[Lukas Sprehn]

Doing this in After Effects is actually pretty simple.
Gareth Edwards, director of the feature film Monster and the BBC film Attila the Hun (part of Heroes and Villains) invented an After Effects techique called the ‘Poor Man’s Massive Shot,’ a name inspired by the software that was invented and developed specially for The Lord of the Rings, called Massive, which is now widely used in the industry for creating digital and fake crowds to fill up places with more life than possible by extras and shooting-people.

He has made several videos about the technique, but they only show breakdowns. He made a tutorial for it though, for the online VFX course called FXPHD. I own the tutorials he made. There is also one for matte painting.

Well, basically, you just shoot a person running in front of a green screen, following him as he run. Then you key out the background and the ground bellow, and then you just loop the shot so the person on-screen keep running. As well as centring the person in the shot.

Then you either track the person to a single 3D layer in a software such as Boujou or you use Mocha. You duplicate the layers and let them slide forward, so that it gives the illusion of a running person, or an army. To add some more realism, create a 3D shape for the layer to interact with, like simple hills, and project an image, like a landscape, onto it.

To create stationary armies or crowds, or just crowds running or walking around in a still shot, or one that is moving slightly, like in a town or something like that, simply duplicate people by using rotoscoping or a green screen, and use something like Mocha, which comes with After Effects.

Thank you for taking the time to read this short text tutorial 😀

Stay creative, and healthy,
Best,
– Lukas

Believe. I do.

[Lukas Sprehn]

This might be of use to you 🙂 It’s a beeakdown: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGOSaLNYnKc&feature=plcp&context=C2a46bUDOEgsToPDskIXNiBecXnYutIlFUp8XyG0

Not a painting, but still pretty much the same princip 😉