I'm sure you don't always wanna read about my vfx stuff, so today I will share my digital speed drawings with you. Again, subscribers of my YT-channel might already have seen them; but for everyone else, I hope that those videos will inspire or entertain you a bit:
Sunday, October 4, 2009
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
The End Is Near
I blew up Earth today. Sorry, Microsoft.
Well, I've been in school and during a not-so-exciting lesson, I decided to play around in After Effects. For once, I wanted to do something creative, something to see if I could bring more things to life than lightning and fire blasts. So I generated a neat little outer space-scene in After Effects - all done digitally in 2D - to experiment with certain aspect of such a scenery. An okay-looking universe and planet were realized soon and I decided that the scene offered too few excitement - so I made the planet be hit by a devastating superlaser and blow up, which was fun to do.
So here you have my simple, yet somewhat entertaining result:
Well, I've been in school and during a not-so-exciting lesson, I decided to play around in After Effects. For once, I wanted to do something creative, something to see if I could bring more things to life than lightning and fire blasts. So I generated a neat little outer space-scene in After Effects - all done digitally in 2D - to experiment with certain aspect of such a scenery. An okay-looking universe and planet were realized soon and I decided that the scene offered too few excitement - so I made the planet be hit by a devastating superlaser and blow up, which was fun to do.
So here you have my simple, yet somewhat entertaining result:
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
A bunch of new tutorials
Well, it's not exactly like I didn't do anything in the past months. I just forgot to post my Youtube-updates here, so... here we go.
First of all: I received a lot of questions about my force lightning tutorial posted early in 2008. An aweful lot of questions. Most of which have been answered a long time ago in that video's FAQs, but nobody really seems to care about reading them.
So I decided to create an additional video answering a few of the most frequent questions.
Next in line are two videos that I felt would have practical use for most artists involved in fanfilming, even though they're not exactly the most impressing video tutorials.
The first is a short tutorial about how to normalise the volume level of several mp3 files in a quick, easy and reliable way.
The last is more of a most valuable tipp for any lightsaber rotoscoper: it explains how to handle objects in front of your lightsabers blades very, very quickly. Forget about subtraction masking around; instead, invest four minutes of your time in watching my little tutorial and save yourself the hundredfold amount of time in the future when rotoscoping lightsabers.
So, yeah, so much for my latest video updates. Oh, and on a sidenote: I have been accepted on an Advanced Graphics College where I'm likely to spend the next two years. Hopefully, I will emerge from this experience as a much better and more professional visual effects artist.
First of all: I received a lot of questions about my force lightning tutorial posted early in 2008. An aweful lot of questions. Most of which have been answered a long time ago in that video's FAQs, but nobody really seems to care about reading them.
So I decided to create an additional video answering a few of the most frequent questions.
Next in line are two videos that I felt would have practical use for most artists involved in fanfilming, even though they're not exactly the most impressing video tutorials.
The first is a short tutorial about how to normalise the volume level of several mp3 files in a quick, easy and reliable way.
The last is more of a most valuable tipp for any lightsaber rotoscoper: it explains how to handle objects in front of your lightsabers blades very, very quickly. Forget about subtraction masking around; instead, invest four minutes of your time in watching my little tutorial and save yourself the hundredfold amount of time in the future when rotoscoping lightsabers.
So, yeah, so much for my latest video updates. Oh, and on a sidenote: I have been accepted on an Advanced Graphics College where I'm likely to spend the next two years. Hopefully, I will emerge from this experience as a much better and more professional visual effects artist.
Saturday, July 4, 2009
How much work goes into a 4 1/2 seconds lightsaber video?
Watch this little breakdown on the visual effects work I did to find out.
Friday, November 28, 2008
What's wrong with me!?
Okay, I guess you all will have noticed by now that I've haven't had any updates in months. First, I was just being a bit lazy. I didn't post every tutorial or video I did here - check my Youtube-channel for all my stuff - and I've also lost my hard drive a few months ago. First, everything was completely gone. Then, I was able to recover some stuff. Then, I had to find out that a lot of stuff I could recover doesn't work anymore. Which means that I only have very, very few working videos or project files left, which has put my work to a complete halt, of course. Plus, I don't even have After Effects anymore. I haven't had a chance to retrieve AE yet and it's gonna take quite a while until I will.
So, sorry folks, but I'm afraid you will have to stick with what I already got for a while.
So, sorry folks, but I'm afraid you will have to stick with what I already got for a while.
Saturday, May 3, 2008
"Sorry, guys, I gotta sit this one out!" - Peppy Hare
I've got some bad news today.
Remember when I announced that I would enter the Lightsaber Choreography Competition VI? Well, in a nutshell, I am officially out due to a handful of reasons like running out of time, having troubles constructing the lightsabers, and stuff like that. Also, it was kinda hard to motivate my crew for this whole duel thing while they're busy at university.
I am considering filming a lightsaber duel short film later this year and releasing it apart from the whole LCC-thing; but I am not too sure what I can come up with. However, it won't happen until summer anyway, so there's enough time left for me to think this through.
I am also playing with the idea of doing a collaborate short film that's not Star Wars-related at all with a fellow filmmaker and good companion of mine, BenMcEwan. But we'll just have to see about that, and again, it wouldn't happen until summer anyway.
So no LCC-entry from me this year. Maybe 2009? We'll see. However, there is some good news as well: I set up an account over at funpic.de to host my files on and am now able to permanently offer you the After Effects project files for various effect tests I'm bringing you. You can already download the first two project files for my latest fx tests, the burnmark and the fireblast, at http://petergerri.pe.funpic.de/projectfiles/.
In future, I'll try to offer the project files along with the effect tests in every new post.
Remember when I announced that I would enter the Lightsaber Choreography Competition VI? Well, in a nutshell, I am officially out due to a handful of reasons like running out of time, having troubles constructing the lightsabers, and stuff like that. Also, it was kinda hard to motivate my crew for this whole duel thing while they're busy at university.
I am considering filming a lightsaber duel short film later this year and releasing it apart from the whole LCC-thing; but I am not too sure what I can come up with. However, it won't happen until summer anyway, so there's enough time left for me to think this through.
I am also playing with the idea of doing a collaborate short film that's not Star Wars-related at all with a fellow filmmaker and good companion of mine, BenMcEwan. But we'll just have to see about that, and again, it wouldn't happen until summer anyway.
So no LCC-entry from me this year. Maybe 2009? We'll see. However, there is some good news as well: I set up an account over at funpic.de to host my files on and am now able to permanently offer you the After Effects project files for various effect tests I'm bringing you. You can already download the first two project files for my latest fx tests, the burnmark and the fireblast, at http://petergerri.pe.funpic.de/projectfiles/.
In future, I'll try to offer the project files along with the effect tests in every new post.
Thursday, April 17, 2008
another burn mark fx test
Hey there,
yeah, once again, I gave those burnmarks a shot. Featuring a nice, moving video footage where I used AE's built-in tracker to motion track the camera pan and apply it to the animated burnmark. Plus: digital sparks to help sell the effect.
There was no kind of practical effect involved in making this video. No pyrotechnics, no trackmarks for the burnmarks or such, and not even a lightsaber prop, which made the process of doing the lightsaber quite a long and painful experience.
New: [download the AE-project file for this effect]
yeah, once again, I gave those burnmarks a shot. Featuring a nice, moving video footage where I used AE's built-in tracker to motion track the camera pan and apply it to the animated burnmark. Plus: digital sparks to help sell the effect.
There was no kind of practical effect involved in making this video. No pyrotechnics, no trackmarks for the burnmarks or such, and not even a lightsaber prop, which made the process of doing the lightsaber quite a long and painful experience.
New: [download the AE-project file for this effect]
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
digital fire blast test
Hey there,
I was out shooting some stuff on sunday, so I now have some footage to play around with. One effect I am currently working on is digital fire, inspired by the effects in the X-Men movies.
I came up with a method that allows you to create some nice-looking fire blasts and balls from the scratch, based on any kind of b/w matte, even on a simple stream of particles. This is what I threw together yesterday:
Took me some time to animate the particles so they'd do the right kinda movement, and to mask my hand in front of it out. But I think it ended up not too shabby, except for the sound effect maybe, which was just a slightly altered force rumble-sfx I threw into the composition right before rendering the whole thing. Kinda cheap, I know, but it couldn't be helped.
New: [download the AE-project file for this effect]
I was out shooting some stuff on sunday, so I now have some footage to play around with. One effect I am currently working on is digital fire, inspired by the effects in the X-Men movies.
I came up with a method that allows you to create some nice-looking fire blasts and balls from the scratch, based on any kind of b/w matte, even on a simple stream of particles. This is what I threw together yesterday:
Took me some time to animate the particles so they'd do the right kinda movement, and to mask my hand in front of it out. But I think it ended up not too shabby, except for the sound effect maybe, which was just a slightly altered force rumble-sfx I threw into the composition right before rendering the whole thing. Kinda cheap, I know, but it couldn't be helped.
New: [download the AE-project file for this effect]
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
[tutorial] how to do that damn interactive lighting
Hey there,
yeah, you're right: I'm going to show IT to you. How to do that famous fake digital interactive lighting for light cast by a lightsaber. w00t!
It's not exactly complicated, though. I hope you will still be impressed by the awesome video tutorial nevertheless. Have fun.
yeah, you're right: I'm going to show IT to you. How to do that famous fake digital interactive lighting for light cast by a lightsaber. w00t!
It's not exactly complicated, though. I hope you will still be impressed by the awesome video tutorial nevertheless. Have fun.
Thursday, January 31, 2008
r2d2-style hologram effect
Hey there,
looks like it's a good week for updates, because I just keep 'em coming. Actually, I won't bring you anything new today, so those of you who have already examined my YouTube-account a bit might be a bit disappointed, as well as startled that I turned out to be a fan of ATLA. However, those of you who didn't might be interested to see a (rather old, but oh well) effects test of an animated, kinda 3d-hologram.
Note that impressive interactive lighting on Artoo and the wall. Took me more than three minutes to think of a way to do that (and three days to notice that I forgot to animate it along with the hologram, but then again, nobody seemed to care).
looks like it's a good week for updates, because I just keep 'em coming. Actually, I won't bring you anything new today, so those of you who have already examined my YouTube-account a bit might be a bit disappointed, as well as startled that I turned out to be a fan of ATLA. However, those of you who didn't might be interested to see a (rather old, but oh well) effects test of an animated, kinda 3d-hologram.
Note that impressive interactive lighting on Artoo and the wall. Took me more than three minutes to think of a way to do that (and three days to notice that I forgot to animate it along with the hologram, but then again, nobody seemed to care).
Monday, January 28, 2008
[tutorial] animated force lightning, dooku style
Hey there,
it's been more than two weeks since my last update. To make up for that, I now present you a new video tutorial: how to do force lightning in After Effects.
The tutorial provides instruction on how to recreate lightning in a similar look to Dooku's lightning in Attack of the Clones; you'll also learn how to animate it and how to give it the proper glow.
I hope you like it and it will turn out useful to you.
As a side note:
This tutorial actually contains copyrighted content from the Star Wars-movies. But don't think of an infringement affair right now; this should be perfectly fine thanks to the terms of fair use. If you think differently, feel free to contact me in leaving a comment or send me a message at Youtube, and I'll be willing to discuss this matter with you.
it's been more than two weeks since my last update. To make up for that, I now present you a new video tutorial: how to do force lightning in After Effects.
The tutorial provides instruction on how to recreate lightning in a similar look to Dooku's lightning in Attack of the Clones; you'll also learn how to animate it and how to give it the proper glow.
I hope you like it and it will turn out useful to you.
As a side note:
This tutorial actually contains copyrighted content from the Star Wars-movies. But don't think of an infringement affair right now; this should be perfectly fine thanks to the terms of fair use. If you think differently, feel free to contact me in leaving a comment or send me a message at Youtube, and I'll be willing to discuss this matter with you.
Sunday, January 13, 2008
a cloning / replication effect
Hello there,
I'm presenting you today a new effect I've kind of invented during the post production. What started to be a "regular" cloning effect, turned out more complex and appealing than I would have expected when capturing my footage.
°°° A short vfx breakdown on this effect:
Achieving this effect required several steps. First of all, capturing the footage. As you may have guessed by now, I placed my camera on a still position and captured my performance for the two of mine.
Having the footage brought into After Effects, I started a short, but yet enervating process of masking out my left silhouette so I could blend both parts of the footage together. By then I had figured out that it wouldn't suffice to have my right clone just wriggle out of my left self. So I needed an additional effect to sell this thing.
What I did is that I duplicated my left self, set it ontop of the video, and applied the Liquify-effect to it that I had discovered for my lightsaber wall cuts before. I just used some well placed keyframes to distort my left self to my likings, so that it looked like it was attached to my right clone. Getting this to look right used up quite some time, but it turned out satisfying in the end.
When this was done, I wanted to add a finishing touch: camera movement, so that you wouldn't recognize that this was a still shot, which makes the cloning effect more interesting for the audience. It's not exactly hard to add artificial camera movement in post in After Effects; you can always apply random values for the position of your video using the Wiggler. But that didn't look realistic enough, so I came up with a far better solution: I took my camera again, went to the position I had placed the camera before and recorded the same wall with a clearly visible tracking point attached to it. That way, I got some natural-looking camera movement, which I tracked in After Effects later and applied it to my finished footage. Piece of cake, right?
I'm presenting you today a new effect I've kind of invented during the post production. What started to be a "regular" cloning effect, turned out more complex and appealing than I would have expected when capturing my footage.
°°° A short vfx breakdown on this effect:
Achieving this effect required several steps. First of all, capturing the footage. As you may have guessed by now, I placed my camera on a still position and captured my performance for the two of mine.
Having the footage brought into After Effects, I started a short, but yet enervating process of masking out my left silhouette so I could blend both parts of the footage together. By then I had figured out that it wouldn't suffice to have my right clone just wriggle out of my left self. So I needed an additional effect to sell this thing.
What I did is that I duplicated my left self, set it ontop of the video, and applied the Liquify-effect to it that I had discovered for my lightsaber wall cuts before. I just used some well placed keyframes to distort my left self to my likings, so that it looked like it was attached to my right clone. Getting this to look right used up quite some time, but it turned out satisfying in the end.
When this was done, I wanted to add a finishing touch: camera movement, so that you wouldn't recognize that this was a still shot, which makes the cloning effect more interesting for the audience. It's not exactly hard to add artificial camera movement in post in After Effects; you can always apply random values for the position of your video using the Wiggler. But that didn't look realistic enough, so I came up with a far better solution: I took my camera again, went to the position I had placed the camera before and recorded the same wall with a clearly visible tracking point attached to it. That way, I got some natural-looking camera movement, which I tracked in After Effects later and applied it to my finished footage. Piece of cake, right?
Thursday, January 3, 2008
TFN's LCC VI
Today, the official Lightsaber Choreography Contest VI was announced at the TFN Fanfilm boards. Participants all over the world enter this contest to demonstrate their skills and ideas in the unique art of starwarsy lightsaber combat. This contest was the birth of the legendary internet-phenomenon "Ryan vs. Dorkman" and other excellent pieces of lightsaber choreography as well.
The reason I am telling you this is that I decided to enter this contest together with a friend, for the very first time. The contest starts friday, february 1st 2008 and the deadline is sunday, june 1st 2008; we will start preparations during this month, and will hopefully begin training our choreography at the beginning of february, planning to start shooting after a week of training or so. Chances are that, since we have about three and a half months left after shooting, the video will feature full lightsaber effects if we rotoscope like mad; in that case, we certainly won't miss the chance to add all kind of fancy effects to the thing, especially lightsaber burnmarks will sure be featured in this video.
So, stay tuned. More informations on this project will be brought to you as soon as possible; if we get the video right, we will hopefully be able to offer some production stills, unrotoscoped footage and vfx and choreography breakdowns as well.
The reason I am telling you this is that I decided to enter this contest together with a friend, for the very first time. The contest starts friday, february 1st 2008 and the deadline is sunday, june 1st 2008; we will start preparations during this month, and will hopefully begin training our choreography at the beginning of february, planning to start shooting after a week of training or so. Chances are that, since we have about three and a half months left after shooting, the video will feature full lightsaber effects if we rotoscope like mad; in that case, we certainly won't miss the chance to add all kind of fancy effects to the thing, especially lightsaber burnmarks will sure be featured in this video.
So, stay tuned. More informations on this project will be brought to you as soon as possible; if we get the video right, we will hopefully be able to offer some production stills, unrotoscoped footage and vfx and choreography breakdowns as well.
Saturday, December 29, 2007
another wall cut fx test
Hey there,
I have been experimenting with my new wall cut method I've recently demonstrated in the video tutorial on how to do lightsaber wall cuts. And with the basically same method, but a bit of tweaking and improving here and there, I came up with a far more convincing and pleasing result. Check it out and share your thoughts on it with me. Comments and critics are always welcome!
I didn't include any sparks, contact flash or smoke effect this time, so you could concentrate more on the actual wall cut effect itself.
I have been experimenting with my new wall cut method I've recently demonstrated in the video tutorial on how to do lightsaber wall cuts. And with the basically same method, but a bit of tweaking and improving here and there, I came up with a far more convincing and pleasing result. Check it out and share your thoughts on it with me. Comments and critics are always welcome!
I didn't include any sparks, contact flash or smoke effect this time, so you could concentrate more on the actual wall cut effect itself.
Friday, December 28, 2007
[tutorial] having a lightsaber cut through a wall
Hey there,
I am proud to present you my first of hopefully many video tutorials. It is about 17 minutes long and covers how I did the wall cutting effect I've recently created; it concentrates on how to make the wall melt away when the lightsaber is cutting through it and it also gives a short breakdown on how the digital sparks and smoke were created.
Both parts of the tutorial are available on Youtube, so sharing them will not be difficult. Don't forget to let me know what you think about it.
[Part I]
[Part II]
I am proud to present you my first of hopefully many video tutorials. It is about 17 minutes long and covers how I did the wall cutting effect I've recently created; it concentrates on how to make the wall melt away when the lightsaber is cutting through it and it also gives a short breakdown on how the digital sparks and smoke were created.
Both parts of the tutorial are available on Youtube, so sharing them will not be difficult. Don't forget to let me know what you think about it.
[Part I]
[Part II]
new burn mark fx test
Hey there,
I've been working on a new method for lightsaber burnmarks, or actually a wall cutting effect like we've seen in The Phantom Menace when Qui-Gon cuts through the security door on the trade federation ship. Check it out here:
There's not gonna be a short vfx breakdown for this one since my next move will be to release a full video tutorial on this effect.
I've been working on a new method for lightsaber burnmarks, or actually a wall cutting effect like we've seen in The Phantom Menace when Qui-Gon cuts through the security door on the trade federation ship. Check it out here:
There's not gonna be a short vfx breakdown for this one since my next move will be to release a full video tutorial on this effect.
advanced lightsaber effects stuff
Hey there,
I am glad that I can already start showing you some of my stuff.
I present you a pretty short video clip of mine where I tried to do a basic lightsaber with a puddle-like distorted reflection of it.
°°° A short VFX breakdown on this video:
It wasn't exactly hard to achieve this effect. I started with a regular lightsaber effect according to Ryan Wieber's method for doing lightsabers in Adobe After Effects (original video tutorial can be found on http://www.ryan-w.com/).
The major difference in doing this and Ryan's method is that I, conveniently, had the possibility to use AE's "Beam"-effect for the lightsaber instead of masking around too much.
The next step was adding the sparks for the saber's contact with the virtual floor. I used AE's built-in Particle Playground to generate digital sparks. Making them glow similar to a lightsaber, they turned out nice enough.
Having done that, I came to the part I was really concentrating on in this effect test: the reflection. We first got to see this effect in Ryan vs. Dorkman 2, when Ryan drags his lightsaber through a puddle and we can see the reflection. Ryan did this thing in a practical way, since he simply dragged a force fx-saber with a real glowing blade through it. Adding a lightsaber glow to it and its reflection and blending in some stockfootage for the sparky stuff turned out to be great looking, and fans liked it.
That inspired me to try this out myself. I have been thinking about the idea of digital waterreflections for sabers before, using some kind of distortion effect, but never really gave it a shot. Thankfully, Ryan's outstanding work there inspired me to finally do that.
So, I tried out the most simple method that came into my mind for this: I copied the lightsaber layer, left the animated ending point of the saber alone and shifted the starting point way down, so it looked like there was a vertical reflection to the saber. Not too hard to work out so far, I knew that I would need animated distortion to imitate the water-puddle like ripple. So, I just decided to try out various effects; but fortunately that proved to be unnecessary, since the first effect I applied turned out to be a winner: Turbulent Displace. Just some tweaking here and there and some animated evolution, and it turned out to look pretty convincing!
The rest was easy, since I added the sparks' reflection a similar way: I flipped the sparks layer upside-down, changed the origin of the particle emitter to follow the first sparks layer and applied the Turbulent Displace-effect with the same settings as the lightsaber reflection. That was pretty much all I needed to do.
For the sake of fancyness, I decided to add some digital smoke; an easy task I have done before. Just made a new layer, applied an animated Fractal Noise-effect to it and animated two or three round masks that would change their shape in order to make the smoke grow bigger and higher.
I am glad that I can already start showing you some of my stuff.
I present you a pretty short video clip of mine where I tried to do a basic lightsaber with a puddle-like distorted reflection of it.
°°° A short VFX breakdown on this video:
It wasn't exactly hard to achieve this effect. I started with a regular lightsaber effect according to Ryan Wieber's method for doing lightsabers in Adobe After Effects (original video tutorial can be found on http://www.ryan-w.com/).
The major difference in doing this and Ryan's method is that I, conveniently, had the possibility to use AE's "Beam"-effect for the lightsaber instead of masking around too much.
The next step was adding the sparks for the saber's contact with the virtual floor. I used AE's built-in Particle Playground to generate digital sparks. Making them glow similar to a lightsaber, they turned out nice enough.
Having done that, I came to the part I was really concentrating on in this effect test: the reflection. We first got to see this effect in Ryan vs. Dorkman 2, when Ryan drags his lightsaber through a puddle and we can see the reflection. Ryan did this thing in a practical way, since he simply dragged a force fx-saber with a real glowing blade through it. Adding a lightsaber glow to it and its reflection and blending in some stockfootage for the sparky stuff turned out to be great looking, and fans liked it.
That inspired me to try this out myself. I have been thinking about the idea of digital waterreflections for sabers before, using some kind of distortion effect, but never really gave it a shot. Thankfully, Ryan's outstanding work there inspired me to finally do that.
So, I tried out the most simple method that came into my mind for this: I copied the lightsaber layer, left the animated ending point of the saber alone and shifted the starting point way down, so it looked like there was a vertical reflection to the saber. Not too hard to work out so far, I knew that I would need animated distortion to imitate the water-puddle like ripple. So, I just decided to try out various effects; but fortunately that proved to be unnecessary, since the first effect I applied turned out to be a winner: Turbulent Displace. Just some tweaking here and there and some animated evolution, and it turned out to look pretty convincing!
The rest was easy, since I added the sparks' reflection a similar way: I flipped the sparks layer upside-down, changed the origin of the particle emitter to follow the first sparks layer and applied the Turbulent Displace-effect with the same settings as the lightsaber reflection. That was pretty much all I needed to do.
For the sake of fancyness, I decided to add some digital smoke; an easy task I have done before. Just made a new layer, applied an animated Fractal Noise-effect to it and animated two or three round masks that would change their shape in order to make the smoke grow bigger and higher.
Check out my 'crazy' visual fx stuff
Hey there.
This is the first time I'm posting here, and I am announcing that I will use this blog to share my visual fx work with everyone interested. Sometimes I'll just show you stuff I am working on currently or that I did out of boredom and curiousity, and other times - not as often, though - I will provide hopefully useful information in posting video tutorials where you can check out how I achieved certain visual effects with Adobe After Effects. Stay tuned for those, you might learn something from them or at least gain some inspiration.
Have a nice day.
This is the first time I'm posting here, and I am announcing that I will use this blog to share my visual fx work with everyone interested. Sometimes I'll just show you stuff I am working on currently or that I did out of boredom and curiousity, and other times - not as often, though - I will provide hopefully useful information in posting video tutorials where you can check out how I achieved certain visual effects with Adobe After Effects. Stay tuned for those, you might learn something from them or at least gain some inspiration.
Have a nice day.
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