Custom After Effects Plugins

Using AI to Build the Tools I Wish Existed

After twenty years in After Effects, there are certain looks, like reeded glass, bleeding ink, or Risograph halftones, that always end up needing a messy stack of fifteen adjustment layers and pre-comps. I started wondering: what if instead of asking AI to generate the final image, I asked it to build the custom plugin I actually needed?

I don’t know how to write code, so I pointed Google Antigravity at the Adobe After Effects SDK, described the exact controls and visual behaviour I wanted as a motion designer, and went back and forth testing until we had five working macOS plugins. It’s all about shortening the gap between thinking “I wish I had a button for this” and actually having it in my Effects menu.

Role: Concept, Look Development & Creative Direction (built with Google Antigravity).

001. Solco

Solco gives you the look of architectural reeded and fluted glass inside After Effects in a single effect, with controls for the glass ridges, refraction, highlights, and a bit of organic wobble.

↓ Download Solco.plugin (macOS)

002. Poro

Poro mimics the way real liquid ink bleeds and spreads into paper fibres, something a standard blur never quite gets right, with simple sliders for ink density, paper roughness, and dark pooling edges.

↓ Download Poro.plugin (macOS arm64)

003. Punto

Punto brings the tactile feel of a Risograph print into After Effects, complete with halftone dot screens, soy-ink colour palettes, slightly misaligned colour plates, and paper grain.

↓ Download Punto.plugin (macOS arm64)

004. Stria

Stria stretches pixels outward from a point along any angle. I made it for those everyday moments when you quickly need to extend a background plate or turn a small element into a directional motion smear.

↓ Download Stria.plugin (macOS arm64)

005. ParticleFlowX

Most particle plugins ask you to keyframe emitters in empty space. With ParticleFlowX, I wanted a plugin that simply watches your video layer and lets the movement inside the footage push the particles around like smoke or liquid, picking up the colours of the shot as it moves.

↓ Download ParticleFlowX.plugin (macOS arm64)