BSA227, Doug Explodes! 24 August, 2016

footless Doug, mask #2

Import all of the doug stuff from the Y drive onto your folder in D drive.  import into after effects.  Drag and drop Douglas movie comp onto lower left hand area to set composition size.  select, CTRL D to make a copy.  Mask off legs from mid-calf down with the pen tool, being careful to select the reflection in the floor but select out some of the shadows he's putting off.  Then comes layer and time and time freezing, but I don't remember when.  And there is also layer and pre-compose and menus giving you the options of saving things in new and old compositions and I don't remember when that happens, either!  So it all gets very jumbly.  Then you CTRL D Douglas again and mask off his body from the ankles on up.  That part will explode later after the time freeze and pre-composing stuff, too.  Recreating this technique will require help from the tutorial Vaughn told us about at video co-pilot in visual art resources action essentials folder somewhere on the web.  What a TERRIBLE blog entry this is.  Not helpful, at all.

Choose effects and presets on right side menu, search up CC Pixel Poly.  Drag and drop onto explode comp layer.  Now Doug will explode into triangles!  But this isn't explodey enough, so over at the left Effects Controls panel, change grid spacing to 8 and direction randomness to 100%.  Now he's starting to explode into tinier chunks.

copy Douglas explode layer.  on bottom layer, change grid spacing to 55 to create bigger chunks and change gravity to 1.2
search for roughen edges in effects and presets and drag drop onto lower layer
make the big chunks look red, not grey, by searching up tint effect and drag dropping it onto lower layer.  in tint plug-in, change map black and map white to reds.
still unconvincing, so turn off motion blur
  layer new adjustment layer and apply blur effect to that layer which will effect all layers below.   search up CC force motion blur, drag and drop then turn it off (fx icon in effects control menu) so it doesn't slow down computing power.
back in main composition, we're going to create lightning strike
layer new solid
make sure its 1920 by 1920 comp size
screen goes blue/black
 then under effect choose generate and advanced lightning
zoom out to see red control balls for lightning.  drag until it's over Doug's head and lower balls to his feet
in lightning settings, open core and glow settings
bring up core radius and glow radius to create fat lightning strike
search linear in effects and presets to right, choose linear wipe under transition
in linear wipe settings, bring up transition completion and feather to soften the effect

layer new solid bright blue
eyeball off that new layer
mask around character, then mask feather in the 300s so it looks like a glow is around him
create second mask, smaller and thinner to make it look like another glow is happening

new adjustment layer, search up curves, drag drop onto new adjustment layer and adjust curves to create washed out glow

Now, layer in blood effects from the project menu.  move around until they're in the right places.  Anything moving too slowly can be sped up by going to time menu and choosing time stretch.  less than 100 makes things faster
choose blood splat and move into composition.  its 2D but we want to change it to 3D so I can change direction it's laying on floor.  hit toggle switches/modes at bottom of screen to move into box selector option and click on cube.  rotate until it's in line with floor then choose the selector arrow at upper left of screen.  really, REMEMBER THE SELECTOR ARROW.  If I mask around Doug's feet later, I can make it look like he's standing on the blood.

Add puffy smoke and welding sparks and Douglas is done exploding.  
new layer solid medium grey drag drop drizzle effect (creates water rings)
change mode from normal to overlay and click cube to make 3D
layer- new -solid black, drag and drop in  CC rainfall from effects and presets, change mode from normal to screen

layer-new-adjustment layer effects everything below it
curve effects and presets to heighten the contrast of all the layers
layer- new -solid black
ellipse tool next to pen tool, to create mask that can be adjusted to create cinematic filter
take mask feather up to 500s and transform opacity down

Douglas Bentley Explodes: the Final Cut