Make Form Cinematic

Tutorial Details
  • Requirements: After Effects and Trapcode Form
  • Difficulty: Intermediate
  • Run Time: 32:57 min

Final Product What You'll Be Creating

Twice a month we revisit some of our reader’s favorite posts from back in the archives of Aetuts+. Today we’ll look at an amazing post from Simon Bronson. This tutorial was first published in May 2009 and dives into some simple principles that are sure to enhance your graphics-based projects! Let’s take a look…


The secret to making motion graphics look sexy and less digital is to borrow some tips from the cinematic production world. Simon breaks down a bunch of tips including how to build your own light leaks and film scratches! The tricks learned in this tutorial can be applied to any motion graphics piece.


Tutorial

Download Tutorial .mp4

File size 252 MB


Public Domain Images used in this Tutorial


1. The_Lady_with_an_Ermine
2. VanGogh-starry_night

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Discussion 111 Comments

Comment Page 2 of 2 1 2
  1. Simon says:

    Nice tutotial – i ended up with this http://www.looksneunow.com/motion/ – of course not as cool as yours ;)

  2. Tobias says:

    @simon: The author said it was taken from a photograph. If you don’t have such a photograph I don’t think it’s to hard to create those pixels your self manually:)

  3. Tolo says:

    Muy Muy Muy bueno
    Gracias Totales

  4. andrew daffy says:

    stunning stuff. An informative and clear demo, some wonderful insights into naturalistic effects, and utterly beautiful results. Your voice is also very soothing, you could read bedtime stories about precomposing layers. Thanks Simon. MORE PLEASE!

  5. Klas says:

    Brilliant stuff!! Loved the filmleaks and the way to use form to create filmjunk. Thank you very much!

  6. trak says:

    here’s mine : http://www.vimeo.com/4692440 .. Thanks for the tut :-)

  7. Mark says:

    fantastic and intriguing technique you have there Simon. I like your analogue on digital take on thing (if that makes any sense)…

  8. Katarina says:

    I really agree with f1a5h84ck… The whole thing you’re describing is pretty useless. You just sift through the options not really knowing what they do and why. Everyone with a little brain and curiosity can do that.
    As for the scratches its stupid enough to combine them with this ultra high tech effect such as form, let alone making it in AE. Why simulate something when you could just make a telecine of the real dust and scratches and superimpose them in your final shot.

    I think you don’t know much about it…just showing off

  9. finemotionvision says:

    Don’t listen to the detractors, Simon!

    Sterling effort and quite inspiring. Great first tutorial and if it’s good enough for Peder Norrby – it should be good enough for most After Affects users. The guy’s a genius.

  10. Simon Bronson says:
    Author

    Thanks for all of your feedback guys. Positive or Negative, it all helps to see what people are getting out of these tutorials.

    I’ve started a channel on vimeo where we can share our creations.
    http://vimeo.com/channels/44255

    Once you’ve got something to show, drop me a message in the ‘shout box’ and I’ll add it to the channel.

    In your video descriptions I’d love to read about any interesting techniques you’ve come up with as well.

  11. peter says:

    Super cool, man!

  12. daniel says:

    GREAT love it. This is a great website!

  13. Klas says:

    Hi Simon,

    Just finished watching your demoreel and the other formexperiments and I love your work. Very inspirational!!

    And I love the music as well :)

  14. Rockinamadeus says:

    Hello I am kind of new to the whole Trapcode word of AE. I am around half way in when you start adding cameras and when I go to zoom in on my form the sphere particles are very pixelated. Anyone know what’s going on?

    • Simon Bronson says:
      Author

      Could be that your focus distance is off, try disabling depth of field first. If it looks ok you’ll need to tweak your focus distance.

      • Rockinamadeus says:

        Well I tried it and still no luck. I’ll give the tutorial a redo and I’ll get back to you. Thanks man

      • Rockinamadeus says:

        Alright I got everything working. This is a fantastic tutorial, I want to see more stuff like this. Great job! I’ll post my result to the Vimeo channel.

  15. Mohammad says:

    thanx alot bro..

  16. lmdang says:

    toll!!

  17. rakesh says:

    nice work…..

  18. Joel says:

    thanks for sharing! good inspiration

  19. R. Murdock says:

    Fantastic tutorial. Thank you so much!

  20. Masterpiece! What an original way to use form, cool effect with the light transition.

    Besides that, the narration was easy to follow

    One of the best tuts here

    Thanks!

  21. Gabriel says:

    Hi Simon,

    You put together an easy to follow and informative tutorial. I used your light leak technique with lights in 3D space for my latest video:
    http://www.vimeo.com/7678769

    Thank you!

  22. asfur says:

    very nice! thank you…

  23. Andy Lunn says:

    Liked it, cant get my particles razor sharp though any ideas? and i have tried different dof.

    Something a little different. Created in 2 hours.

    http://www.vimeo.com/11341580

  24. a says:

    i wish you would explain what you are doing a little more as you do it?????????????

    aaaaggggh!

  25. a says:

    sounds like yur just whispering to yourself, makes it very hard for a newcomer to follow this tut.

    flying through steps hardly explaining any thing as if you expect everyone to know their way around after effects, pisses me off…

    but the outcome looks great, hope i get to that point.

    thanks anyway

  26. JK says:

    Hi
    Great Tutorial, however I am puzzled by the intro to making dust…
    how I get the pixels you use?
    It seems you have a layered photoshop document with a few pixels?
    not sure how to come up with that..
    perhaps i’ll just skip this part of the tutorial.
    Thanks again

    Jim

  27. Mehmet says:

    Yep, what can I say. Great great tutorial. Easy to understand and not boring.. And badass skills of course.
    Cheers

  28. kobanimo says:

    Thank you for great tutorial. Here is mine http://vimeo.com/19019714

  29. illd says:

    Great work – it has so much character and analog feeling!

  30. Leon Benlolo says:

    I used several tutorials on this site to make this video of my holiday in Manicore, a small town in Amazon, Brazil.
    Hope you like it.

    http://youtu.be/Jcxb_7_su_Y?t=1m35s

  31. Tanner says:

    This is such an easy tutorial. Makes me sorta mad I was working on something pretty cool using the same basic ideas… Should have let me do it and go over the music effector.

    http://vimeo.com/28872254

  32. Chris says:

    where can I download the source files for this??

  33. mennoes says:

    How to get those Plates your using? For example the Scratch Plate!
    Great tutorial, thanks in advance!

  34. Caleb says:

    Hey Simon,

    Where did you get the dust comp that you imported in the first step?

  35. Nidia says:

    Awesome tutorial! you’re very talented!

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