Click the preview frames above to view a QuickTime clip (1:10, 15.8 MB)This is an experiment I did in AfterEffects 7 on a slow Friday at work after watching a documentary about Islamic tapestries. I'll try to add step-by-step images later, but I'm at home now and the project file is at work to my blathering will have to cut the mustard. Overview of the production recipe follows:
STEP 1
I created a 400x400 pixel composition and added a solid of the same dimensions. The background was 50% grey and the solid was black. I masqued into the black solid a simple bezier curve of a vaguely floral shape rooted in the lower left corner, then keyframed it mid-way through the six second composition. Next, I created a starting keyframe and an ending keyframe that scaled the floral masque so it looked like it was growing out of the corner to fill the frame. I tweaked a few bezier points where the morph was weird. The solid faded to 0% opacity over the last two seconds.STEP 2
I next duplicated the black solid with the animated masque and flipped it vertically with a difference transfer mode. I then duplicated the solid again, turned it white, timestretched it to 50% speed and applied it as an overlay with 50% opacity.STEP 3
I added my little 400x400 tile of animated masques to a new comp, this time sized 800x800 pixels. I duplicated and flipped my first tile into quarters. To be precise: the upper-left tile is flipped horizontally, the upper-right tile is as originally composed, the lower-right tile is flipped vertically, and the lower-left tile is flipped both horizontally and vertically. By doing this my four growing flower shapes would radiate out from a common centre.STEP 4
I added the 800x800 super-tile to a new comp, this time sized 1600x1600 pixels. Again I quartered and flipped for a symmetrical design, as above, now with four large rosettes filling the frame. I used the Distort->Offset filter to centre one of the rosettes.STEP 5
I added the 1600x1600 mega-tile to a new comp, this time sized 3200x3200 pixels. Again I quartered and flipped for a symmetrical design, and then precomposed that work and duplicated it, rotated forty-five degrees and applied with a difference transfer mode. I pre-rendered this uber-mega-tile for better system responsiveness, and had a cup of coffee.STEP 6
Final composition: 720x486 D1. I dropped in a copy of the uber-mega-tile pre-rendered movie, looped ten times, and a 3D camera. I pushed the uber-mega-tile away on the Z axis until its borders matched the comp, and made this my start keyframe. I then moved the uber-mega-tile to just behind the camera and made this my end keyframe. This move took place over fifteen seconds. I applied a fast blur to the uber-mega-tile for the last second as it approached the camera in order to hide raster artifacting. The uber-mega-tile rotated ninety degrees over the fifteen seconds.STEP 7
I duplicated the 3D animated uber-mega-tile many times and off-set each in time by 7.5 seconds, sufficient to fill out about a minute of screen-time. Every layer was applied with a difference transfer mode, and tinted with a primary shade. Since multiple difference modes can make for sometimes unexpected colour combinations, I did a lot of RAM previews and tint tweaking.STEP 8
In order to avoid having the entire sequence centred, I wobbled the camera back and forth with slow easy-ease translations on each rotational axis independently, to a maximum of about eight degrees either way (approximately three seconds between easy-ease keyframes).STEP 9
To avoid glimpsing the hard edges of any of the tiles and to enhance the feeling of perspective, I added an adjustment layer with the filter Distort -> Optics Compensation. I inverted the compensation and set it to 60 degrees, giving a nice warp to the outer edges of my tiles.STEP 10
I added the standard Glow filter on the entire timeline (catching at 30% brightness, spreading 32 pixels, 0.5 opacity), and then Trapcode's StarGlow filter (thank you, Trapcode -- slick work as always) with the Star Prism preset, animating from 0% to 100% opacity from 0:30:00 to 1:00:00, to enhance the climax. (Plus, I'm just keen on spectra. It's a weakness.)That's it!
You might not want to make what I made exactly, but the production architecture could be applied to any number of elements that lend themselves to a simple animation quickly iterated and reiterated into a piece with high visual complexity that renders quickly and is sparing in the use of third party plug-ins.
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