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.

Me 2 Me 2 Me 2 Me 2 Me 2 Me 2 Me etc.

This looks great, and was very simple. I framed the shot the way I wanted and left the camera running. Shot myself and captured.

Then in after effects I just opened up the mask settings in my timeline. Split the footage with shift, command, D and lined them up in the timeline. Then I just used the pen tool to cut myself out (the sitting me) and there you have it.

Easy way to get as much "you" as you need.

Willy and Billy from William Maddox on Vimeo.