lights

Prismatic is my first independent project since I have left my position as Creative Director at Autofuss and Google a few weeks ago. It has begun its existence as a proof-of-concept animatic for a larger, practical set I am currently developing. Soon though, it took life on its own and became a self-standing animation I am happy to share with you today.

If you haven’t yet seen Prismatic, strap on your virtual reality goggles and go check it out here. The rest of the article will make much more sense this way. If you are already familiar with the work (or just came back after I sent you to check it out), welcome. In this article I’ll talk about the process behind creating as well as publishing Prismatic, as well as about some of the lessons learned along the way.

Fireflies in an early evening.... It's probably no surprise that this video was vastly inspired by amazing photography of Yume Cyan. We combined simulated particle fireflies created with custom aperture sprites with a footage of the forrest and then revealed it with the mattes shot specifically for this project (as usual).

This tutorial is a hybrid between the Automated Light Rig and Scrolling LED Text. We will be building an animated image map driven light array that can be used for for either cool light effects or easily controlled particle emission.

While the entire project can be completed within After Effects, I will also jump into Cinema 4D every now and then and show you a very easy way for creating quite complex light arrays and importing them back into AE.

In this tutorial I will show you how to link your lights with automated samplers on an image map, creating an ever-changing, yet unified, light rig. While the tutorial explains the expressions in depth, I am also providing you with presets simplifying the entire process into just few clicks.