How do you recreate that classic GTA San Andreas visual style in After Effects?

I think you’ve got a good sense of the starting points. I’d probably suggest using Colorama in Adobe After Effects with some work to limit the overall color palette in the scene. Restricting the number of colors and slightly boosting contrast can help recreate that stylized look.

For reference, the visual style in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is a mix of slightly exaggerated color grading, strong contrast, and simplified lighting. The game uses fairly bold shadows and saturated tones, especially in environments like Los Santos at sunset, which gives it that gritty yet stylized atmosphere. If you push warm tones (orange/yellow highlights) and deepen shadows with a slight green or teal tint, it can start to feel very similar to the original game aesthetic.

Another thing that helps is adding subtle edge definition. You can experiment with effects like Find Edges, Posterize, or even a mild cartoon-style outline layer blended on top. Keeping it subtle is important so it doesn’t look too “filter heavy.”

Ben Marriott made a video back in 2019 about using EBSynth to create different animation styles. You might be able to adapt that workflow as well. With EBSynth you can paint or design a single stylized frame (for example with bold outlines and GTA-style shading) and then propagate that look across the footage.

Another trick that can help if you're specifically aiming for the classic GTA vibe:

• Slight film grain or noise

• Mild posterization (8–16 color levels)

• High contrast lighting

• Subtle vignette and haze

Those small touches combined with color limiting can get surprisingly close to the stylized feel of older Rockstar titles like San Andreas without making it look overly cartoonish.