Dot matrix with depth cloud transition effect Could someone point me in the right direction to reproducing this effect which takes an illustration, breaks it into circles of color similar to what an inkjet printer would do, and randomizes depth of each circle so you can watch the illustration dissolve as you zoom into it.

I'm using Premiere CC and have experience with Maya and 3DSMax.
poor's solution makes sense to me. Use Blender or equivalent to create a basic particle system with a distribution based on the illustration. Give the particles some jitter within z-space, match your shot between edited sequence and Blender and just move the camera along the z-axis into the particle field in Blender.

I was hoping for something built into After Effects, but while I think there would be some tinkering to get the initial settings looking good, this effect could be reproducible relatively easily across illustrations.