First let me say that it is impossible to see what is going on here with a size of 320×240 so I rendered it larger. I figured that if I am going to make the effort then I should do it right and in a useful way. If you click the Youtube link you can watch it larger and in higher quality, if you wish (click on HD in the cog wheel or put it on full screen).
So, Quadratura is the title of this piece and you’ll find I have also made a blog entry called Quadratura. Briefly, Quadratura is a concept of dimensional, sometimes illusory, painting techniques designed to create the appearance of added depth and space. In this piece I have taken a rather famous example called Apotheosis of St. Ignatius by Andrea Pozzo and brought it to life. This particular type of animation activity is something I am interested in and it seemed like a great subject for this assignment.
Essentially what I had to do was separate the characters from the background. How did I do that? Using Photoshop (and many, many layers) I had to select each character to be animated, copy that onto a new layer, and then reconstruct the environment of the painting as if the character had never been there in the first place. For a detailed piece of art such as this it was complex and time-consuming. The characters that appear to hover are where they were in the original ceiling painting, while the ones that move around were altered copies of some of the original figures. In After Effects you can draw a motion path in real time, as the timeline scrubs through your allotted space, then you can go back in and smooth the path, which is what I did. I also used the Wiggler to create motion for the hovering characters. The trail effect behind the moving figures was created with an effect called CC Wide Time that enables you to show a certain number of frames before and after the location of the playhead. I copied the rear layer and applied a radial zoom blur that faded in and out, and put that in Lighter Color blending mode at about 53% opacity. I used another effect called Shine on the larger clump of clouds and figures in the upper center portion of the picture, and that creates the crepuscular/God rays effect you see moving back and forth. It’s easy to abuse such effects so I kept it under control. Obviously I also altered the colors of the overall piece, increasing the saturation and making it all much warmer in general. In addition to changing colors in Photoshop I also used an adjustment layer of a gold color in Linear Burn blending mode with 28% opacity. I find that such tricks help to unify a piece, especially when you are altering so many elements and making changes from the original.
I created the ambient music you hear in the background, combing choir sounds (from a VST plugin I use called Symphonic Choirs) and also a sample of some birds I had. I have thousands of samples in a library I have built over the years. In this case I played the sounds of the birds chirping in reverse and applied a delay (it creates an echo effect).
Eric Chamberlain 