Learning AE (Adobe After Effects)

Although not on the list of Passion project options we were told that we could come up with our own creative task. For me, learning how to use an industry grade visual effects compositing program has been a goal. I knew it would be very challenging but I had learned how to use an industry grade editing program made by the same company. I decided I would tackle the task with a can-do attitude and determination.

After Effects is a program with such detail I can barely serve an introduction in this paragraph, but I will do my best. One of the first effects that I created in After Effects is shown in the video to the right. This single shot took me around 6 hours of work to complete! This is partially due to the fact that I am a novice when it comes to VFX and compositing. VFX and compositing does take a huge amount of time regardless of your skill level however. I am happy with the result I ended up with. The basic process I went through to make this shot is as follows: Make a point track of each eye individually, create two null layers, parent the point tracks to their corresponding null layers, add a red solid layer for the left eye, use the pickwip tool to parent it to the camera track, mask a shape around your eye so that the solid only comes through where your eye would have been, add another mask to help with blending but make sure it doesn't go to the edge of the eye, parent the masks to the left eye point track, do the masks and solid layer again but for the right eye this time, blend these together using multiple tools, duplicate the solid layer and add the glow effect from the effects panel, keep adding layers until you reach the desired level of glow, stretch the horizontal axis of glow to get the anamorphic light flair effect. That is the basic outline of this effect. As you can probably see VFX and compositing is a very long process, nonetheless I find it quite enjoyable!