Compositing

Once all the assets were completed, I moved onto compositing. I composited each scene separately to edit all together at the end. The process for compositing was this:

I started by exporting the animation from tvpaint as a png image sequence to preserve transparency and get a better quality. I then cleaned up the photoshop document for the background and grouped the layers into folders to make it easier for me. Once that was done, I imported the raw photoshop file, and the image sequence into a 1920x1080 24fps ae document.

For the compositing, I always started with the sky and the clouds. In this particular scene, it was the sun as well, and in others there were things like fog as well as the clouds. I used the position keyframe to animate these.

I then placed the image sequence in the document and moved it into position. From there, I used curves and the hue/saturation effects to colour correct it so that it matches the environment.

The next steps were dependent on what the scene needed. This one needed an outer glow on Beram as he was silhouetted by the sun, as well as a slight zoom and pan as this was a scene from the travel sequence, and thus needed a bit of movement in it. Other scenes needed things like shadows, changing blurs, inner glows and largers pans with parrallax.

Compositing was really fun but also really stressful, as it was where I could see the look of the final thing, however there was a lot to do to get it to that presentable stage and a lot of files and layers to work with. It was also great at helping me learn after effects, and I love how versatile the software is.

One thing I learned was that proper planning goes a long way, and that I really should have spent more time on layout so I could get the exact movements down rather than having to problem solve in this stage.