My current Motion Graphics assignment is to make yet another title sequence. This time, it’s going to be an adaptation of Jim Butcher’s Storm Front. I’m working on a brush-and-ink on parchment style for the bulk of the piece. Here’s my illustration of Bob the Skull, Harry Dresden’s mystical advisor:
Intermediate Editing. Shot on a Panasonic DVX-100a in my apartment and the Art Institute’s greenscreen studio. Edited in Adobe Premiere Pro CS4, effects and mastering in After Effects CS4, and audio in Sony Acid Pro 4.
For this project, the class collectively came up with the title “What Goes Around Comes Around.” Then we each wrote down an adjective and randomly drew the words from a hat to give us a guiding theme for our videos. I drew “artificial.”
I had a very limited amount of time to accomplish my shooting, since I could only get into the studio for about three hours, and I hadn’t shot any of my empty plates yet, so I didn’t have camera angle and focal length data. I think I accomplished what I was after, though, for the most part. I think my shot composition is improving rapidly, but I need to set aside time for storyboarding next time.
Figuring out how to make the melted wax was a fun experiment. Here’s how it’s done:
Make a new layer above the candle. Edit > Fill > 50% Gray.
Set the new layer to the Overlay blend mode, add a layer mask, and fill the mask with black.
Activate the Bevel & Emboss Layer Style. Leave the defaults for now; they can be adjusted later.
With a large, hard-edged brush, paint white on the layer mask. The bevel will appear wherever you paint, but because the layer is set to Overlay, the gray is invisible—only the light and shadow appear.
Now adjust the bevel to taste.
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