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growing up as a kid I was always messing
around with my dad's camcorder I was
always illustrating and making puppets
and costumes and when I got to art
college finally I kind of combined all
my creative pursuits as a kid and
eventually I actually made it my job as
well the parallax technique is when you
take a still photograph you separate it
up into layers you bring it into a
compositing application like After
Effects and then you put those layers
into 3d space and then move the camera
through I was approached by ad hoc films
to create the animations for a film they
were doing for the World Wildlife
Foundation and using the WWF stills
I was able to use this technique to
create something really special so what
we're going to do is we're going to set
up a parallax shot it's going to be
still and we're going to be able to set
it up in a way that it gives us all the
right elements so that would be like a
nice shallow depth of field we're going
to have some action we're going to have
things in the foreground and the
background and then we're gonna be able
to take that apart and animate it I
think that's the one isn't it
oh cool so we've got the shot we can go
an animate now what I'm going to do now
is I'm going to bring the photo into
Photoshop I'm going to start cutting out
all the different layers and the
different elements in this case you've
got me use the sort of main subject and
I've got the ping-pong balls and I have
the background ready to separate them
all out
then I do paint back in the background
so that when we move the camera
eventually in after-effects you can see
behind the subject so this is the
original shot we've painted the
background as best we can and then I've
gone around and cut out all the balls
and finally that's me now that I'm happy
with my Photoshop layer document I'm
going to bring it into After Effects so
I've got all my layers and I'm going to
make them 3d and I'm going to place a
camera in there and now I'm going to
start positioning them in 3d space or
dead space and I'm going to throw the
the background layout and quite far back
because that's how it would have
actually been in reality and I'm just
going to size that up so it fills the
frame again I'm going to start placing
the bull's some right far in the
background and some in the foreground
and I'm actually going to duplicate some
of these full layers and I'm going to
throw them right into the foreground and
give them a real blur and I'm going to
do the same into the background I'm also
going to colorize some actually I've
only got red and orange ones here I
thought it'd be cool if we could have a
purple one and a propeller one or
something but let's do that so I'm
really happy with how this is looking
and I'm just going to now animate the
camera just going to do a simple zoom in
and and that's it just the keyframe at
the beginning and a keyframe at the end
and it's a very graceful slow movement
in it cool that's looking good now I'm
going to animate myself so I need to pre
comp this and I'm just going to pin the
various elements these are limbs and it
where the elbow is and over the course
of the 5 second duration I'm just going
to move very subtly these different body
parts it's always important just to
keyframe of the big
at the end and just have one smooth move
over duration of your comp I think the
other really important thing is is that
any movement you have this should be
really supple don't suddenly bring an
arm up really suddenly it's going to be
a very subtle graceful movement
otherwise the viewers I pick up on
anything that looks slightly strange so
let's go back into our master comp and
see how that's looking I think this is
looking really good now and I'm just
going to add a lens flare I'm going to
stick on some film grain and I'm going
to render okay cool so it's rendered
let's have a look yeah and it's alright
it's pretty good I'm pretty happy with
that the parallax technique is really
useful when you don't have live footage
but you do have archival photography or
stills it gives the effect that it's
slow motion or at least it brings the
photo to life
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