Assignment #9

She Vanished into Thin Air

She Vanished into Thin Air from Marcy Elliott on Vimeo.

Hi guys!

So for this project I actually made my friend disappear......just kidding!

I filmed some footage of my friend, Karen, standing in the middle of a field and pretending to be a witch. Then I filmed the same exact frame/scene without anyone standing in the field.

I captured both of these clips into Final Cut and cut them down to take them into After Effects. Then I placed the clip of Karen in the field at the beginning of the timeline, and shifted the empty field to the last half of the timeline. I then drew an inverted mask over Karen at the moment when she was supposed to disappear (the mask is offscreen before this moment). This mask is keyframed to follow Karen's movement, and eventually grows to cover the entire screen. I expanded and feathered this mask to make the transition more natural.

After I was done masking and putting the two clips together, I created two new shape layers for my particle effects. I applied CC Particle World to these layers. The first particle effect I worked on was the red smoke. The very first thing I did was to line up the floor grid with the actual ground plane in the scene. I changed the particle type to faded sphere. Then I played with the birth and death colors, longevity, birth rate, velocity and opacity. I keyframed both the birth rate and the opacity throughout the scene.

The second particle effect I worked on was the sparkles. I copied over all of the ground parameters (X, Y, and Z space), as well as the emitter parameters. I changed the particle type to star. Again, I played with the birth and death colors, longevity, birth rate, velocity, and opacity. I keyframed the birth rate, velocity, and opacity of the stars throughout the scene. I also added a bounce effect to the stars when they hit the floor.

I then rendered out the animation and added both the music and credits in Final Cut.

I like particles a lot!