Sin City/Matrix Agent FX Test

Hey!

I had a go at copying the look of Sin City (well the trailers at least - yet to see the film) and have come up with this.
It's not perfect, but I'm reasonably happy with it. Any suggestions on improving it will be appreciated!

[image=http://www.jonfx.com/tangent/sincityagentthumb.jpg]
Sin City/Matrix Agent (QT 0.8MB)

 

Awesome! It really looks good.

One thing I would do, is make atleast one thing in color. Maybe his tie or something.

EDIT:

the motion tracking on the sunglasses is a little off towards the end.

Ay.

 

How do you make it look so... uh... need a word here... stylish? What effects did you use. I'm assuming you used AE?

 

Well done, the motion tracking on the sunglasses is a little off towards the end.

 

Jon, I feel a tutorial coming on.

I made a couple of Sin City effects test. They were just black and white though. Yours looks more special.

Also, the background, was that a CG city? It looked good anyway.

 

Slick. You've become one of the few people around here that I look for. Keep up the good work.

I like that even as the camera spins, the direction of the rain changes, too. How exactly did you go about this?

 

Nicely done Jon, I'd be interested to see more of this sort of thing from you.

Keep it up!

 

I just watched every vid on his website. I want to be you, Jon.

 

Thanks for the replies...

One thing I would do, is make atleast one thing in color. Maybe his tie or something.
The only thing that could've been made colour is the skin - and I wasn't sure how that worked in Sin City, I guess it depends on the shot?

the motion tracking on the sunglasses is a little off towards the end.
D'oh. I masked the glasses, but slowed down the spin afterwards. Something to fix.

Jon, I feel a tutorial coming on.
I'll try below...

Also, the background, was that a CG city? It looked good anyway.
Thanks, it was a series of photos taken of La Defense (Paris) stitched together with, er, a photo of Cadbury World.

Slick. You've become one of the few people around here that I look for. Keep up the good work.
Cool! Thanks.

What effects did you use. I'm assuming you used AE?
How exactly did you go about this?
I filmed myself spinning on an office chair in front of a greenscreen (you'll notice the light shifts on my face, in theory it should stay still). Put it into After Effects, keyed it, added background. Added Offset effect to background, had it move in time with the footage spin.
Created white solid, masked same way as sabers for the glasses (which were wrapped in tin foil - didn't help) and tie clip (which was masking tape, I don't have one).
Added beam effect for the ear piece, keyframed it to stay relative to footage. Duplicated beam layer so I had one above and on top of footage. Changed opacity for which ever one I needed to hide.
Created a scribble of a coil in Photoshop, manually tracked it to the beam layers - rotating/scaling as needed. Again duplicated this layer same as the beam.
Added rain effect, changed speed and angle to fit the footage.
Duplicated footage layer, hid the copy.
Duplicated rain layer, set alpha matte as the hidden footage layer. Lowered opacity (meaning rain will be in front of the agent but not adding more to the rain behind).
New comp, imported previous composition twice, set one to screen. Adjusted Brightness & Contrast/Levels to taste.
Blurred background (Gaussian), added motion blur to background and footage when spinning.

I think that's basically it - hope you can get some sort of sense from that?

EDIT: Oh and lightning! I had a light flashing during filming, so adjusted the brightness of the background to light up at the same time.

 

I think I need to spend less time on the computer. I understood that.

 

a question of a video from your site, the lightsaber with trails, how did you do that? just extended the mask or something?

 

Thanks, DV.

I want to be you, Jon.


the lightsaber with trails, how did you do that?
Here you go, should help.

 

One thing I would do, is make atleast one thing in color. Maybe his tie or something.
The only thing that could've been made colour is the skin - and I wasn't sure how that worked in Sin City, I guess it depends on the shot?

Did you film in black and white? Sorry I didn't read your explanation yet.

But if youn didn't, I'm sure you can go back and track over the tie to give it it's color, unless it's a black tie.

 

That was totaly awsome.

 

Awesome Jon, u beat me to it! you say you used the rain effect? where can i get hold of that, i've been looking for this everywhere, cant find it.

 

i dunno if anyone has said this, so ill say it

bullet_head_films, Welcome to TFN!

 

I don't think it's a rain 'effect' preset, he just added his rain effect. I'm guessing he just used AE's Particle Playground with a bit of a motion blur.

 

thanks thats very kind of you

im sure Jon used somesort of plugin he goes on about changing speed and angle etc,

how did you do it Jon?

 

I'm guessing he didn't use much in the way of plugins, that's all standard AE stuff.

 

Wow, some really impressive stuff there. As for the matter of having color, I think it would be pretty sweet if he had a small dark red lapel or something on the left breast section of his jacket.

 

Wow! Very class, I'm gonna have to try the sin city effect sometime this weekend.

 

if you want a simple version of it, probably wont yeild as great of result, but in after effects you can go to effect>stylize>leave color and choose whichever color you want to have in color, while the rest is b/w, then adjust tolerance and softness to taste
you can probably get better results with some other way however...

 

That was pretty cool.
Heh, I'll never have a reason to use something like that in the near future, but it's nice to dream.



Good work.

-Vaportrail

 

u can make rain in standard after effects? no way ive tried every filter, i've seen plugins you can buy, but i just wana know how jon did it, so if i can get the job done cheaper why not aye.

 

By the way - if you want to make those kinds of glasses/bandages effects easier, get a black light, and paint the lenses with fluorescent matieral. They should saturate quite easily in that case, and then you won't have to rotoscope and the effect will remain more natural and textured. This is one of the ways they did Marv's glasses.

-Spiff