Expert: Andre Hickman - 1/21/2009

Question
Hi Andre!

I'd like to make an effect of a letter emerging from a cloud. My intention is to make it look like the letter is formed from the cloud: at the beginning, only the cloud is visible, then the letter appears moving upward, away from the cloud. At the end, it detaches from the cloud. I have the letter in Photoshop and the footage of the cloud. I tried to do this using Distort and frankly didn't work. Any suggestions on how to get this done?

Thanks in advance!
Regards,
Dalia

Answer
Hey Dalia,

I actually can think of about 5 different ways to do it.  The problem is, I don't know what resources you have regarding software or plugins that you can use to help.  The best way would be to use a particle emitter to actually generate a cloud (out of little cloudy particles, and then have the particles conform to some mask of the "E".

A simple way would be to go into photoshop and select an "E" area, then use a clone brush to paint in clouds to form an "E" cloud that somewhat matches the original cloud (export it with an alpha channel, like a .tif or .png file)  Then in After Effects tweak the "E" picture to fade in over the original cloud, using opacity, blur to unblurred, and a little noise distortion to add a bit of motion.  As the "E" comes forward and comes into focus from the blur, slowly also start blurring the background image.  This will give it a depth of field look, focusing on the "E" cloud.  Or you can do all of that using 3D layers and a camera.

I do a lot of stuff in 3D, so I would just render the whole effect in a 3D app, but for you, it is going to be too complicated for me to explain how to do more advanced ways in this forum, so I am going to turn you on to some tutorials that may help you get where you are trying to go.

Keep in mind that these tutorials aren't directly about your project, but they have elements that if you use the same techniques with your idea, you should get where you want to be.  It will most likely be a combination of some of these things that you will use (and possibly even in reverse direction of the effect). Also bookmark this sight (www.creativecow.net) as it is an invaluable resource to learn new things.

http://library.creativecow.net/articles/chao_joe/firefly.php
http://library.creativecow.net/articles/hamill_alan/smoke.php
http://library.creativecow.net/articles/hansen_jaysen/clouds.php
http://library.creativecow.net/articles/lind_tobias/spooky_film_title.php
http://library.creativecow.net/articles/stern_eran/Simple_Morph.php
http://library.creativecow.net/articles/stern_eran/The_Smoke.php

I hope this helps.  DON'T EVER STOP LEARNING!

Cheers,
Andre'