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TSTV Graphic/Slate

All of this was composed in after effects except for the TSTV logo.

The background is just 2 layers. The floor was put in 3D and rotated on the Z axis. I put the TSTV logo and background in, then made a reflection of both layers after I changed the point of of interest to help me rotate and flop it. I skewed the image to help adjust the perspective and make it seem attached to the floor with the four corner pin. I had problems with this until I turned off constrain proportions. I added a fast blur to both reflection.

The light was kind of tricky. for the spot light effect instead of a spot, I used a trapezoid mask above the logo and dropped the opacity to 20%. I had to stretch the trapezoid up after I added the camera. I also repeated the edge pixels to soften it up a little. The light itself is just a point, with a few adjustments to the default settings. I wiggled the light 30 times per second with 30% intensity to give it a nice soft flicker.

For the particles I just used CC Particle world with faded sphere. Adjusted the color, birthrate, longevity, gravity, and inertia to make it swirl nicely on the burn/fire setting. Then after I added the camera I adjusted the Z radius accordingly.

The camera was fun, and I experimented with a few different movements before I decided a crash dolly would look best. A complication was the trapezoid used for the spot. I had to cut it until the camera had moved close enough to add it back in. So I faded it in at the opportune moment. It looked funny, so I correlated the reflections appearance with the spot light's appearance.

I added the lens flare effect and set myself up for the slate which was really simple. I almost used the same background as the original layer, with different colors and no floor. Put the text in, and added the motion. Then I threw in another lens flare and some motion blur to solidify it.

The transition took a little time, because I wanted a graphic match on the cut. Overall I think it turned out really clean.

I added the music in final cut. I hope you enjoy it!

Untitled from William Maddox on Vimeo.

-Will

Metroid's run for your lives ...

This was a fun little effect. I cut out a picture of Samus and placed her atop that little planet in photoshop. Then I took that image and stuck it in After Effects.

I wanted to have Samus charging up her laser beam. I went ahead and slapped a Beam affect on her. I made the start point her gun and the end point just off screen so it was faux 3D. Then i just adjusted the length and timing to where I wanted it.

Then I needed my little charge up particles.

I wanted little power spheres, so I went ahead and made my particles faded spheres after trying both bubbles and shaded spheres. I matched the color to the lightest part of the beam. My rate was only .2 per frame and my longevity was about half a second. I didn't want there to be much coming out of the gun, just a slight effect of charging particles. For the motion I ended up using the twirly and adjusted the camera position, so that they looked like they were spreading out from the gun rather than falling out. Then I adjusted the emitter position to line it up with the barrel of her cannon.

Boom! I'm a firing my laser!

Untitled from William Maddox on Vimeo.

motion tracking

I used 2 trackers to follow the top corners of this letter. I basically went frame by frame seeing if the trackers were following, then I would let it play and see if it would stay on. To try and reduce the rotation, shake, and scaling problems I went into the graph editor and removed keyframes that seemed to cause problems. Then I just attached a text layer to the null and made a nice little letter...

Untitled from William Maddox on Vimeo.

Falling in some sort of alternative universe

Nothing like Chroma Key.

It was pretty simple. I grabbed the footage. Then I used this keylight tutorial found here .

From there his hand was a little cropped b/c it went out of the shot. So I trimmed the workspace to a square I cut out around him. From there I just threw a glow on.

falling down like yikes. from William Maddox on Vimeo.

superman titles

This was a relatively painless procedure once you found the right walk thru online.

For this project I started out with my main body text "dorm antenna cable"

I set the background color and the font color and adjusted the kerning. Once I knew what I wanted the text to look like at the end, I animated per character and changed the scale and opacity. I also threw a blur on there as well. Then I turned on the ease to make it a nice fluid bump that runs through the text as it appears.

The superman text numbers:

I found a little tutorial that showed me how to change some of the specific settings on the echo filter. This achieves the text stretch. I turned on motion blur to help this as well.

To find out how to do this effect:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKmMHFsIxQc



Then at the end I put a camera on a null to dolly into the moving text.

This will be used as a closing slide for some TSTV commercials next spring.

Digital Slate from William Maddox on Vimeo.

=Will

A Shining Halloween Treat

So you love the shining and you love After Effects 3D. Whatever will you do to combine the two:

First:

I grabbed a pic of the Grady Twins and masked out the ugly crappy hotel hall from the movie.

I grabbed another hotel hallway and created a vanishing point in Photoshop to make it 3D.

Pull both of those badboys into after effects. I started out with my lights. I made an ambient navy light that would flash on an off still leaving some deep blue shadows. Then I placed a spot light at the light fixture in the picture. Made it point down and out towards the camera. I put a camera in there and dollied it forward while playing with the orientation to make the hallway rotate a little bit. I also added a bit of wiggle to give it a slight handheld effect with a magnitude of 6. From there I just added the Grady twins in and leashed them to the camera. I set some opacity key frames to make them ghost like and there you have it.

A new shining scene.

Shining Hallway from William Maddox on Vimeo.