Glowing Fairy Wings

[Ian Corey]

Yeah, there’s this little-known effect called ‘Glow’. It’s in the Effects > Stylize menu.

I’d mask out the wings on an overlaying duplicate of the footage and then apply the glow. Then I’d mess with the Blending modes.

Lastly, I’d apply a bunch of Lens Flares.

/

[Ross Bradshaw]

Cheers Ian.

I’ll try out your suggestions. I think they will work for the frame of the wings. If Im using Glow I should make sure the wings frame are white so I can get maxium brightness?

Thanks again
Ross

[Ian Corey]

You wouldn’t have to make them as-white-as-white. The Glow effect has some operators that can assume different levels of luma and apply an adjustable level and radius of the glow.

For an other-worldly effect, try a wiggle expression on the Glow Intensity so that it “pumps” softly.

[Ian Corey]

With that said, don’t make the wings black or dark green or purple. The lighter, the better.

[Ross Bradshaw]

Ok cool. I didn’t know you could add the wiggle expression to an effect. Do I use the slider expression to do this?

Cheers Ian
Ross.

[Darby Edelen]

I would recommend running some tests if possible. Shoot a small part of the scene a couple of different ways and see what works best in post.

I would recommend using white wings, as these may be easier to effectively matte using a combination of garbage mattes, tinting and boosting contrast (the new tutorial on Sin City color effects has some good hints on how to do this, pay special attention to when he’s matting the jeans).

Another good idea, if possible, might be to set up lighting so that you can have a backlight on the character wearing the wings during shooting. Not only will this brighten the wings more and allow you to matte them easier but it will light the talent from the back (where the glowing wings would be lighting the talent). The danger here would be blowing out your footage, so the backlight shouldn’t be too outrageous, but enough to give a practical effect that you can accentuate in post.

Also, I’m not a huge fan of the Stylize > Glow effect, and in many cases you can get a better effect by using a Box Blur and changing the blending mode to Screen or Add… if you want to add color in you can paint it in to the layer yourself, or add a Generate > Ramp, or a Generate > Fill. For an even more advanced Glow you can add Noise & Grain > Fractal Noise to the layer before the blur and animate the evolution or offset (this would give it a cloudy aura look), you could even use the Color Correction > Colorama effect to add a range of color to the glow. You can layer these glows on top of one another for a more interesting effect. Basically, you have many more options for generating the look you want if you build the glow yourself.

Darby Edelen
Designer
Left Coast Digital
Santa Cruz, CA

[David Bogie]

[Ross Bradshaw] “I was ask if I would be able to make an actor’s fairy wings glow and look realistic. The shot hasn’t been done yet but its not been shot against green or blue so I was wondering if anybody out there would know of a way that I can make only certain parts of an image glow?”

Realistic fairy wings. That’s funny.

Since the shot hasn’t been done yet, you have an opportunity to really make your life easy. Tell you costume people you need to have the wings made of retrorelfective material. There are many products on the market but the one I know of is called Illuminite. It is a stretchy polyester that has retroreflective microprisms either woven in or bonded to the surface.

You mount a small lighting instrument next to your lens and the wings will glow all by themselves.

bogiesan

This is my standard sigfile so do not take it personally: “For crying out loud, read the freakin’ manual.”

[Ian Corey]

This is true. It’s not a specular reflection, like the kind that come off of mylar or mirrors. It’s more like the glass beads they embed in the lines on the highway to make them more visible at night.

Adding the expression to the Glow Intensity is easy. Apply the effect, then, in the Timeline, twirl down to Glow Intensity. Option/Alt-click the stopwatch. An expression will be generated, delete it and write wiggle(x,y); where x is the number of times per second and y is the level of Glow Intensity.

Of course you can use Sliders.

[Steve Roberts]

Yes. Any property that can be animated (i.e. has a stopwatch) can have an expression applied to it.

[Ross Bradshaw]

Hello all!

Cheers to everyone for all the advice.I will look into what everybody said and see which effect looks the most realistic (and yes I know how strange thats sounds).

I have been using AE for a bit now and I know (what I consider) a good bit of stuff but when it comes to putting it all togetjer and making it all work I seem to always miss important steps so thanks for explaining for me.

P.s
If ever you need advice on Premiere dont hesitate to ask.

Take it easy
Ross