Phantom

‘Phantom’ is a passion project to push 3D in After Effects as far as I could. The hawk was modelled, rigged, and animated using only native After Effects plugins. Originally planned as a simple exercise in faking 3D in After Effects, I realised with some extra time and effort I could push the setup further, resulting in a pretty decent forward-kinematics rig and model. Concept / Art Direction / Design / Modelling / Rigging / Animation: Jason Chow (http://jasonchow.net) Music: Jason Chow (http://jasonchow.net)

Behind The Scenes ▼

A passion project to push 3D in After Effects. The hawk was modelled, rigged, and animated natively in After Effects, using nulls, Beams, and expressions. Originally planned as an exercise in faking 3D, I realised with time and effort I could create a decent forward kinematics rig and model that pushes After Effects's 3D capabilities.

Concept / Art Direction / Design / Modelling / Rigging / Animation: Jason Chow
Music: Jason Chow

Behind The Scenes

Showcase of my 3D character rig, made natively in After Effects using nulls, Beams, and expressions. This rig was created for 'Phantom' (https://vimeo.com/402363941). Concept / Art Direction / Design / Modelling / Rigging / Animation: Jason Chow (http://jasonchow.net) Music: Jason Chow (http://jasonchow.net)

To build the hawk in After Effects, I placed nulls in 3D space to emulate vertices, and used expressions to connect these ‘mesh’ nulls with Beam effects. I then parented the ‘mesh’ nulls to ‘joint’ nulls to control their movement.

Some concept & tests from development of 'Phantom' (https://vimeo.com/402363941). VFX Breakdown Reel (https://vimeo.com/407514749) Character Rig Showcase (https://vimeo.com/404911295) Concept / Art Direction / Design / Modelling / Rigging / Animation: Jason Chow (http://jasonchow.net) Music: Jason Chow (http://jasonchow.net)

I originally planned ‘Phantom’ to composite the hawk into live footage. The idea evolved as development continued, and I realised the animation I wanted to portray would work best high in the sky, so live footage was abandoned.

VFX Breakdown of selected shots from 'Phantom' (https://vimeo.com/402363941). Character Rig Showcase (https://vimeo.com/404911295) Development Reel (https://vimeo.com/407093190) Concept / Art Direction / Design / Modelling / Rigging / Animation: Jason Chow (http://jasonchow.net) Music: Jason Chow (http://jasonchow.net)

The transformation sequence featured several VFX layers, created in After Effects mostly with displacement maps, with some particles made in Trapcode Particular.