A question on how to recreate the extending pixel-block effect from the GitHub Education Ceremony

[Random9]

Dear Adobe After Effects entrepreneurs,

I just watched the GitHub Education Graduation ceremony on Twitch:

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/651561261?filter=archives&sort=time

In the beginng and throughout the video they create an effect in which the pixels of an image extend out as blocks in a sort of wave. I understand the concept of time jamming to recreate the wave effect, but I have been using the Adobe suite for a while and do not know how to recreate that extending pixels effect.

If you're wondering what I am talking about just click the link to the Twitch livestream or look at the screenshot right here:

This might be doable in Blender with lots of efforts, but I believe there must be some plug-in or template I have not heard of that must make this easy in Premiere Pro or After Effects. If you know about such, please let me know, or explain to me, if you find the time, how I can recreate this exact effect!

[Mylenium]

That's easy enough in any 3D program. After all, it's just blocks popping through an infinite plane. The only tedious part potentially is setting up the actual font if you don't have specific tools for that. Otherwise this would be litterally a 5 minute job in Cinema 4D using MoGraph effectors and generators. Same for Blender - there's a bunch of mograph scripts that rig particle systems and deformers for thatr sort of effect. Where AE is concerned, a simple way might be Card Dance, though creating the parameter maps would not be particularly intuitive.

Mylenium