Creating an Electric Sphere

In the scene I’m doing, all the characters are contained within electrical bubbles. Here is how the effect is done.

First, I create a file in Photoshop (4000px x 4000px) with a black background and a faint circle that will serve as a guide. Then, on a new layer, I draw the first frame of the electrical arc on the left of the circle guide.

I draw each animation frame on a new layer on top of the previous one. I reduce the opacity of the previous layers as I go to create a skin onion effect so that I know where I’m going with the animation. Going straight ahead, I create 37 drawings on 37 individual layers all contained within a single Photoshop file. Once all the animation is done. I save each layer as a seperate PNG file, named like this: Electrical_01.png, Electrical_02.png, etc.

I then bring those files in a compositing software (in this case, Animo), and add some blur and re-render them as a new PNG image sequence (see video below).

Then, I duplicate the animation several time, starting at various points of a 48 frame cycle. Each duplicated animation is rotated a different way, creating the illusion of a sphere (see video below).

Puppet Tool

Most of The Saga of Rex will be animated traditionally, but for certain scenes where there is not a lot of movement, I’m going to use various time saving devices. For the first scene I’m tackling here, the various characters are suspended in mid air within electrified bubbles. I don’t want to just use a held drawing because I think that would look too stiff and boring. So I’m going to generate some movement using the Puppet Tool in Adobe After Effects. First, in Adobe Photoshop, I create a full color version of the image I’m going to animate.

Then, I seperate various sections of the image. All the different parts are saved as PNGs on transparent background. Then I import all these images in After Effects and use the puppet tool to create movement (see video).

Welcome to the Saga of Rex Production Blog

Well this is it. I’ve cleared my schedule and I’m now ready to dedicate my full attention to making The Saga of Rex: The Animated Film a reality.

In order to get the best possible quality for the videos, I will be using YouTube as a host and will embed them in the blog. The videos will be “unlisted” so that they do not appear on my channel and on searches. Please, respect the privacy of these videos by not sharing them. These are meant for this blog only.

For my first video, I wanted to show you my work space where I will be making the film. A lot of people have asked about my set up, so this will give you an idea.

Next, I need to figure out what will go into the short film. My thinking is that I will just keep things going exactly where I left off in the demo film, while removing most of the Guardian-Shepard subplot introduced at the beginning of the book and continuing through the first chapter. That part will be added back later when the long version of the film is done, but for the four minute short, I’m going to keep the story from Rex’s point of view as much as possible.

As you can see from page 26 of the graphic novel (posted above), the next scene I’m going to create is an inside shot of the flying saucer with its alien cargo. I’m not sure yet how this will transition from the previous scene but I’m imagining a cross-disolve or a fade-out/fade-in should work well.