Posted May 01, 2020 by droid productions
I'm going through final testing for Love of Magic's Act IV's public release; one of the things I spent a lot of time on in this episode was integrating video into the game. Here's a shot of Emily going super-saiyan.
Video originally started out as a still shot in DAZ. Since I was bored and sipping a drink I decided to see if I could do anything with it in After Effects.
Once that started, I went back and animated her in Spine (giving the very subtle movement to her base model).
The background is a stock image from Shutterstock; I start it zoomed out fully, then pull it in to give the feeling that Emily's getting closer. I also added a Radial Blur, taking the blur value up as it zooms in.
The eyes and sword are using Video Co-pilot's amazing Saber Effect, a free AE plugin that's quickly become my go-to effect for magic. The eyes are masks, while the sword is a straight line.
The final result was so epic it needed some epic music to go with it; I love Alexander Nakarada's work, and his title Wrath totally felt like it hit the right tone. In retrospect I should have faded it at the end, though (ingame it's used with the same music, but cross-faded in engine, the actual music video is loaded without sound.