Not entirely clear on your description of the problem, but here's some thoughts based on your screengrabs:   First step is to get the design right.  I can't work out from your post how you've designed the layers, whether in Photoshop, Illustrator, or natively in AE, as everything is precomposed.  I'm guessing maybe in AE natively, as there don't seem to be footage items in the project window.  Personally I'd design in Photoshop or Illustrator, unless there's a specific reason, ie you need to animate shape layers.   You need to have every layer in the main correct position before you apply the Puppet tool.  Once you apply a Puppet mesh, if you scale or move the layer with any other tools you will probably disrupt the mesh and get weird results.  Don't duplicate layers that already have the Puppet tool applied.  Apply the Puppet tool individually to each layer where it's required.  If you duplicate a layer that is laready Puppeted, reset the Puppet tool and start over on that layer.   In your second image the eyeball is extending below the lower lash.  If you combine the lash and white eyeball into one layer, you should be able to distort them together with one iteration of the Puppet tool.   In your third image, the lower lash looks distorted and weird.  You need to lock the left and right corners of the lash to the upper lash corners, so the eye is always wrapped by the lash line.  Try using the Starch brush in the Puppet tool for that.   If I haven't addressed your problem, please repost with a clearer explanation of what the problem is. ... View more

It looks like it may use a pre-animated typeface, although I don't recognise the specific one it may be.  You can find many such typefaces around to purchase, such as at aescripts.com   https://aescripts.com/after-effects/text/animated-font/   A few freebies here: https://speckyboy.com/free-animated-fonts-after-effects-templates/   ... View more

Please provide more information.  What format are you exporting?  What is the resolution and frame rate of your composition?   The most common issue that causes this problem is rendering to a lossless format that results in a file too large for a hard drive to play back reliably.   Try using the H264 presets first off,  to see if that helps. ... View more

You need to add Tapers to your stroke so that the lines taper from and to their origin points.  Then use Trim Paths to control how they are revealed and disappear.  Quick tutorial here:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fReYweptmtM   ... View more

I tried to reproduce your problem.  I don't have clean versions of your image so I just used Generative Fill to create a crude copy.  I used Photoshop's "Slect subject" to select the bug and create a black/white depth matte.  The results were the same in AE with Lens Camera Blur - a soft fringe around the subject when it's blurred.   However, if I then used the Depth Matte as a luma matte I was able to remove the fringe altogether, leaving a hard edge (Probably a bit too hard, you lose the sense of the blur.)   You could do the same if you're able to render a matte pass of your bug character without any background elements.     But ultimately I think this is just a limitation of the plugin.   ... View more

Not knowing a whole lot about your job, here's some questions:   Why is your Blur Focal Distance set to 194?  If you change it to 0 what happens? What function are Masks playing in your comp? Why are you using masks in the blur effect? ... View more

You can't download individual components of After Effects.  The Rotobrush tool is not a standalone plugin or file, it's integrated into the application.   ... View more

I don't have an immediate solution to your issue, sorry, but I can confirm that Motion Sketch is working normally on both systems available to me currently - both M2 Macs. ... View more

Can you post a screengrab of the effects control panel with all of the Camera Lens Blur parameters visible?   If you precompose the depth map layer and use Levels in the precomp to brighten the main body of the character to pure white, do you still get the halo? ... View more

First step is the obvious one:  have you tried restarting your computer?  Sometimes the GPU can clogged up, and a restart can clean it out.   Also, try turning off hardware acceleration in File > Project Settings, to see if that makes a difference.     ... View more

I'm running most of the major Adobe apps every day on an M2 Max Macbook Pro (96GB RAM) with no significant issues, so I think this may be an issue outside Adobe software.  Perhaps an OS, hardware or third party app or plugin issue.  Are you using any third party After Effects plugins in your projects?   Rosetta is Apple's emulation software that allows Intel coded apps to run on the M1/M2 systems until the software has been updated.  After Effects is M1/2 compliant and does not need Rosetta to run, so make sure you're not.  But if you're using third party plugins that are not M1/2 compliant this may be causing an issue. ... View more

It looks like your colour management is set to some kind of Log color space.   Go to File > Project Settings > Color.  The default colour management settings look like the image below.  Unless there's a specific reason, the safe setting for Working Color Space is "None".       I have also posted in the other thread you've created.  Might be wise to stick to one thread.   ... View more

Please provide as much info as you can about the source footage.  Where does it come from?  Do you know the camera type?  File format, color space, resolution, frame rate, file size etc.   What are the colour management settings for your system, and for your composition?  Please post screengrabs.   What do you mean by being "restricted in colour and font choices?" ... View more

Please provide more info.     What type of source file contains the audio?  Ideally you should use lossless audio files in AE, like WAV or AIFF.   Do you have a solid green line denoting your preview in the timeline?  Does the vision play smoothly?   What resolution and frame rate are used for your composition?   What type of hardware is outputting audio from your system, the internal audio or an external I/O device?  Have you checked AE's Settings to confirm you're using the correct audio device? ... View more

Switch from "Edit Value Graph" to "Edit Speed Graph". ... View more

I'd just do your roto in a standalone comp at the correct framerate, then nest that comp in your main comp.  Much cleaner, and less likelihood of error.   Alternately, if the footage is suitable, you might want to pre-render a copy of the roto footage adjusted to the correct frame rate, preferably using pixel motion frame blending.  Then import the new file, now at the correct frame rate, and start your roto work.  This will be more efficient because you'll have less frames to roto, but might create artefacts in the footage, so tread carefully. ... View more

It looks like you have imported your PSD files as Photoshop Sequences, rather than as still images.  After Effects sometimes defaults to this setting if you have a bunch of file names that are numerically sequential.  Make sure you uncheck the "Importer(format) sequence" checkbox when you import.   You can just right click and replace your current files in the Project window to fix these.   ... View more

You'll need to post full screen grabs of your interface with all edited parameters visible for us to work out what's causing the issue, if possible.  You've cropped out too much info to really understand what's going on in your project, or to work out what might be causing the different results in Premiere Pro.   In particular, it seems that if your Current Settings give you the desired result, it would be good to see what your current preview settings are. I'm guessing it's probably rendering at 50% resolution, then upscaling to your output resolution.    But I think using the Mosaic effect I mentioned in my second post on your 4 cartoon layers in the main comp is the best solution.  You'll be able to create blocky edges just on these layers, then render in Full Quality to preserve the antialiasing.   However, you're still scaling those layers to 200% in the main comp, so you'd be better off doing that in one of the precomps.     Ultimately, this is really a bit of a workflow issue - you shouldn't ever be scaling pixel-based layers by 600%, only vector layers.  If this were my job I'd probably trace the images in Illustrator to convert them into vector art.  It may require a bit of manual path adjustment if the images are too low-res.  Once it's vectorized you can scale to your heart's content in AE and never worry about it softening. ... View more

The Remove Grain plugin in AE has always been notoriously slow, especially when working with high resolution and frame rate like you are.  You could try using Premiere Pro and applying the Median filter, this will be heaps faster but not quite as good.  Or there are more efficient third party plugins like Maxon's Magic Bullet DeNoiser III, if you want to spend some money. ... View more

You can also fake a pixelized look using the Mosaic plugin, which has the added benefit of allowing some layers to antialias while others look blocky.  Here's a short tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Px3fCmAi6KY   ... View more

The blurriness you're seeing is normal antialiasing when you scale elements above 100%.  In your case, you're scaling the background elements 300%, precomping and then another 200%, so thats equivalent to a scale level of 600%, which is huge.     You've cropped all your screengrabs so it's not clear how you're previewing your work.  But my guess is that this may be as simple as the render quality setting.    Try rendering from the Render Queue with the Render Settings > Quality set to "Draft" rather than "Best" quality.  This prevents any antialising, causing blocky hard edges.  Which in most cases is not desirable, but might be what you're after for your 8-bit-gamer style graphics.   If that's not what you're after, please post again with a bit more explanation and all your preview and render settings.   Here's a sample of precomped text scaled to 600% (and rotated 3 degrees to create more diagonal edges).  The upper is Best quality (antialiased) and the lower is Draft quality (not antialiased.). You can see the same thing in your samples - in the first version your text is aliasing, but in the rendered (blurry) version the text is clean and smooth.     ... View more

I tried your project and there's nothing that seems to concern me.  The timeline is nice and responsive.  It started rendering a preview after 10 secs of no use, which is normal, created a full res preview of the whole timeline in just over 30 seconds.  I rendered the item in your Render Queue (that had rendered for you in 38 seconds).  Mine took almost twice that, 1 min 9 secs.  Rendering to ProRes, rather than H264, made no difference to the render time.   I then transcoded your source video files from H264 to ProRes 422 and replaced them in the project.  This reduced the render time by 1 second - woo hoo!  The thinking is that Apple silicon has hardware encoders and decoders for ProRes - but it hasn't made a significant difference in this example.   But I'm not experiencing any unusual slowdowns, shutdowns or crashes, like you've suggested.  I'm not sure what else I can suggest, sorry, other than maybe a clean OS install? ... View more

That's very strange.  I don't get the attachment dialog in this thread either, but you can see the OP posted an attachment, and I can still post attachemnts in other threads.  I wonder if there's a file size limitation per thread?  Anyway, in the meantime, can you maybe post a Dropbox, Google Drive  or WeTransfer link? ... View more

Just post a project file as an attachment in this thread.  I'm currently using the same machine - MBP M2 Max with 96GB RAM - and not experiencing any obvious issues.  I find Apple silicon to be pretty incredible during the design phase in AE, the timeline is so smooth and responsive.  (Although I do seem to have regular Dynamic Link issues when sending the AE Render Queue to AME.) Lets see if we can reproduce your issue on my machine. ... View more

The issue here is that you're not technically rotating the mask, you're animating the mask shape from one shape to another.  Think of it as morphing from one shape to another.  After Effects animates each mask point between your two keyframes.    Look at the top left corner of your mask.  As you move through the timeline, that point moves in a straight line to the end point, where it becomes the top right corner.  All four points of the mask do the same thing.  Because of simple geometry, the square becomes smaller while the points move from start to finish.   The hard way to fix this would be to create curved motion paths for each of the mask's corner points, so they move in a circular path.   The easy way is to use layer rotation instead of mask animation.  Turn off or delete your current mask.  Create a square shape layer above your jpeg layer, the same size as the current mask, and set it as a Track Matte for the jpeg layer.  Then animate a 90 degree rotation of the shape layer. ... View more

I've just tried exactly what you've mentioned and have no trouble at all.  The base layers stay anchored to the base when I expand 100 to 200 pixels horizontal height.   So perhaps there's something specific going wrong with your project.  Can you post a few screengrabs showing what happens? ... View more