Another boxing promo created using Adobe After Effects, Illustrator and Photoshop. For this 3 day job I wanted to create a scene reminiscent of a boxing gym wall with old posters and banners. These fighters are up and coming but quite low in the rankings and this will be a battle of brawlers, so this gritty, unpolished look fits nicely. The basic idea and color palette came from a cover for an X-Box game I found when looking for inspiration. Here’s the frame from Illustrator showing the X-Box cover, the raw text layout and the finished layout. I used the Illustrator Envelope warp tool to warp the text. This next image is the result of treating the clean Illustrator image in Photoshop to give it some age and character, all done using stock grungy images. To create the 3D displacement on the images, in Adobe After Effects I used Zaxwerks 3D warps with a stone texture applied.
There is also a subtle lighting effect created by animating a radial Ramp from side-to-side. My friend Maltaannon helped out with this expression:
swing = Math.sin(time * how_fast_it_goes) * how_far_it_goes;
x = value[0] + swing;
y = value[1] + swing;
[x,y];.
This was applied to the “Start of Ramp” and “End of Ramp” properties. All you do is replace the “how_fast_it_goes” and “how_far_it_goes” values with your own numbers, or link them to expression sliders. It will swing both points at the same rate and you can set the points where ever you want them in the comp and they will swing together. Doing it this way means the ramp won’t change size as it moves back and forth across the comp.
The comparison movie shows the edit at the top (split into ungraded on the bottom left and graded on the top right) and the finished promo at the bottom. Note at the beginning I removed the ugly advertising on the back of the referee’s shirt and at the end I left space at the bottom of the packshot for details and various channel logos. Watch movie
17 Responses to this post
August 8, 2008 at 11:01 pm |
I love the swinging light
August 9, 2008 at 1:00 am |
Nice work dude!
August 9, 2008 at 5:19 am |
JD your work is really down and dirty, just like those boxers
I Love that grunge look!
August 9, 2008 at 4:58 pm |
Nice spot JD! I actually work in a games store, so your color theme was instantly recognizable
August 11, 2008 at 9:47 am |
This would make a great Motion Menu JD, just need a couple of buttons and your good to go
Any chance you can disclose the way you rig up the wiggle expression in greater detail? The swing lights are a really nice subtle detail here well done Meltaanon – ill have to try this code out sometime.
August 12, 2008 at 9:12 am |
The wiggle shake is nicely covered by Harry (graymachine.com) in a free tutorial, but it’s offline right now. I seem to remember Andrew (videocopilot.net) having one as well…
August 14, 2008 at 3:01 am |
Hey JD, Could you do a tut on how you removed such advertising on the ref’s back? Killer work bro, I want to try the swinging light out sometime soon. How does Maltaannon know so much bout expressions, I’m jealous!
August 16, 2008 at 8:18 pm |
Hey Andrew, To remove the advertising I used a shape layer with a gradient (colors sampled from the ref’s shirt). I keyframe the path of the shape layer to cover the ad. The dark finish on the grade helps to disguise any problem areas.
August 19, 2008 at 3:33 am |
hahaha. Awesome JD! Awesome, true to the principle of KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid). Always the way to go isn’t it? Thanks for the post though bro. Look forward to your next post!
August 21, 2008 at 6:40 am |
Thanks JD, coming back to it a couple of hours later… it now works
August 22, 2008 at 12:48 pm |
Hey JD/Maltaanon,
In the above expression, how is speed controlled? (if it is) I have tried dropping my values but this doesnt seem to make a difference….
Also if anyone copy pastes this code you need to get rid of the fullstop at the end of the fourth line, otherwise you will get expression errors…
If anyone can shed some light on this, I would be very thankfull
August 22, 2008 at 12:57 pm |
ok my mistake = time * how_fast_it_goes) * but when i drop this value it seems to go faster and when i raise the value it goes faster, really confused..
fyi my values are 300 and 600, this is nice but i would like to drop its speed by about 25 % and have it slightly slower
August 22, 2008 at 2:02 pm |
Hey JC,
How far is it going? You may need to adjust the distance as well. JD
August 22, 2008 at 2:44 pm |
ALright i think i got what I was after with the following:
swing = Math.sin(time * 0.90) *600;
x = value[0] + swing;
y = value[1] + swing;
[x,y];
Previously I had:
swing = Math.sin(time * 300) *600;
x = value[0] + swing;
y = value[1] + swing;
[x,y];
I ended up using both and shifting the opacity slightly.
This is a really neat way of controlling this type of effect and perfect for this helicopter spotlight look I’m trying to execute.
Very impressed gentlemen. Even though i wished i understood exactly whats happening in the expression a little more.
August 23, 2008 at 11:00 am |
Shameless ad here >> you can go to my website and watch my tutorials. Most of the techniques I use are based on expressions – I just hate keyframing
October 8, 2009 at 3:02 am |
Hey i can’t watch the movie..
May be missing link!!. Can you help JD.
Thx in Advance……
October 8, 2009 at 10:20 pm |
Hi Vikash, thanks for letting us know. That link has now been fixed. Best wishes, John.
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