Magical Sphere

I tweaked it using a lens distortion and below is a time altered render so it fit the criteria of the assignment.

Finished product

Blending it in with the sphere was quite easy as i had made the particle effect on a different layer so I changed the shape so it matched the shape of the magical sphere layers then had it underneath those layers so it would look as though the particles were appearing from the magical sphere.

I then made the birth rate less so they would just blend with the animation and not be an eye sore or take the viewers attention away from the sphere. I felt this made it blend in a lot better and they moved smoothly together at the same rate so they looked as though both animation layers were more connected than previously.

I then animate the hue and saturation so the sphere changed colour as the animation progressed, I felt this added a lot of dynamism and would catch the viewers attention and be more entertaining and and make the ending dark red and cool blue colours seem more vivid in the finished product.

Particle effects

I wanted to create some particle effects and blend them in with the previous animation to give off the the look of energy particles spreading from the sphere outwardly to the viewer. To do this I change the animation preset to viscouse after generating particles in after effects. But I realised that was to intense so I decided to change it.

I changed it to a twirl effect, I found this gave me the look I wanted with the right pacing, I changed the values for the birth rate and randomization before I got a smooth movement that I wanted and I changed the colouring to a orange tint so it would blend with both colours in the animation.

I increased the size of the particles till I had the feel that I wanted and set about blending them in with the sphere.

Colouring the sphere

Using interpolation and a colour curves effect I coloured the middle a cool blue I felt this would give it the look of energy starting and expanding to a red outer sphere of energy.

I gave the outside sphere a sharp powerful red colour to show that the energy grows as it expands out of the center.

I decided to duplicate the blue central animation to make it also seem more spherical as I felt the energy expanding out from just one side wouldn't seem like it'd evolve into a round shape.

I minimized the layers and coloured them with an orange tint to add a complete central part of the animation and blended it with the other layers to make it seem like the energy was all coming from one central hub of energy.

I was then ready to add some particle effects to the animation to give it dynamism and make it seem as though the energy was not restricted to the sphere and would come out to the viewer. At the moment the animation had the look and feel I wanted but lacked the action and intensity I was looking for.

More development work

After taking the images and importing them not after effects I set out making the animation.

I duplicated the images and put them both together ready to turn them into a more spherical shape.

Using the distort effect turbulent displace I was able to animate the images of light as if they were slightly waving as time passes by.

I duplicated this effect onto the other layer and made them blend together vertically.

I also added this to the other image of light and wanted to make it more of a inside energy feel as if it was powering the outside sphere.

I minimized the animation of the second image so it looked like the center of the sphere and rounded the original image to make it more rounded. To make it more rounded and more like what I wanted it to be I used a cc lens effect on the image. And increased the scale, I now had what I felt I was going for so was ready to colour the images by changing the hue and saturation.

Images of light early development work

Using a torch and pointing the light into a jug of water I was able to take this photos and change them into an alpha map and was very happy with the results as it was exactly what I was going for. I felt doing this project mixing practical with cgi was a good idea as the randomness of the patterns made would be very hard to replicate just in cgi.