Saturday, May 16, 2009

Final Project Bonus

FINAL PROJECT PART 2

The next part of my project was for a film project I did in another class. I desired to make my intro cool so I decided to do a bit with after effects as a way to take care of this desire and to couple it with my after effects final project, a little two birds with one stone action if you know what I mean.

For this I took footage of me zooming in on a reflection of an air vent. I couldn’t zoom in all the way with the camera so my goal was to make after effects do this. This was extremely difficult and I got Ben’s help on this one. We created a mask that looked like vents right in the same place as the actual air vent. We then motion tracked and I believe a few other things I can’t even remember how to do. The end result was rocketing the camera into blackness via the camera tool.

At this point I created a simple title sequence. I aligned the text in a 3D world of blackness and made the camera travel in a “U” shape. I also made it feel a little unpredictable with its movements by messing with the cameras positioning. At the end of the sequence the camera moves in on air vents that I created using masks. Layered behind the air vents is actual footage from my film project.

It turned out really great and I am really satisfied with how it looks.

Brazil After Effects Segment from Matt McClure on Vimeo.

Friday, May 15, 2009

Final Project

FINAL PROJECT

My project is a series of green screen clips mixed with animations that are a test for videos I will be making this summer for my business.

The first step in the workload was to make the animations. I compiled 3 different animations: my business logo, an apple, and a car spilling gasoline.

For my business logo I had to create the design in photo shop. Then, in after effects, I created a mask to animate the stem of the plant to look as if it were growing. I then attached the leaves with anchor points to the stem and scaled them up and rotated them to make it look as if they were also growing. The hard part was the next part. I took the heart logo and broke it down into particles that repelled inside a mask and then played it backwards to get the desired effect.

The apple was the easiest part. I simply photo shopped 3 different apples: a normal one, one with a bite in it and one that was brown on the inside. I then animated them together.

For the car spilling gas, I drew a person, created a gas pump, and photo shopped a Ferrari. I then animated my person grabbing the gas gun from the gas pump and then sticking it in the Ferrari’s gas tank. At this point I created gasoline by using a particle effect and then using two masks to contain the oil.

Now after all of this was done I filmed my segment in front of a green screen I made in my room. The biggest challenge was the lighting, but everything worked out in the end.

Once I had my footage captured on the computer, I did a quit edit in Avid and then exported everything to after effects. Once I had my animations and footage in after effects it was play time.

I started by using the color key tool to key out the green screen background. I then created masks around the sides where my green screen ended (my green screen was too small and this was a big problem). I used a lot of masks to get a relatively desired clean look. Also I did some very minimal roto-scoping in places where it was needed.

The next part was putting my logo with my green screen footage. I had to make it look like a stem was growing out of my hand. This required a lot of positioning key frames. I then created a mask and put my face in the background of the footage so I could blow the logo out of frame. To animate this I just scaled the logo really big and changed its position in order to achieve the effect of it coming towards the camera.

The next part was to work with the apple animation. Once again I used a lot of positioning points in order to make it look like the apple was in my hand. I also scaled it smaller when I brought the apple in to my wind up right before I threw it at the camera. And once again I scaled it large to make it look like I threw an apple at the camera.

The next part was the easiest. I took my animation of the car spilling gas and just put it in the left corner of the screen.
Once I was done I rendered it, and uploaded it to Vimeo.

: )

Final Project from Matt McClure on Vimeo.

Wednesday, April 29, 2009


Untitled from Matt McClure on Vimeo.


Here is a little addition to my project. More to come!!!

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

For my final project I am working on a couple of things…
1.) The main part of my project is to create animations to enhance green screen videos I am creating for my business.
For the first animation of my final project I have created a hand that grows a plant out of it and creates a particle heart logo around the whole piece. This is actually the logo for the website for my business that I am working on.
Check out these 2 videos to see how it has progressed…


Logo Test 1 from Matt McClure on Vimeo.



Logo Sparkle Test from Matt McClure on Vimeo.

2.) The second part of my final project is to polish my directing workshop scene with some after effects post work. For example, I will play with the lighting and color tone of the scene as well as create some steady cam shots.

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Thursday, March 26, 2009