Artist Statement:

I had by far the most fun working in AfterEffects because it was something completely new to me and I had a lot of room to experiment. For this assignment, my starting point was water. I wanted to create a composition that was underwater, because I felt that would best convey my emotion of feeling lost (while at the same time incorporating that I am a Piscean fishy!). The spinning globe represents my ever-changing home. In my 20 years, I’ve moved to at least 17 different cities. Though home was wherever I made it with family, I’ve never felt like I completely belong to a certain place. Hence, “Lost”. The butterfly that floats atop the globe is a representation of me. It moves in an upward direction instead of fluttering around to signify rising above all challenges. I ended up not doing an underwater comp (for reasons you will see below) and placed the globe above the surface. The background is a vast sky to represent the endless space still left to be explored.

Technical Decisions:

 I started off by creating the floor, i.e. the surface of the water. To do this, I precomposed a flat image of fractal noise and adjusted its settings accordingly to make it look caustic. I then added an offset loop to this image to make it move in an upward direction. I then turned it into a 3D, rotated it on the X-axis to make it flat, and pushed it back along the Z-axis. I also added an oval mask to make it taper off in the distance, creating the illusion of more depth. This was all done to create the water’s surface texture in black and white.

After this, I moved on to the background. I added and image of the sky and placed it where I wanted it to be. I then duplicated and flipped the image on top of the water’s surface and changed its blending mode to soft light. This created a reflection of the sky on the water and also gave the water the colour it needed. After observing some of the references that Bryan showed me, I decided to add an adjustment layer to the surface image and desaturate and darken the water a little.

Next, I placed a flat world map on the composition, smack ed on the CC Sphere effect on it, and added an adjustment layer to get its colours where i wanted them to be. I then set its rotation to (times*50) and duplicated and flipped it onto the water, the same way I did for the background to create a reflection. Again, I kept things desaturated, keeping in mind my references. If i made the colour too bright or made them pop, the elements looked too detached from each other as well.

For the butterfly, I broke up it’s individual wings and body in photoshop, placed them into AE. I pinned their anchor points to the body, turned them into 3D layers and used the orientation settings with the loopout command, to make the wings flap. I then precomposed the three individual pieces and as a 3D object, was able to place it wherever I wanted and rotate the same way I did the globe. The butterfly is pretty much the only element in my entire composition which is bright and vibrantly coloured as it is small enough, and the colours help it to attract attention.

I added a bunch of layers on my composition for finishing touches like colour solids to unify the colour grading of all elements, and curves, vignettes, spotlights and a faint layer of shimmer.

Since I had all these 3D elements, I added a very gentle handheld camera movement (by giving the wiggle command in orientation) to make the whole thing seem as real and authentic as possible.

Process (Before/After):

 Initially, when the composition was entirely underwater, I was using a default 16:9 aspect ratio and the upper surface of the water was also visible from underneath. This made the water look very shallow. After discussing with Bryan, I made the composition longer and removed the ‘roof’ of the water as well, just keeping the rays of sunlight streaming in.

Ultimately of course, I completely scrapped the underwater idea and went with the globe on the surface.

Artist References:

These references really helped me to unify my composition and use the right colour palette to achieve the mood I was aiming for.

- Water and Oil by Steven Meisel.

This photo series helped me nail the kind of colour grading wanted to give to my water. All the elements in this blend into each other very well, and at the time I looked at this reference, my elements were extremely disjointed. By desaturating the elements, they looked more like the belonged to one world.

- Richard Hamilton.

As I was piecing together the different segments of composition, I decided to look at some collage artists and I liked the way Hamilton’s pieces were obviously from different belongings yet placed together more seamlessly as compared to some other artists, such as Braque.

- Melancholia by Lars von Trier

Finally, this film was EXACTLY the visual theme that I wanted to achieve! I had almost reached my end product when Bryan recommended it to me and aided me in adding final touches to make the composition exactly what it needed to look like.