Make Form Cinematic

on Sep 9th 2011 with 111 comments
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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By

Rollover to read this author's bio or click through to see a full list of posts by this author.

Simon Bronson is an Australian freelance motion designer/editor currently working in London. If he’s not playing with trapcode form he’s probably taking photographs or eating crumpets....or both.  

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← Older Comments
  • Simon

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

    • http://aescripts.com Lloyd

      There is something very nice about your version. A perfect example of less is more. Great job!

    • Simon Bronson
      Author

      Lovely stuff, I really like where you’ve taken this. I’d never have thought to use a high key background but it works!

      • Simon

        nice that you like it :) thank you

  • Tobias

    @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:)

    • http://aescripts.com Lloyd

      The images that Simon used can be downloaded from Wikipedia Commons from the link above

  • Tolo

    Muy Muy Muy bueno
    Gracias Totales

  • http://www.thehouseofcurves.com andrew daffy

    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!

  • http://www.klasandersson.com Klas

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

  • ismael
  • http://www.3dand2dmag.wordpress.com Aleso
  • trak

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

    • Simon Bronson
      Author

      Awesome, you really took it to a new level! You’ll have to teach me some of your tricks now.

      • Trak

        Thanks Simon…not sure to have something to teach you…. Your scratch plate and dust techniques with Form were very clever…

    • http://aescripts.com Lloyd

      Fantastic execution! Loving your piece.

      • trak

        thx man ;-) , just added strings layers and Kaleidoscope

    • Simon

      great! :)

  • Mark

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

  • Katarina

    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

  • finemotionvision

    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.

    • finemotionvision

      and by the way…here’s my effort inspired by yours and all the other positive minded people on AE Tuts and Vimeo….

      http://vimeo.com/4784209

  • Simon Bronson
    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.

  • peter

    Super cool, man!

  • Damo
    • Simon Bronson
      Author

      sweet. with that music it feels like the opener to a james bond film.

  • daniel

    GREAT love it. This is a great website!

  • http://www.klasandersson.com Klas

    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 :)

  • Rockinamadeus

    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
      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

        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

        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.

  • http://www.paldesign.org Mohammad

    thanx alot bro..

  • lmdang

    toll!!

  • rakesh

    nice work…..

  • Joel

    thanks for sharing! good inspiration

  • R. Murdock

    Fantastic tutorial. Thank you so much!

  • http://www.bluefx.net Gyorfi Szilard

    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!

  • http://www.tintypepop.com Gabriel

    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!

  • http://link name

    comment4,

  • asfur

    very nice! thank you…

  • http://www.media73.co.uk Andy Lunn

    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

  • a

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

    aaaaggggh!

  • a

    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

  • http://www.chairtv.com JK

    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

  • Mehmet

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

  • kobanimo

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

  • illd

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

  • http://www.youtube.com/user/leonbenlolo Leon Benlolo

    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

  • http://vimeo.com/28872254 Tanner

    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

  • Chris

    where can I download the source files for this??

  • mennoes

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

  • http://2g-art.me Caleb

    Hey Simon,

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

  • Nidia

    Awesome tutorial! you’re very talented!

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