Jackson Spencer Ocean Man Review 4/11/2016
"The ocean and a man become one."
Due today: Using After Effects for the creation of water-like effects that the imply form of the man
Upcoming dates:
4/11 --> 4/15 Tweaking the position and opacity key frames on the effects, adding smaller splashes and layering them to look more real
4/15 --> 4/22 Finishing a more in depth environment for the ocean man to be placed into for the final
I first looked into using the Trapcode Particular plug-in for After Effects to program a particle field that would be modifiable around a shape (the animation), and could be coded to look like water, so then I could place it over my animation using a mask to create the illusion that the drawing was made of water.
but I soon realized that the plugin was actually very expensive, so I had to find another way to create the same effect using other methods in After Effects.
So I converted the frames of my animation into png files, opened them in Photoshop, and created a batch action that would cut out the animated man in each frame and save it. Then I opened the png files as a sequence in After Effects.
I placed the animation of the man on the top layer and applied the Simulation filters such as CC Blobs, CC Glass, Change Color and experimented with their different modifiers to create something that appeared like liquid. Then, in combination with a motion blur, I created four null objects that were linked with the positions of copied versions of the liquid man, and made them to follow the limbs of the man with keyframed motion paths. Using the CC Mercury filter, I could turn the copied versions of the man into splashes of liquid, so I could then create splashes of liquid that followed the movement of the man.
The movements seemed to work pretty well, the challenging part was getting the splashes to look one with the man, but I think that once the keyframes of the motion path get a bit more attention and I mess with the opacity of the different layers I can get them to appear more fluid.
Think about contraposture when running (left arm forward, right leg forward, then the other leg and arm). splash working well. dark tones look good but perhaps sky should be a bit lighter so waves and man are similar colors but not sky. adding rain isn’t needed, rather, spend time making the ripples and splashes on the body occur more regularly. perhaps mask the outline with something that makes parts of the outline transparent, moving the mask around on each set of frames, so the outline turns into a backlight / rimlight thrown by the moon on the top edges of the figure and is broken up continually.
ReplyDelete