. Select the footage and posterize time (Effect> Time> Posterize Time) to reduce frame rate to "6".

14. Lastly, go to "Composition> Composition Settings" to preserve the frame rate.