Diane...remind me to follow the guidelines next time and base the project on a fictional restaurant.

Halfway through this course, and getting inspired by the really phenomenal other projects people had uploaded, I realized that Twin Peaks was the fictional franchise I wanted to do...though there really aren't any good restaurants to play off of in the series. (There is of course, a restaurant by that name in the real world...something I discovered in the course of this project, an unintended irony, I suppose.)

So I soldiered on, taking inspiration from the opening credits sign, with it's hand painted view of the eponymous mountain tops. It needed a neon reboot, it seemed.

It always starts with a sketch...good old Field Notes.

Then I broke out the pen tool, had a bit of fun in Illustrator.

And of course, if I was going to design a neon sign, it had to have some sort of movement, right? That's one of the hallmarks of the medium...so I took the easy way out and built the movement around the population dropping by 1 as the sun rises, the same way the show originally starts out.

Then it was just a matter of watching most this lecture four or five times as I stumbled my way through AE, trying very hard not to compulsively hit the "a" key to try and bring up the direct selection tool.

So there it is. Thanks Jake, this was a phenomenal course, I had a blast, and I'm looking forward to seeing a few more of your courses as I blindly feel my way through learning After Effects.