If you are a fan of special effects and want to know how they are achieved, you surely know about After Effects. This animation application is one of the most used and recognized worldwide, with it you can make animation and character design. In this article, you can start by learning how to create the giant head effect with After Effects.
After Effects, what is it? Know a little more
It is software belonging to Adobe’s range of graphic tools focused on creating visual effects and motion graphics for non-linear editing. It was used for the first time in the film Jurassic World, a tape that is still all the rage today for its advanced effects for the time.
After Effects is one of the programs most used by designers to create animated videos, one of the effects preferred by designers is to create caricature or cartoon animation.
Motion graphics
It is quite important that you know its meaning if you want to delve into the special effects industry. It is a term that, translated from English, refers to audiovisual design. That is, it is the action of adding movement to graphic resources, such as images and advertisements, texts and others.
Information required to start using After Effects
So that you can perform basically any action, and of course, create the giant head effect with After Effects, it is necessary that you know these interface terms to move with ease through the program.
- Composition or project. On the main page, you need to create a new project in order to import files. There is a panel called ” Composition ” select it and click on ” New Composition “. Give the file a name and modify the settings.
- In the “File” panel, save the new project, and by clicking on it again and then on “Import” you will be able to select the files you want to upload to the program.
- The timeline is a bar at the bottom of the screen and it indicates the progress of the video and the files or movements it has. To add the files to it, drag them from the projects panel located on the left side of the screen.
- The layers panel is located below the projects panel and follows the same principles as Photoshop or Adobe Illustrator. You can preview the project on the right side of the screen.
With this program you can create animations and put the effect you want, one of the favorites is the neon effect.
Start creating the giant head effect with After Effects
Export the video to which you want to apply this effect and drag it to the timeline panel. Double click and select the ” Roto Quick Brush ” tool from the tools panel at the top.
Carefully draw around the head to make a selection. On the left side, you will see an effects controller panel in which you can adjust the selected area. The next thing is to click on ” Freeze ” just below the display screen so that the effect does not lag.
Duplicate the layer and remove the effect of this copy. While in this, click on “Window” and “Tracker” then select ” Follow movement ” on the right side of the screen. A sort of box will appear with a plus sign. Take it to some part of the head that has more contrast and click on “Play” to save all the movements.
In the panel next to the timeline, where the videos are located, right-click “New” and “Null Object” position it between the two clips. Again in the “Tracker” window click on ” Edit destination ” select the null object and “Apply”. In the first layer, change the proportions of the head, and select change the “None” box to ” Null 1 ” to link both layers.
In this way, the transformed head will be able to follow the same movement as the original layer without making it look bad. And voila, you can now try to create the giant head effect with After Effects.
With After Effects you can not only create the animation of characters and images but you can also slow down or speed up the speed of any video.