Today I decided to use After Effects to work on another shot in the project, when the skies become dark with Thunder clouds. I looked up some tutorials on how to animate lightning, and found a very useful one by Dan Root. It was very helpful in teaching me how to animate lightning- you first make the large flashes first and then animate on 1s the lightning disintegrating into tiny squiggly lines.

Using this tutorial, and adding movement to clouds I created in Photoshop, I created this final shot.

I also completed an animation test to get an idea of the level of smoothness of the animation for the project. I animated Brent sticking out his hand and then pulling a heroic pose. I felt frustrated at my animation being unrefined and wanted to use timing of frames to try and make it better. By spacing certain frames close to each other, I can control the holding of poses and allow them to stick to the viewer’s brain. This is the result of my animation.

I also created an animated version of one of the animatics I created from my storyboards, specifically the one where Brent was rolling his eyes, and then reacting to the lights fading out.