[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.

[Ian Corey]

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

[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]

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.

/

[Ian Corey]

That would be this tut:
https://library.creativecow.net/articles/rabinowitz_aharon/junk_mattes/video-tutorial.php

[Ian Corey]

That would be this tut:
https://library.creativecow.net/articles/rabinowitz_aharon/junk_mattes/video-tutorial.php

[Ian Corey]

That’s the thing that probably won’t work so well. How do you take this robotic walk and blend it with a natural walk/stop/sit?

I think unless you do some clever animation or scene blending you’re going to see a jump. Expect that going in and you won’t be surprised when you have to play with the transition for an hour or two.

Also, I hope I don’t have to mention this, but when the talent is on frame left, you’ll see more of their front. When they are on the frame right you’ll see more of their back (assuming they walk left to right). It’s those 2 cycles where they are as close to center as possible that you want to build your work from. Otherwise they will look like they are walking in a Escher painting.

As far as the key goes, use Kelight to remove the background and review this tut for a possible mask. And/or remember the Effects > Generate > Fill.

[Ian Corey]

Depending on the performance of your machine (or, gulp, the client’s) your HD animation files might play back with a lot of chop in them. There’s a lot of data in Animation. I know my Mac Pro starts to stall about 10 seconds into a native res animation file.
If the client is a video professional- no worries.

[Ian Corey]

Yeah, if it’s just silhouette you’re in luck. You can take as little as one walk cycle and loop it. I’d recommend using a fast shutter to avoid having to work with motion blur. Also, pull the walk cycle from a few steps in, not the first set – it’ll loop better.

[Ian Corey]

Upgrading to CS3 will fix this problem.

You understand the repercussions involved in running AE7 on a Mac, right? It’s running under an emulator which eats all of your CPU and memory while it’s running. You can’t get ANYTHING done on that version.