Droid Productions

Mab going into battle

Added 2022-11-01 04:00:56 +0000 UTC

With the magic of Halloween in the air I decided to do a little VisDev (Visual Development, i.e. trying out how things will end up looking) for Mab.

This is a relatively simple composition, so let's break it down, back to front:

The background is Blasted Hills, seen at the end of Act VII (where MC meets the daemonic army). I added a curve to darken it a little.

On top of that I put a fog layer. These are stock layers of someone playing with a fog machine against a black background and taking 4K videos of it. I love using them as part of a composition because they give a lot of free complexity.

In front of that we have Mab herself. I didn't spine animate this one, it's just a still image.

We've already gotten the lighting setup here; there's a purple mesh-light in her right hand, an orange mesh light in her left hand, and a strong blueish white light behind her. Her eyes are also glowing (emissive).

The eyes were then updated in After Effects, adding a 'saber' effect (which is what I usually use for the glowing eyes in magic scenes. Totally awesome free plugin, available from here.

The globes she's holding are done in Particular, which is probably the best particle system plugin for After Effects.

The final trick I did was make three 'planes', in 3D space. Mab and her effects are all one plane, the fog layer is one plane and the background is one plane. When the camera now moves around it, or side to side, the things that are closer will move faster... what's called a Parallax effect. It's a great way to fake 3D depth with 2D images, and gives the idea that this little animating still frame is a lot more complex than it actually is.

Hopefully that was interesting, and see you all later!