-Action!
Good!
[Intro music]
Jordy here for cinecom.net and welcome to Copycat Friday!
This is the series where we breakdown an effect or technique...
...from a popular music video or film.
In today's episode we'll be recreating the scribble effects...
...from Kendrick Lamar's latest clip LOVE featuring Zacari.
-Oh, that's a little bit distractive there.
[Upbeat music]
...on a music video from Bruno Mars.
So we were very excited to see Kendrick coming out...
...with a scribble effect too.
It looks completely different, it works completely different...
...and we decided to create it inside After Effects.
But the first thing we did was the setup.
The walls in our studio are painted black,
so that would already work out perfect for the background.
Yannick is going to sit on a bench on which we threw a black fabric over.
It's important that everything in your shot is dark.
Then for the lighting, we placed the Aputure 120D on a dolly.
And that way we can move the light, just as you can see in the video clip.
To make the lighting a little bit more softer,
we used a dome with a single diffusor in the back.
The reflection inside the dome increases the size of the light source...
...and the grid is helping us to aim the light better,
without having it spill on the surrounding.
Then for the backlight, we placed a Lightstorm LED panel,
also from Aputure.
And to make a little contrast between the front and the back lighting,
I threw a blue filter or CTB over it.
Whenever we are doing a lighting setup...
...and we wanna test out how that lighting looks,
...we use Justine, our stand-in right here.
And this is, by the way, also Yannick's girlfriend.
-That's not true.
-Yes, it is.
[Upbeat music]
To make it yourself easy, have your subject sit still.
And now it's time to bring our shot into After Effects.
We'll be going quickly over it, but if you're new to After Effects,
definitely make sure to check out our in-depth beginners tutorial,
to which you can find a link to in the description below.
The scribble effects are shapes,
so that means we'll not be working on the clip itself.
So, make sure it's deselected.
Then take the pen tool and draw a simple shape...
...over the edge of your subject.
By default it will fill the shape with a red color,
so you wanna go into the properties of the shape layer that has just been created...
...and delete that Fill.
This leaves you with a simple white line,
which you can also change its width from, if you like.
However, I do suggest to keep it thin.
And then we'll animate this line.
For that we'll need to add the Trim Path option to the shape layer.
You can do so by clicking on the Add menu and choosing that Trim Path option.
This gives you a start and end value.
Animate both values from zero to 100.
But make sure that the end value starts earlier and stops earlier.
This is important to see a line coming in and out.
If you wanna make it more dynamic, you could place some extra keyframes in between...
...with some offset values,
so that the length of the line changes over time.
Finally, create smooth animations by setting your first keyframes to easy ease out...
...and your last keyframes to easy ease in.
The ones in between can be set to easy ease.
Just make sure you never forget to ease the easy ease out...
...when easing the easy ease in.
A little update about the Comment Wall, guys.
As you can see, we're making great progress...
...we're almost ready to start printing that wall print.
Now, right here there's going to be a heater,
And we were wondering, who likes his comments behind that heater?
And, you know what? Just say "first" in the comments down below...
...and then we know that you want your comment behind the heater.
The line animation looks good,
now it's time to add some effects to the shape.
We'll start off with a Glow effect,
which you can find in your Effects Library.
Play around with the settings to end up with a soft glow...
...that doesn't spread too much.
As for the glow colors,
set the color A to a very bright orange and color B to white.
And that will kinda add a golden color touch to the scribble.
But we'll do that even more with the Gradient Ramp effect on the shape.
Set the start color to white...
...and the end color to that light orange again.
You can then change the position of the color points...
...so that the line gradually goes from a white to a soft orange.
Next up, we'll take the edge off from the line with the Roughen Edges effect.
You don't need to change that much in here,
just play around with the border and scale...
...to have some variations in thickness of the line.
Finally we'll add the Posterize Time effect to it...
...and set the frame rate to 15.
This is to make sure that the scribble effect appears more like a stop-motion.
As the final touch, you wanna change the blending mode...
...of the shape layer to Screen.
To make the scribble more dynamic, you wanna duplicate that shape layer.
Then change the path of that duplication a tiny bit.
And this way you can see two lines dancing around each other.
It's a bit too hectic, so what we'll do next...
...is animate the opacity,
so that the duplicated line comes in and out a couple of times.
The result should look like this.
Next up, we wanna create a reflection,
which you can also see happening here in the music video.
It's essentially the same,
you draw a path and animate its stroke.
This time, you do wanna have a thicker stroke.
Add the same effects to it. The Glow, the Ramp,
Roughen Edges and Posterize Time.
The settings are pretty much similar.
As an extra effect you wanna add a Gaussian blur to it...
...and set it around 80.
Finally change the opacity to around 60...
...and you now have a nice looking reflection.
This was one scribble effect, you can now copy and paste this...
...to have it appear on multiple spots.
You have to change the paths or create new ones.
It does consume a lot of time, but the end result is pretty awesome.
We're going to dance a bit with Justine.
In the meantime you can hit that subscribe button down below...
...to see us every Tuesday and Friday...
...with a new exciting video.
Thank you so much for watching...
...and as always...
-Stay creative!
-So, Yannick wanted to surround himself with pretty women,
just like Kendrick Lamar did in his videoclip.
So he came out with a pretty cool solution inside After Effects.
-Look at that! You almost believe this.
Yannick, what do you have to say about that?
-Don't tell my girlfriend.