Role

• Composite the animation base on the storyboard.
• Client asked for a white laboratory background that reflects real life.
• Make it as if characters are in real life.

Project Goal

The artist in this case wanted her animation to appear in a real life setting while melding clay animation with it, but she didn't know how to do it. That's where I come in.

She showed me the storyboard for her idea (it's an animatic mp4 file storyboard). It has the character talking about his life and then randomly transforming into a clay figure as he is contemplating life.

I offered her solutions to save her main animation in alpha channels and for the clay animation to take pictures of it in a green background. She agreed and sent me the following mp4 files each including their own character set to appear in the scene.

I bring all the files to After Effects and begin the composition process. I had difficulty with the robot and the little ball man file as there were two distinct green colored backgrounds for the keylight to register. In order to fix this I put these files into Photoshop and began painting with one green color to make them more uniform. This process took around 10 minutes.

The laboratory background was found in iStock and the client was happy with it so I brought them all to AE. The characters are now together! This looks fine but the characters look out of place, plus there is no reflection of them to complement the background.

I begin to add layer styles to each character, masking the corners of each on their own pre-comp. These layer styles include inner shadows in the multiply mode.

With some carefully thought out light blue hues (cause no light is completely white) and shadows, the characters are looking much better in the setting. There is, however, still no reflection. I begin to copy files to rotate and reflect them, adding some opacity and color correction layers to blend seamlessly with the background. Finally, I apply some finishing touches like the camera zooming in to match with the storyboard, creating the final piece.