Ink Riot

Black strokes and coloured smoke burst outward around the subject. The marks carry the thick and thin of a loaded brush, so they read as drawn at speed.

The energy comes from the strokes leaving the frame. Ink that stays inside the edges settles into a background pattern, which is what the entry warns about.

Heavy black strokes with tapered ends, travelling outward from behind the subject. Thickness varies along the length of each one the way a brush unloads.

Coloured smoke fills the space between the strokes, softer and slower than they are, and gives the black something to sit against.

The subject stays sharp and cleanly lit. The effect only reads as an effect when the person underneath it is clean.

Use it for a music piece, a sports cut, a title card, or anything that needs force without a setting.

Skip it when the background matters. The ink replaces it.

Collage layers cut paper and photograph fragments over the image, with torn edges and mixed scale. It is built out of pieces of other pictures.

Look at what the marks are made of. Torn paper and photographic scraps is Collage. Wet brush strokes and smoke is Ink Riot.

The strokes stay neatly inside the frame and the shot settles into a patterned backdrop. Say the strokes fly outward and leave the frame.

The second failure is a still image with ink painted onto it. Ask for the ink bursting and the smoke moving, or nothing in the shot travels.