Hi, I'm Ben Marriott.
I'm gonna show you how I made this animated grain effect from projects like these
What is goon?
Let's begin
I'm going to show you two methods that I used to create this animated grain look in my animations
and we're gonna do one on each of these eyeball characters.
Let's get stuck into our first one.
For this first character we're going to use the easiest method which is using the dissolve blending mode and then a couple of effects to get the look we want
You'll notice that I've got a few layers shied here
So you can see these are just the arms and the legs and some other rigging layers.
We don't need to focus on them so I'm gonna hide them.
The only things we need to pay attention to at this eye main and iris layer which are the layers we're gonna add the grain to
The first thing we're gonna do is duplicate this eye main layer and rename it to Eye Main Grain so we know what we're working with.
We should always label our layers and we're gonna change its color to black
Now we're gonna draw a mask to create our light source
So we're gonna select our ellipse tool from up here on the left. Make sure this button is clicked tool creates mask
Otherwise, we're gonna be creating more shapes that we don't need
So now we're going to draw a circle around where we want our light source coming from
So I think we want it from the top left, which is my go-to for a lighting source
And we're gonna expand the mask a little bit to cover mainly the iris and the pupil
By default the mask is set to add so we just want to click inverter to get the reverse of that
There we go. Now you want to feather this mask?
So we're gonna click F to bring up the feather options and let's make this 65 pixels
Now we can see kind of what we're looking at. That looks pretty good.
So to add the grain we're gonna change the blending mode to dissolve and that's gonna do most of our work for us
now
By default the dissolve is gonna look up close really Pixley like this
How dissolve works as it just makes with a gradient?
It makes the pixel either on or off together the closest digital approximation to a smooth gradient.
I don't particularly like how this looks at the moment
I want it to look less sort of pixel perfect and more sort of smudgy and grainy like it's from you know
A brush or a scan or a texture or something like that.
We're gonna do that by creating a new adjustment layer
We're gonna go out to our layer menu select new adjustment layer or ctrl alt Y and we're gonna add the effect turbulent displace
So if we click that over here already
It's gonna look really wild now this if you play back and this is not the look that we want
But we can get very close to it just by adjusting the size from 100 down to 2 pixels
And we're gonna change the amount down to 30 as well
So if we're looking closely we can see that now what was once these sort of
pixel perfect sort of bunches of clusters of pixels down here
It's now becoming a little more mashed together and smudged
it's really subtle and when you look at a hundred percent you kind of
Maybe make out the difference a little bit
But I think it's that little touch that you know,
brings it all together and the advantage of this method is that it's all controlled by these masks
So if we want to adjust the light source, we want to move the light source up to the right
We just move that mask. It's changed.
Let's move it back to where we had it
Okay, I'm happy with that. Now. The next thing we're gonna do is add a rim light
So we're going to duplicate this eye main grain layer and rename it ----
Eye Main Grain Rim
I'm gonna change that color to white
And we're gonna expand our mask because this light is only gonna be visible on the edge
It's gonna be much harsher so we're going to change the feathering down to
20 pixels
There we are. Okay. So now looks like it's lit from two sources. That's looking good.
Now, let's do the same thing to our iris
All right, we've added that to our iris one thing I do want to change is the feathering on this first mask we drew
Let's change it down to 55 because I want you want to see a little bit more black before the rim light here
Now, let's take a look at the whole animation
One disadvantage of this method is that
the turbulent displace adjustment layer is going to affect all the layers underneath it which includes these
Clean vector lines that we've got here and they're going to become a little bit bumpy
For most of the projects I tend to work on that's going to be fine
because I'm generally going out of my way to make things look a little more rugged and handmade anyway,
so that's gonna be fine. If you do need your clean vector crisp lines this method that might not be for you
Let's take a look at our second character
The method for the second character is going to be a little more time-consuming to set up but I prefer the look of this one
And you know what? They say no pain. No grain
Over in Photoshop
I've got a still of that comp that I'm just using as a reference at 20% opacity and
What we're gonna be doing is we're gonna be using this texture brush
To draw out about five frames of the animation that we want
This grain brush is one that I've made myself and it's going to be available for you in the description
so you can take it and use on your own projects
To start, we're gonna draw an arc in the bottom right hand corner this eyeball where we want it darkened
There we go, I'm gonna set this layer to 20% opacity because I'm gonna use it as a reference for the next layers
I'm gonna create about four more layers and I'm gonna duplicate what we did there on each one of them
All right now I've got five of them made I'm going to
turn the opacity this bottom one back up to 100%
and we're just gonna make sure all of these are turned on and save our Photoshop file
here in After Effects, we're gonna import our file by pressing control I and
And select the file you want and make sure you click import as composition retain layer sizes
click import and then click OK on this dialog box too
That's going to make sure that imports the project with all its layers and not just as a still image
Let's go into our composition.
And first thing we can do is delete these bottom reference layers.
Let's turn on our transparency
I want to make sure that this comp is 10 frames wide
So I'm going to press ctrl K and make sure that its duration is set to 10.
So change this last number here to 10 frames.
Now I want to make make each of these frames 2 frames long
And I'm gonna drag them out. So they appear in a sequence
Now let's play that back
Okay, this is gonna be our animated grain
back in our character composition. We're just gonna drag that grain texture over the top
and you'll notice if we play it's gonna play this 10 frames and then stop so we need to loop this composition
and I'm going to show you the method I use for looping compositions in After Effects, which is not at all tedious
So we're going to right click a composition go over to time enable time remapping
Click on the frame before the last keyframe, make another keyframe
Delete the last keyframe, hold alt or option. Click the stopwatch here. Click the arrow, go to property
Go to loop out
Click off and then drag this comp as long as you need it to be
Now looping composition in after-effects. See!
All right, let's drag that on top of that Eye Main layer and parent it to the Eye Main layer as well
So it's gonna move with it. We're gonna use this Eye Main layer as an alpha matte
So to do that, I'm gonna duplicate it, drag it on top of our grain texture layer.
Better rename it now, call it Eye Main Matte.
I'm gonna select this grain texture layer and under track map, select alpha matte
So now that texture is only going to be visible within the confines of that shape that's looking good to me
Now we're gonna duplicate these two to make a rim light again
That's a texture layer and our matte, I want to duplicate them both
Now to change the color of this one, we're going to need a fill effect
So we're gonna type fill into our fixed panel over here and by default it's set to red. So let's select white
I'm just going to grab the composition and move it down to the bottom right a little bit
All right, let's do the same thing with our iris
I'm also going to make sure that those two new texture layers are parented to the iris
There we go. All right. Let's play it back
Okay, I'm pretty happy with that. Let's go and compare the two looks
You can tell the difference of these a little more when they're next to each other
the one on the left is a little more intense because of the way that texture is boiling.
And the one on the right, it just tends to be a little more subtle.
I've used these both in different scenarios
They both have their advantages.
The one on the left I kind of tend to prefer more generally, but it is a little more
Tedious to set up if you're in a huge project
That might not be viable both I think are great to have in your tool kit
Both this After Effects project and the Photoshop file are gonna be available for download in the description box
So take them open em, unpack em have a look around add some grain to maybe an existing vector animation you've already done
and please upload it to Instagram and tag me @ben_marriott_
I would love to see what you make.
Thank you so much for watching
Please let me know in the comments whether you prefer method number one or method number two
And also remember to subscribe hit the bell icon like and share. Thank you