What: There isn’t much to explain in ways of what this video is. So I’ll put it as simply as can. It’s a burning head! Err, burning gas mask, to be exact.
Why: Mostly, I was looking at the forums I frequent and realized that my previous inanimate avatar was rather stale. So Instead of using Illustrator or Photoshop to cook up something cool, I thought.. “Hey! let’s use After Effects! It’s easier to return desired results in AE anyway”. And so here we are. I’ve had many people (mostly on the forums where it popped up on) ask me how I did that because it looks, and I quote, “completely badass!”. So, sure. Why not.
How: When I explain the process over to myself, it sounds ridiculously simple. The entire animation took me 10-15 minutes max, and then some random tweaks here and there after the fact. Though, I realize it might not sound completely simple to any non-AE fluent reader. Here goes -
1. I took a screenshot that I had of the “Pyro” character from the game, Team Fortress 2 (seemed fitting). I imported that into Adobe Illustrator, where I used the Live Trace function on it, but retained the color. I believe I used a color depth of 32. So not a whole lot of detail was left in, but enough to show some comprehension in the finished animation.
2. I imported the above illustrator file into After Effects. For those confused as to why I would import the project file and not say, something like a .png, the reason being is that when you import a vector file into AE, it allows you to scale the layer without losing any clarity at all. If I were to import the .png(or any raster image) and scale to the size desired, it would look like pixelated garbage.
3. Trapcode makes a 3rd-party plugin for AE called Form. The Trapcode team is comprised of geniuses. The Form plugin is a particle grid that you can manipulate over the X, Y, and Z axis as well as apply various types of layer maps. For the Size layer mapping, I used the imported pyrotorso.ai. What the does is increases the size of the particle on the grid to correspond with the intensity of color on the image I used for the mapping. Keep in mind, that there are thousands of particles that are in the grid of this particular animation, so you shouldn’t be able to spot individual ‘dots’. You can, but most people won’t ever notice it unless they know to look for it.
4. Using this fire clip I got from Artbeats.com, I layered it over the RGB(or color) mapping of the Form plugin. So when the flame movie passes over one of the particles lit up by the pyro head, it will reflect the color represented in the video. Nifty, huh? But ok, that’s all well and good.
5.If we leave the animation like that, we’d have the same general effect of stenciling that pyro head over the video of the fire. But, we want the head to look as if it is rendered out of the fire itself and even look as if it is burning! So what do we do? Yes. We layer the fire clip OVER the Form animation. But do a little more than that, we apply a flowing fractal field that affects the opacity of the clip. So with that, you have some areas of the fire that show through at certain places, but never all at once. And since the field animates slowly, it will show through in a flowy manner.
6. At this point I was looking at the animation and thinking, yeah that looks MUCH better! Buuuut it’s still missing something. Right now it looks like a burning head, sure. But I wanted to give it the feel as if the head was actually IN the fire instead of made of fire. So I used another absolutely amazing Trapcode plugin called Particular to create burning embers that fly through the flames. It’s that extra subtle detail that completes the project. It may be small, but it adds a ton.
And that’s pretty much it. I adjusted coloring and added a faint glow later on. But it’s always nice to have the final product look exactly how you envisioned it before you embarked on the 15 minute journey.
Programs used: Adobe Illustrator, Adobe After Effects, Team Fortress 2
Burning Head
What: There isn’t much to explain in ways of what this video is. So I’ll put it as simply as can. It’s a burning head! Err, burning gas mask, to be exact.
Why: Mostly, I was looking at the forums I frequent and realized that my previous inanimate avatar was rather stale. So Instead of using Illustrator or Photoshop to cook up something cool, I thought.. “Hey! let’s use After Effects! It’s easier to return desired results in AE anyway”. And so here we are. I’ve had many people (mostly on the forums where it popped up on) ask me how I did that because it looks, and I quote, “completely badass!”. So, sure. Why not.
How: When I explain the process over to myself, it sounds ridiculously simple. The entire animation took me 10-15 minutes max, and then some random tweaks here and there after the fact. Though, I realize it might not sound completely simple to any non-AE fluent reader. Here goes -
1. I took a screenshot that I had of the “Pyro” character from the game, Team Fortress 2 (seemed fitting). I imported that into Adobe Illustrator, where I used the Live Trace function on it, but retained the color. I believe I used a color depth of 32. So not a whole lot of detail was left in, but enough to show some comprehension in the finished animation.
2. I imported the above illustrator file into After Effects. For those confused as to why I would import the project file and not say, something like a .png, the reason being is that when you import a vector file into AE, it allows you to scale the layer without losing any clarity at all. If I were to import the .png(or any raster image) and scale to the size desired, it would look like pixelated garbage.
3. Trapcode makes a 3rd-party plugin for AE called Form. The Trapcode team is comprised of geniuses. The Form plugin is a particle grid that you can manipulate over the X, Y, and Z axis as well as apply various types of layer maps. For the Size layer mapping, I used the imported pyrotorso.ai. What the does is increases the size of the particle on the grid to correspond with the intensity of color on the image I used for the mapping. Keep in mind, that there are thousands of particles that are in the grid of this particular animation, so you shouldn’t be able to spot individual ‘dots’. You can, but most people won’t ever notice it unless they know to look for it.
4. Using this fire clip I got from Artbeats.com, I layered it over the RGB(or color) mapping of the Form plugin. So when the flame movie passes over one of the particles lit up by the pyro head, it will reflect the color represented in the video. Nifty, huh? But ok, that’s all well and good.
5.If we leave the animation like that, we’d have the same general effect of stenciling that pyro head over the video of the fire. But, we want the head to look as if it is rendered out of the fire itself and even look as if it is burning! So what do we do? Yes. We layer the fire clip OVER the Form animation. But do a little more than that, we apply a flowing fractal field that affects the opacity of the clip. So with that, you have some areas of the fire that show through at certain places, but never all at once. And since the field animates slowly, it will show through in a flowy manner.
6. At this point I was looking at the animation and thinking, yeah that looks MUCH better! Buuuut it’s still missing something. Right now it looks like a burning head, sure. But I wanted to give it the feel as if the head was actually IN the fire instead of made of fire. So I used another absolutely amazing Trapcode plugin called Particular to create burning embers that fly through the flames. It’s that extra subtle detail that completes the project. It may be small, but it adds a ton.
And that’s pretty much it. I adjusted coloring and added a faint glow later on. But it’s always nice to have the final product look exactly how you envisioned it before you embarked on the 15 minute journey.
Programs used: Adobe Illustrator, Adobe After Effects, Team Fortress 2
Client: N/A
Production period: ~15 minutes