After an entire day’s work I present my finished product: youtube.com/watch?v=zowb0qKyGVk
Done for now, anyway. I might go back through and tweak the effects since they seem a little overpowering. For some reason the vector pass disables the explosion modifier in the 2.56a Beta which meant I had to leave it out and therefore some of the effects I intended weren’t fully translating through.
(Dang these URL blocks for new members are a hassle! I appreciate the attempt at blocking spammers, but it makes it rather difficult to reference any online tutorials or other pages I’ve been following directions from and have run into issues with.)