March 24, 2009 by John Dickinson | 70,960 views | Comments (72)
In this 30 minute tutorial you’ll learn techniques and workflow used in Adobe After Effects and Illustrator to create the dramatic effect of the Batman icon shattering apart revealing a bright light source behind. Plug-ins used include Knoll Light Factory, Trapcode Particular and Shine. For a 10% discount on these and other Red Giant Software products use the code Motionworks10. Thanks to Ko Maruyama and Jonas Hummelstrand for creative input. Watch Tutorial
72 Responses to this post
March 24, 2009 at 4:49 am |
Hail Mary, what an excellent tutorial. Feels like christmas, thank you JD!
March 24, 2009 at 5:13 am |
thank’s !!!!
March 24, 2009 at 6:35 am |
For some reason I can’t get it to load.
March 24, 2009 at 6:46 am |
Nice one!
Gotta love those LF Stripes, I use them more than Shine in my broadcast work!
March 24, 2009 at 7:11 am |
This tute was mind blowing…
Your attention to detail is surely what makes you stand out.
Another tutorial worth every cent of watching by JD.
March 24, 2009 at 8:11 am |
nice work john thnx 4 fullfilling my request
March 24, 2009 at 10:19 am |
Hey Spiro, try right clicking, and click Copy Link Location, and then paste that into your address bar.
March 24, 2009 at 1:43 pm |
looks great , but the movie is not loading up
March 24, 2009 at 2:02 pm |
Try right clicking on the movie link and saving it to your desktop.
March 24, 2009 at 2:21 pm |
Wont open for me either unfortunately. Tells me it’s it’s in a form quick Time cannot understand even though the extension seems correct. And I have the latest QT updates.
Bummer, this one looks sweet.
March 24, 2009 at 2:38 pm |
I’ve just switched the suffix back to mp4 from mov, which may have been causing the problem. Refresh your browser and give it another go.
March 24, 2009 at 3:56 pm |
Works for me now! Just finished watching it. Tons of great tips – thanks John!
March 24, 2009 at 5:35 pm |
Thanks heaps looks great.
March 25, 2009 at 2:29 pm |
Really fantastic tutorial John. Nnice work on the promo too!
March 25, 2009 at 7:14 pm |
hey this is great thumbs up
March 26, 2009 at 2:51 am |
Cool tutorial man
thanx
March 26, 2009 at 5:33 am |
brilliant!!! I was just shaking my head at how awesome you are…
Thank you a million times for sharing your skills…
March 26, 2009 at 11:20 am |
You rock. Seriously. Thank you so very much for your Tutorials. Your work is so appreciated. I have learned so much from your teachings. Keep up the amazing effort.
God Bless
March 27, 2009 at 6:26 pm |
Thanks a ton! Is that Lightbox or Shadowbox. Very cool.
March 28, 2009 at 7:00 pm |
Fantastic. So much in one tutorial. I particularly like seeing how you brought Illustrator into the mix. I even picked up some tips with they way you drew curves.
March 30, 2009 at 3:48 pm |
this looks interesting but the movie says coming soon. isn’t this done yet?
April 1, 2009 at 1:34 pm |
perfect. many thanks.
April 5, 2009 at 11:48 am |
Hey folks,
I tried doing something similar to this, but found I had a problem with my Knoll layers.
When I add the flares they don’t knock out the black solid, so my shine layer on the bottom doesn’t get seen. I was sure KLF acted like trapcode layers and stuff excluding the solid layer an revealing only the effect. Am I mistaken? I looked several times John at your set up and noticed your Bottom Flares layer didn’t have any blending modes applied.
Hamilton.
April 6, 2009 at 9:37 am |
this is a great tute!
April 8, 2009 at 4:06 pm |
Hey Ryan, If you are using the latest version of KLF just make sure the bottom layer in the layer stack has “unmult” checked. If you have a previous version you can download the unmult plug-in for free from http://www.redgiantsoftware.com.
April 9, 2009 at 4:28 am |
Nice tutorial and a great stunning effect.
But i have a problem doing this tutorial … and hope you can give me a tip.
When i try to reflect my shape in Illustrator i dont get a window where i can select Copy.
When i do reflect it reflect to the other side and my old one dissapear. You know a solution for this ?
MFG Warti
April 9, 2009 at 5:04 am |
Hi Warti, Are you clicking the “copy” button in the Reflect window?
April 9, 2009 at 12:41 pm |
The reflect Window did not appear … that was my problem.
But after some tests i figured out to double click the reflect icon to get the window …:)
I dont often work in Illustrator.
I can copy it now but it reflects in the middle of my shape axis.
But this should not be a problem …
btw. great tutorial ! Very good site for me.
April 9, 2009 at 12:52 pm |
Thanks for the post, this sounds like and interesting tutorial that my friend studying DC would enjoy. I’ll make sure to pass it along to him.
April 23, 2009 at 8:24 am |
Thank’s !!!!
August 31, 2009 at 4:19 am |
Hey John
Um this is way to late to be replying but i just wanted to know if this interests you at all.
My thought was, instead of making a custom shatter map for this effect, would after effects plugin cc pixle polly have worked just as well?
Sorry, i have been meaning to find this out for myself but i havn’t allowed myself enough “cash”
to try this out when i get home from work.
thanks
Aidan
August 31, 2009 at 3:29 pm |
Hi Aidan, welcome to Motionworks. Pixel Polly is a pretty old effect that has very limited settings. There is only a choice of polygons or squares for shapes and no shatter mapping features. Take a look at it when you find some “cash” and you’ll see what I mean. Nice to see you watch The Business of Design
September 2, 2009 at 4:09 am |
Cool, thanks heaps John!
Yeah I hadn’t been on in a while and saw the new series you’ve done, watched every episode that night.
Very cool way to go about building a career out of what you love to do. I have been putting those points into practice already, and in my regular job too.
Got me thinking my brother and I should work together.
Looking forward to the next episode.
Cheers.
Aidan
September 2, 2009 at 3:43 pm |
Hey Aidan, I’m really pleased to hear you are finding value in The Business of Design. To have a career you love is a true blessing, and working with your brother as I do, is a rewarding experience. All the best, John.
September 3, 2009 at 5:43 pm |
Excelent!!! you are very talented. Add to my favorite.
Saludos
September 3, 2009 at 8:21 pm |
Thankyou Andres and best wishes, John.
September 10, 2009 at 5:28 am |
Hi John,
Awesome tutorial. I have learnt so many new techniques from it. I originally found out about customer shatter maps from total training for AE 6. Brian Maffitt spends over an hour going through the shatter effect and it’s great to see how the effect is producing such inspirational work. All the best, Paul.
September 10, 2009 at 4:09 pm |
Hi Paul T, I remember watching Total AE 6 as well. Sadly there really isn’t that kind of in-depth training available these days. Brian told me the other day how he was blown away that people are still getting so much value out of effects such as Shatter that he created over a decade ago. All the best, John.
December 2, 2009 at 3:24 pm |
Hey, great tutorial. So did you do the actual teaser trailer for the Dark Knight?
December 2, 2009 at 3:33 pm |
Thanks Mark. No, this was a promo for pay-per-view here in Australia. Best, John.
December 2, 2009 at 3:49 pm |
Oh cool man, that’s awesome. I love this Dark Knight teaser, and I wanted to know of a good and easy way to do it, so this tutorial is great help! Thanks.
I’ve used the shatter effect before but like you prior, didn’t know it could do the things it could do! Haha. Thanks man, great help! I know what I’ll be screwing around with tonight.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWw0ov-cAUg – Dark Knight teaser.
December 4, 2009 at 1:47 am |
Cool Mark, glad you’ve found it useful.
December 18, 2009 at 6:01 pm |
perfect. many thanks.
January 8, 2010 at 10:45 am |
Fantastic Tutorial. Thank you very much.
January 10, 2010 at 11:17 pm |
You’re welcome Matt. Best wishes, John.
January 24, 2010 at 6:04 pm |
Hey John! I watched this the other day, and you mentioned that to create the custom bat particles, theres a making it look great episode and I forgot which one it was and don’t want to destroy my internets bandwidth loading the whole video again to find out what it was.
January 24, 2010 at 6:10 pm |
Hi Remington, it’s the Butterfly Man tutorial. Best wishes, John.
January 24, 2010 at 10:49 pm |
Awesome, thanks! I just bought it and its downloading as we speak. Thanks for the speedy response!
March 18, 2010 at 6:58 pm |
Hello, Jhon:
I can’t see the video. The screen gets green, but I can hear your voice. What can I do? If is not a problem, could you send it to me by e-mail, or upload it to a server?
Please, answer.
P/D: I’m sorry if my english is not good.
April 1, 2010 at 1:43 pm |
Hi John, good to see again some one-year-old tutorial, especially when some products came out since it was done. I think to VCP optical flares.
And I wondered : back to this project, can you try to apply OF instead of KLF to see if the obscuration layers work less “fake”. I just want to know if it’s quite more precise, and allow us not to use the upper layer of lights ? Or maybe you already have noticed, in your practice of OF, if the obscuration layer work better or not ?
Thanx to let us know if you can.
Snake.
April 11, 2010 at 4:34 am |
Hi Snake, I can tell you without trying it. OC has a better obscuration than the current version of KLF. Best wishes, John.
April 2, 2010 at 11:28 am |
thanks for the tutorial john… from Jujuy-Argentina
April 11, 2010 at 4:34 am |
You’re welcome Elias.
June 15, 2010 at 5:58 pm |
Cool dude.. That was a AWESOME simple animation..
July 4, 2010 at 3:20 pm |
Good work…
August 15, 2010 at 1:42 am |
thank you so much for everything . god bless you
August 15, 2010 at 9:00 pm |
very nice tutorial, thank you post..
August 21, 2010 at 9:28 pm |
Its awesome….
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