Another tool in AE that we learned how to use was the liquify tool. It is a versatile filter that can be used for a number of interesting effects, and we covered the basics (which is only scratching the surface!)

We were provided with a clip to work with, and it was a relatively short video of an actor playing the Joker. There wasn’t a lot of movement involved, but enough to see the effect of the tool, and the length would make it easier to render out.

Following the instructions, I began by going into ‘effect’ at the top (with the layer selected), into ‘distort’, and ‘liquify’. A panel then appeared to the left which contained all of the various editable options that the filter allowed. I noticed that there were also a number of different symbols, each corresponding to their own version of the liquify tool. They were tools, which had different effects to experiment with.

 

 

I used a few of them and tried to change the options below here and there, to see what kind of alterations I could apply to the Joker. The Distort tool was probably the one I used the most since I felt that it was the most versatile and allowed for more freedom when creating changes. I actually fell behind a little during this lesson, because I was having issues with the speed of the program. I had to restart it multiple times, and I fell behind a little, resulting in my notes being quite limited, and not being able to try all of the tools. I still had a lot of fun stretching out the Joker’s face and shoulders when I was able to. Applying the effect to the clothing made it a little difficult later on since we only applied a tracker to the face.

The way this was done, was by going to the start of the video and making sure that Liquify is selected or highlighted. Then, going into ‘tracker’, and ‘tracker motion’. I moved the tracker to the middle of the face and clicked play after adjusting the square grids a little. It took a while for the tracker to finish tracking the movement of the face through the whole video, but when it was finished, I clicked apply, and the liquify effect was set.

 

 

If I didn’t like something, or one of the filter types applied, I could select the bottom right tool ‘reconstruct’, and undo the liquify. This was very useful, since I didn’t want to make a decision straight away, before playing around with the other effects, and it made room for a little creativity before selecting one and rendering.

I liked being able to have fun with the liquify tool, however, it was unfortunate that I was hindered a little, and short on time, due to the program being slow. I also don’t feel as confident as I would like to when using it because firstly, my insufficient notes, and secondly, I didn’t feel like I had a direction with it. It was certainly a lesson of testing the different aspects of the tool out and trying to get introduced to it, but I feel I would benefit more from spending some extra time learning about what sort of art/animations could be created with this tool.

Here is the final result that I chose to render out. I like the comedic impression because it reflects the Joker’s crazy personality well.