The way I work - After Effect part

by 4:04 PM 38 Things you said
Hello there,
You don't need to see how I did the drawing to understand what I'll be talking about on this new post. If you suddenly feel like you need to know the way I draw, just click on the link ... right ... THERE which is the drawing I used to make the animation that you can see on the pow ... POW!

First of all, as I draw on photoshop, I always keep my different objects on separate layers to help me use them well in AfterEffect afterward. In that way, I will a lot of time but if you haven't done it, you can cut the picture.

For Raphael, I had to cut his shoulders to make a second layer of broader shoulders which would be used in the effect of breathing. I also added two different drawings of eyes: One that is half-closed and the other one completely closed. That will be enough to make a good eye blinking. Finally, as Raphael is a bad-ass, I could make his mouth move a little to show his rage. This is also a layers I did in photoshop before importing everything because it saves me a lot of time in that way. If you are better at AE than PS, you might do it in another way.

Using only one composition, I do all my animation of the turtle. As I have a separate body part (his hand and weapon) I use another composition to make the movements. It's a 3 second loop I did for that one so the moves have to be quite gentle.
It all looks too green and once over the background, it looks even worse ... that's normal ... and weirdly, I did that on purpose because I had planned to make it all grey-ish.
Once every layer is ready, I put all of them in a new composition where I'll work on them to look good all together. Something I like to do to create 3D layers which is a great strength of After Effect. I will use a camera to slightly shake and give the impression of somebody holding a camera. This should give more life to the animation as something too static is a bit boring to me.
Once the 3D layers are done, I often just try new things with the color modes and some effects to give each animation a different style.
I'll repeat again so that nobody comes and tell me that I did what and what wrong: I'm only showing the way I do it, I'm not telling it's the perfect way to work or anything.

You can see the other turtles animated:
Leo
Don
Mike (coming soon)

Leave a comment if you have any questions and thanks for watching!

Francis Caron

Developer

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38 Things you said:

oinyo said...

Love ninja turtles! keep up the great blog!

Makel said...

Lookin good!

ah_poo23 said...

Im impressed! nice work!

CollinBeloin said...

kudos, you did a good job

Barton said...

Holy cow! you have talent

James said...

Anything Ninja Turtles gets my vote! The pics look crazy!

Stephen said...

That's amazing man. I'm loving your progress. Keep it up!

nazz said...

good job this is awesome. thanks

Quick Reads said...

Wow it looks super super awesome, i mean it! :D Thanks for sharing your progress! Take care!

Dejch said...

good job m8!

Moobeat said...

great tip

Verona said...

can you show us stuff from any video games you made?

Francis Caron said...

There's a small cute video game (spot the difference) that is about to be sold ... maybe not too, it might take 2-3 months.
I'll post it when it's sold!

icey said...

dude, the background totally looks like a picture i took in Taiwan. i'll let you know when i upload it...

Francis Caron said...

Cool, I did that in 5 minutes with some brushes :) Happy to know it looks like something at least haha!

Jetah said...

My favorite turtle!

Malkavian said...

im digging the battle scars on the turtles.

parsnip.celery said...

Huh. I used to mess with photoshop when I was into html web design but not so much any more.

Kunta Jay said...

Ah dude, awesome. I'd love if you could do me a banner for my blog. Props man +followed

Francis Caron said...

@KuntaJay: I'd be happy to do it for you!

Leminur said...

That is so awesome! It reminds me of Mortal Kombat's endings so much! I wish I could do such thing...

1HipHopBlog said...

That is a really good job!

Braden said...

Wow man these are awesome! How long have you been drawing?

Kunta Jay said...

@Francis Really? Thanks man. You can contact me on twitter @x804 or just email me

DerpyHerpy said...

Amazing work you have here. Keep it up dude.

Unknown said...

You should consider doing some sort of an online comic, maybe even like a motion comic with your animations. If you have someone who is willing to write, you could do the art and lettering. Just a thought. I envy your ability to draw

Anonymous said...

This is amazing! You're very talented. and I love the turtles. :D

Unknown said...

Great job!

Chicity11 said...

Great job, just started using photoshop a couple weeks back myself.

Manuel Elias said...

Agree with XceptioN there.
A digital graphic novel would be ill.

Dave said...

Awesome pics there. Brilliant post.

Daniel Smotherman said...

Awesome pics.

Elliot MacLeod-Michael said...

Very nice work. TMNT forever!
+followed

Barbeque said...

wow cool! TMNT!

can i save those awesom turtles in my cool pictures folder?

ZKMin said...

Very cool keep up the great work!

Francis Caron said...

@Agoddammit: Yep!

Someone said...

wow this is so cool!
random rewiring

Vulcan Raven said...

great job, dude!