I’ve been working on a special Easter video and have managed to complete it just on time. Watch Walter and his evil twin ‘celebrate’ Easter together
Frenemies – The Evil Easter Bunny (Happy Easter Short Film)
I have always been a fan of antagonistic duos like Tom and Jerry, Road Runner and Wile E coyote or – more contemporary – Itchy & Scratchy. No words are necessary; the entire story is told with nothing but gestures, scenes and music so the viewer can enjoy the movie no matter what language they may speak
It took me a long time to edit this video and I am still not sure whether the storyline will be clear to someone watching without knowing what is going on. It’s sometimes hard to disassociate yourself from your own story and try to see it with ‘fresh’ eyes.
I also have to find an easier way to record the sound. None of the sound you hear in this Easter short film is real – it is all recorded and overlayed in post production. But since this is a very slow process I think I have to rethink how I can record the sound cleanly directly when filming
Either way, I am very happy with this video and I hope you will enjoy watching it!
Tough Mudder - Probably Not The Toughest Event On The Planet
April 7th, 2012
When I first heard of Tough Mudder, it had already exploded into mass popularity in the US. Similar events, like the Tough Guy Challenge, were popping up all over the world, but I could not say which one really came first. Tough Mudder is a 18km+ obstacle course with 25 British Special Forces style obstacles along the way. There seemed to be an almost insatiable desire for people to put themselves to the test in this wild and dirty type of challenge.
Me and my friends were equally tempted by the physical challenge, the camaraderie and the pure dirty adventure, so when the first Australian Tough Mudder event was announced to be on Phillip Island near Melbourne, we decided to give it a shot.
After watching a few videos from the US, everyone ramped up their training in anticipation of an endless, gruelling and painful track. Especially Electroshock Therapy looked absolutely insane with people screaming their heads off and dropping like rocks into the mud after getting zapped! Have a look at this crazy one:
Why we didn’t change our minds after seeing that video is beyond me. I think we just wanted to see how far we could push ourselves and on Saturday the 31st of March, Tough Mudder was finally upon us.
15,000 people were scheduled to participate in Tough Mudder on that day and we drove down to Phillip Island to get there 2 hours early for our 2pm start time. 600 people starting every 15 minutes from 8am to 2pm onwards. You do the math! It was a LOT of people
The organisation of the event was amazing! Parking was quick, easy and well instructed. Registration was broken up by last name so we were done in 5 minutes. Within 30 minutes of arriving we were all ready to go with our numbers pinned to our clothes and went “now what?”
Left to right: Luke, Dave, Emma, Me, Tim, Franco
We had some food, listened to some of the live music and watched people run through Electroshock Therapy. Surprisingly less people were screaming at the Electroshock Therapy obstacle than at Arctic Enema, a big tub filled with ice and water to dive through. The most feared obstacle didn’t seem so bad any more.
At 1:40 we were done waiting and simply joined the next start group. No one checked that we were part of our designated group and so, at 1:45, after taking a very corny Tough Mudder pledge, we were on our way.
A lot of the Tough Mudder obstacles were not much of a challenge and simply more dirty fun than anything.
Most of the Berlin walls except for the last set were fairly low and had steps to boost yourself over, the barbed wire on Kiss of Mud was actually all blunted, Boa Constrictor did only have a few centimetres of water in the pipes (rather than being up to your neck), Fire Walker was a walk through a short stretch of smoldering hay and many other obstalces turned out a lot less scary than we expected.
Most of them were simply great fun. We did Walk the plant to jump 4-5m into water, trudged, pulled, rolled, crawled and pushed our way through a variety of sticky mud pits, up and down slippery dirt slopes, through water obstacles and across ropes and monkey bars.
For me, the killer was the running.
We were up to about Kilometer 5 or 6 when my knee started to hurt
I am not a strong runner, mainly because my knee seems to loathe the mere thought of running. My dad (a doctor who loves running marathons… cazy man!) told me I have a short tractus iliotibialis (band running from hip to side of knee) that heats up when I run and gets incredibly painful. I’ve been training and stretching for 3 months, but I can’t seem to get it fully under control. I knew it would act up during Tough Mudder, but I had hoped it would take a little longer than 6km.
I started to walk or powerwalk for short distances to give my knee a break. My team mates slowed down a little so I could keep up with them, but as the kilometres went by I got slower and slower. By kilometre 10, I was more walking than running, kilometre 13 was when walking started to hurt and by kilometre 15 or so I was limping along slower than most people would walk. Every step was like a hammer to my knee, but I was determined to finish the Tough Mudder challenge.
Towards the end of the Tough Mudder course however, we paid the price for not being in the 8am start group as the track filled up with people. Moreover, the weather changed and the sun vanished. A cold sea breeze was coming up onto Phillip Island and we were getting increasingly cold as we made our way towards the finish line caked in wet mud.
We had a volunteer tell us to climb out of a waist deep water filled trench to avoid sitting in the queue for Twinkle Toes for another 15 minutes. So we got up and ran along the muddy bank instead. I think this was around kilometre 14 so my knee was hurting like hell and I am glad I still managed to keep my balanace and not drop into the mudpit below. After Twinkle Toes my method of movement deteriorated to a limp and the rest of my team started to move ahead of me. I didn’t mind. I didn’t really want to hold them all back anyways
I was getting frustrated with my painful knee, but many people who passed me encouraged me to keep going
However as the kilometres went by, I started to get very, very cold though simply because I was no longer running and the sun was gone. But with ‘only’ a few kilometres to go, I didn’t want to give up.
After Funky Monkey (where I slipped almost instantly because my gloves and the rugs were all slimy with mud), a tire mountain, a few more mud pits and the Turd’s Nest, I could see a crowd appearing in the distance. As I limped closer, I could see it was a large number of spectators and Tough Mudder participants waiting in front of the second last obstacle: Everst, a half pipe covered in mud that you need to run up and somehow reach the top.
Besides a large number of spectators there was also a humongous crowd of Tough Mudders waiting to attempt Everest. Cold, shivering and wrapped in thermo sheets we stood there a while but when word got around that it might be a wait of up to 1 hour, we decided to skip Everest and go straight through to Electroshock Therapy.
Electroshock Therapy was not nearly as bad as I had feared. Limping a bit behind I went through the wires after all my team mates had already gone through. A friendly volunteer had a hose with water aimed at me the entire stretch through Electroshock therapy so I probably got a few extra shocks, but besides some pinching and some muscle twitching I made it through within maybe 10 seconds
I believe that the level of voltage for Tough Mudder in Australia may have been a lot lower than it is in America simply due to health and safety regulations – for which I am very grateful I didn’t really want to flop and collapse face down into the mud after being zapped!
Straight after Electroshock Therapy we got a group shot taken by the Tough Mudder camera crew and I will post it up once I get my hands on it
Then, 3.5h after starting Tough Mudder, we went through the finish line to receive our headbands, T-shirts and free beer
All of us except Franco skipped the shower at the end simply because the lines were too long, but the shower I had in the hotel afterwards was probably one of the nicest I’ve had in my life
Left to right: Emma, Luke, Dave, Me, Tim (Franco went to shower)
Tough Mudder was great fun and even if you’re not overly fit I am sure you can make it
Don’t get me wrong, there were some nasty obstacles in there. When I jumped into the ice and water of Arctic Enema, my whole body went numb. After diving under the board and pulling myself out the other end I felt 10kg heavier because I was soaked with freezing water. We were lucky that it was a fairly mild day.
But the only thing that posed a real challenge to me was my painful knee. My team mates however did not have much trouble finishing the 20km and the 25 obstacles.
Maybe we will all do it all over again next year if Tough Mudder returns to Melbourne
Visual Effects 101 - Learn All About Motion Tracking and Null Objects
April 3rd, 2012
I finally got around to cover a topic that I’ve wanted to do for a while now: motion tracking in After Effects
In this tutorial, besides watching Walter and The Devil fight it out, you will learn all about the concepts and the practical application of Motion Tracking!
Enjoy!
Motion Tracking Fundamentals
Motion tracking in itself is not a visual effect, but an essential tool to help you create visual effects. It allows you to track the motion of moving elements in your footage and extract information about their position, rotation and scaling.
You can then use this tracking data to control other layers in your composition and, for example, create visual effect elements and have them follow your tracked object.
This allows you to do things like have blood stains stick to walls during a moving shot, add a halo or other effect to follow your actor, erase objects from your scene and much much more.
Base Footage
If you want to do motion tracking in a scene, make sure the element you want to track stands out cleanly against the background while shooting your footage. A person dressed in black walking in front of a dark sky will likely be hard to track. You can make motion tracking easier by adding tape markers or other helpers to your actors or objects to make them easier to track.
It is MUCH easier to remove a tracking marker than it is to track an indistinct object!
For this tutorial, we are going to track Walter’s head as he walks through the shot and attach a halo to it
After Effects Motion Tracker Controls
To get started with motion tracking in After Effects, open the Tracker window by going to
Window -> Tracker.
A small tool window containing all the controls necessary for tracking your footage will appear on the screen.
Scroll to a time position in your clip where Walter’s head is fully in frame, make sure the footage layer is selected and click on the ‘Track Motion’ button in the Tracker window. Since we also want to track the rotation of Walter’s head, make sure the ‘Rotation’ checkbox is ticked. You should now see 2 track points overlayed onto your footage, connected by a white line.
Motion Track Points
If you zoom into your track points, you will notice that each of them consists of 2 rectangles!
The inner rectangle defines the part of the frame we want to track. Make sure you position it on a very distinct and high contrast element that is easy to follow visually from frame to frame.
The outer rectangle defines the area that will be searched each frame to locate the contents defined by the inner one. Make sure it is big enough so that the element you are tracking remains within its borders across consecutive frames.
Notice that the larger you make the rectangles, the more processing After Effects will have to do and the slower the motion tracking calculations will become. Also note the small arrows on the white line connecting the 2 track points.
Track Point 1 will define the position data we are recording and Track Point 2 is used to record the angle i relation to Track Point 1 and store it as a rotation value.
Null Objects
Before we get started with the motion tracking, we need a place to store our tracking data. For this, a Null Object will be perfect. You can create a new Null Object by selecting
Layer -> New -> Null Object.
I called my layer ‘HeadTrack’ as we’ll be tracking Walter’s head
A Null Object is merely a placeholder object with a transform that contains position, rotation and scale data. You can animate these properties or add other custom properties to the Null Object and then use the Null to control other layers in your composition. A Null Object will never be rendered.
We will use the Null Object to store our position and rotation data from motion tracking Walter’s head.
Tracking The Footage
Position the track points on the element you want to track. For me, I will place them on the back of Walter’s head and on his hairline as I want to track the position and the rotation of his head.
Once you positioned your track points, you can start the motion tracking process by clicking on the ‘Analyze Forward’ button in the Tracker tool window.
After Effects will now, frame by frame, process your footage and try to keep track of the elements you specified with the track points. If at any point in time the track points fail to follow what you expected them to, you can stop this process, go back, reposition the track points and continue the process from where you left of
Sometimes you have to fix a few small things manually or help the motion tracking process along, but eventually you should end up with having your track points follow the object you are tracking nicely.
Apply Motion Tracking to Null Object
Now that we have the track points follow Walter’s head, we can apply the motion tracking data (position and rotation) to our HeadTrack Null Object. For this, click on ‘Edit Target’ in the Tracker tool window and select the HeadTrack layer. Then click on ‘Apply’, select ‘X and Y’ and click OK.
Now when you scroll through your clip, you should see the Null Object follow Walter’s head correctly through the shot
You may have to manually fix up parts of the track, for example, where your actor enters or exists the frame. I fixed up the track for the HeadTrack Null Object manually.
Parenting The Effect Layer To The Null Object
Finally, I’ve created a nice glowing halo effect that we will now attach to Walter’s head
Go to any frame in the footage and position the halo nicely over Walter’s head.
We now want to parent the halo layer to the Null Object layer. You can do this by selecting the pick whip in the ‘Parent’ column for the Halo layer and dragging it onto the HeadTrack Null Object. This will make the HeadTrack layer the parent of the Halo layer.
Now, every change in position, rotation and scaling that occurs on the HeadTrack layer will automatically be applied to the Halo layer. Since we used motion tracking to make our HeadTrack Null Object follow Walter’s head nicely during the clip, so will our Halo layer
The Result
You can add more effect layers and have them follow Walter’s head by parenting them to the HeadTrack Null Object. I added a nice glow for the halo to make it look a little more convincing
You can use motion tracking to trace the movement of any element in your footage (as long as they have distinct features you can track), store the data in a Null Object and then use the Null Object to attach effect layers or control all sorts of other effects with it
Motion tracking is a fundamental part of knowledge for any visual effects artist and I am sure you will have lots of fun with it!
VFX 101 - Add realistic destruction elements to your bullet hit effects
March 30th, 2012
Visual bullet hits are great fun to create – as are any other type of destructive effects. All of these effects are most realistic when they visible cause some damage, as would in real life.
However, I did not talk much about how to create great destruction effects. This video applies not only to bullet hits but should prove useful for any sort of damage effect you are trying to create
The basic principle of destructive visual effects
I like the psychology of this effect as it kind of works in reverse
Rather than adding a visual effect to make an object appear broken, we shoot the scene with the object already broken and then use visual effects to cover up the damage until it is destroyed.
The great thing about this is that you can interact with the broken element properly!
Imagine a scene where a wall is hit by a mortar, leaving a massive hole in it and then one of your actors crawls through that hole. For the effect, you simply cover up the hole using VFX and reveal it in a wake of rubble and dust when the mortar strikes
Step 1: Film your footage
Shoot your scene with the already destroyed element in it. For my tutorial clip, I pre-tore up a paper target and filmed the scene of me pretending to shoot at it with my fingers.
Step 2: Prepare material to cover up the damage
When you use VFX to cover up the damage, you will need something to cover up the damage with.
In my case I filmed a few small clips of me standing in the same position holding up an intact paper target.
You can then use your additional footage to cut out the element you need to cover up your broken element. In my case, I masked out a mint condition version of the paper target
Overlay the materials to cover up the damage
This can be a little tedious as you will have to align your overlay with the original footage up to the point where the element is destroyed. I used a corner pin effect and keyframing to align my paper target overlay with the broken target until I throw it into the air.
However, at the moment where I lift the target up into the air to shoot at it with my fingers, I could no longer use my overlay due to the position of the paper. During the last second before I shoot at the target, the three holes were visible from the front as well as the back.
To solve this, I created smaller overlays from parts of the intact target footage to cover up the holes individually.
I had to add some animated colorisation effects to them so the patches would blend in with the shadows on the paper
Once you have the damage covered up, you want to disable all of the VFX when the element is destroyed. For me, I remove all paper overlays when I pretend to shoot at the paper target.
Add action VFX during the transition
To make this effect less obvious, add some explosion, dust, rubble, particle or other destruction effect at the moment of impact/destruction This will make your effect more interesting as well as distract from the cover up VFX elements disapperaing.
Gun effect destruction complete
Each situation will be slightly different and you may need to prepare different cover up VFX material, apply different effects to your overlay elements and add a variety of destruction effects to make it look convincing.
However, the principle is always the same:
Film with destroyed element
Cover up element with VFX to point of destruction
Add destruction effects and remove cover up effects
They seem to have changed the format and only introduce the first clip of the playlist (which isn’t mine) rather than each one, but I still happy to see it plugged by another YouTuber
I am sure I will submit a few more videos to Indy Mogul, especially since the next few in the pipeline are actual short films rather than VFX tutorials. Would be great to get a few more of my videos featured on other people’s channels
