After Effects

In Post Production tutorial we have been looking at creating an imagine which looks animated in After Effects, some examples of this kind of image can be seen below.

3D Animated Photos

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rl3IbS9k8PQ

To start this project, we were given 2 files.

Some things to note about these two images, certain objects need to be cut out of both images. Each of these images are different colours, So colour grading will be needed to make them match up. And lastly each of these images are not at the same size as the Mars plate is at 2500x1406 and the Gravity plate is 2684x1200. Each of these images will fit into 1920x1080 space however.

The first steps were to cut out the Earth from the Gravity Plate. To do this, we used Polygonal lasso tool. This tool cuts objects out with a straight line instead of a freehand curve which can't always cut things out accurately.

Once George had been cut out of the Gravity plate, we also had to remove the spaceship from the Mars plate. To do this, i used the clone stamp tool. This tool can replace textures in images in an intelligent way.

The next part of this process was to add some small red shading to certain areas of the George cut out. Some parts were very dark blue and it may be difficult to change this with colour grading in After Effects, so we painted over on a layer with low opacity and the screen blending mode. The screen blending mode created a transparent layer of colour over the darker parts of the image, I was trying to cover the dark blues.

Another issue with the George image was his visor had clouds over it, so this had to be corrected with a layer mask. I used the eraser tool to get rid of some of the clouds, but I wanted to keep the edge of his mask so that it was still visible.

Next both of these images were added together into one Photoshop document so they could be imported to After Effects.

Once this was done, the two images could be put into After Effects. We created a new composition that was 1920x1080 and imported our Photoshop files. The two images were larger than this size. We colour graded the George image so that he was no longer blue, but he was a darker red so it looks like the light coming from Mars was reflecting on him.

For the animation, we had to link layers together so that when camera key frames were added in each image would move at the same time. If I didn't link the images, it may not look right. To create the illusion of distance between the two images the Mars plate had to be moved back so that it looked like it was in the distance away from George, and when the layers were animated it gave the illusion of movement.