HELIANA'S HELLIONS
As an introduction into learning compositing, I shot and animated a poster I received for backing Loot Tavern's D&D 5e source book, Heliana's Guide to Monster Hunting. After I had recreated and animated the poster in After Effects, I went into Nuke to composite the animation back onto the footage I had taken of the real poster.
Software: After Effects, Cinema, etc., Deliverables: HD Video 5-7 Seconds
01
Getting Real
The first thing I would need in order to composite a digital poster would be footage of said poster in the first place. Using what meager trinkets I could scrounge up from my dorm room (and a trip to Micheal's to make a few shiny necklaces), I created a set to create a more interesting environment, it would be a shame for such a nice poster to simply hang in a sad, white, dormitorial void.
Before you say that this void is still rather sad and dormitorial, later, I would reshoot this footage with an arrangement of posters and drawings to decorate the walls, making the wall a rather more exciting void. Unfortunately, I would not remember to take photos of this second set, but you will see the result as we proceed.
01
The next step was to scan the poster, import it into After Effects, and recreate all the forms, as well as the background. The main subjects, being the magnetite dragon, tar-rasque, and polyhedrooze would need more detail, as they would need to be rigged for expressive animation. The polyhedrooze required little work, as it was only a series of triangles, but the others would be created with a complex array of shape layers and masks.
Magnetite Dragon
Tar-rasque
Original Poster Scan
Making Monsters
Recreated Figures
Recreated Backdrop
Moving Monsters
After creating all the necessary assets, we come to animation, allowing me to bring the monsters I made to life, just like the great biomancer Francis N. Stein.
Compositing Creatures
With my assets finalized, I could place the animated element back into my footage using Nuke's planar tracker. Following that, I went through several steps of editing and adjustment to conform the look of the poster to the original plate. The foreground elements were also rotoscoped to appear in front of the poster, this time using point tracking. And as much as I know that everyone wants to sit and read text in an art showcase, in this instance I created a breakdown of the composite that displays the other necessary steps more concisely.
