Tudor "ted" jelescu
Forum Replies Created
-
Well, it sounds like you’re having fun with the project and that’s what matters. I am quite familiar with Pompeii, as I just visited the site last November. 60 minutes is a lot of work, and I think you’ll loose a lot of younger viewers on the way. Most folks now a days are used to short attention span and fast cuts. My recommendation to use a “look” like roto toon or similar comes from mainly two directions:
1- You can’t fight big budget visual effects- now a days with all the fx movies coming out, anything that does not fit that kind of quality visually is immediately categorized as “low budget”, old and cheesy. So you either go for the big production look, which involves lots of money or lots of time and expertise, or you go for the artistic expression, which is another way to say you find a gimmick to make your low resources look interesting enough that the viewer will buy it and find it interesting enough to be patient and follow the idea behind it.
2- Everyone can do a movie at home right now- the technology is available and every 10 year old is able to shoot some great looking footage on his GoPro in full HD or even 4k, use a few graphics templates, a edit template and pump out a great looking movie in hours. The point is to go for a different look, something that is your personal interpretation of the way things are supposed to look. Weather it is a cartoon, pastel painting, graphic novel or super saturated look that depends on you. When you work with different elements that come from various sources you will run into a clear issue: your compositions will look like various elements put together. What you need is a unifying element that can rick the mind into thinking that all that is in the frame belongs in the frame.
So my final 2 cents: if you’re going for realism then it will be impossible to achieve as a beginner one man band. Go for an achievable goal, something that will enable you to be creative and not get frustrated with details. After all, you want to continue to have fun in what you’re doing and you want to finish what you started.Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist -
There are no silly questions- here are a few links that will explain the terms and give you an idea on what plugins you could use to get that look:
https://www.redgiant.com/products/toonit/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBxepka2krI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7hfrJwtzpU
Oh, yeah, and 73 is like the new 53 I hear…
Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX ArtistSome contents or functionalities here are not available due to your cookie preferences!This happens because the functionality/content marked as “Google Youtube” uses cookies that you choosed to keep disabled. In order to view this content or use this functionality, please enable cookies: click here to open your cookie preferences.
-
Easy- Motion Tile, select mirror edges in the settings and extend tiles only as much as you need.
https://helpx.adobe.com/after-effects/using/stylize-effects.html#motion_tile_effect
Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist -
You’re aiming high, which is always good! Shorten the dolly shot, get some angles that help perspective and trick the eye where you have flat cards like the statues. Bring some lights in the scene to have a bit more modeling. Shorter shots and more cuts will make for a more interesting viewing experience. Vary the shots (wide, medium, closeup). Above all add color grading to blend in the various elements and give it a feel – that helps the viewer forgive many errors and buy into the shot. It is more important to create a feeling that is acceptable and interesting than accurate historical representation. Try even a Roto Toon look – this will help create a uniform look to a shot that is composed with many unlike elements.
Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist -
The example you gave is actually pretty simple. All they have in there is a still layer with artwork that depicts the city and several layers of smoke/ash cloud footage that are animated to look like they are moving towards the camera. If you gather these elements the animation is not that complex. You could get fancy and layer the city artwork to have a 3d space and then use a particle generator to create the ash clouds.
For free smoke or even time lapse footage search youtube- plenty of free stuff posted on there that you can download.
Good tutorials on smoke/clouds with particles are only one google search away.Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist -
It all depends on the art direction – if you want to keep skin tones un-altered then use the lights on the actors without color gels and get a few accent lights with color filters to bring color on the objects in your shot. If you do not mind skin tones altered- use color gels on all your lights. One other thing- dress your talent with clothes that have high contrast and make them use objects with high contrast in light and dark tones. This will enable you to select highlights and bring in the neon glow into your shots. I highly recommend having a AE machine on location and doing several tests to see how your setup will end up looking with all fx in.
Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist -
The scooter is in the same exact spot in both shots, so when the dissolve occurs the only pixels that change are the ones of the girl to the grass – no need for roto work.
Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist -
Light in such a way to get lots of contrast when you shoot. Put strong color filters on some lights. A lot of the glow is created by isolating the highlights in post and then applying a glow (32 bit color space). Some of the glowing areas are generated by animating masks (glowing eyes for example). Saturate the colors in the footage as well using Hue/Saturation or Colorista.
Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist -
Unless you want the people who are affected by the drink to wear the same color clothes before and then change to the same color after (in which case you can dress them all in the same color, something that it’s different from the rest of the colors in the shot, pull a color key and affect the individuals separately by using garbage mattes) you will need lot’s of roto work. Mocha seems like a good way to achieve this, with a combination of tracking and animated masks.
Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist -
Use the Waveform you generate as a Track Matte for the blue solid, combined with an animated mask that reveals the color as the music progresses.
Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist