The animation for our brief has been specified as 2D, and we can do anything that we like (within the genre and target audience) as long as it is in 2D. But that doesn’t mean that we cannot utilise 3D, and use it as an illusion. One way this can be done is by bringing environments to life an effect called parallax.

So firstly, what is parallax? Well, Google’s definition is:

The effect whereby the position or direction of an object appears to differ when viewed from different positions, e.g. through the viewfinder and the lens of a camera.

Through the understanding I have gained over the last few days, to define it in clearer terms, I’d say that it is when elements in the foreground and background of an image are moving at different speeds and look as if they are changing position. It seemed complicated at first, but I quickly grasped the concept and was excited to start thinking of opportunities to apply this to the brief.

3D is not native to After Effects – it is created through plugins. Despite this, however, AE allows us to navigate a 3D space (you can make layers 3D using the little cube button). This space is also known as the Cartesian space, and it is what allows us to move our layers at different positions and distances from each other inside the composition. This is why parallax is also known as the 2.5D effect.

 

 

As always and something I love to do, I went hunting for inspiration! I found some awesome videos on youtube which give multiple examples of this effect, and it really helped me to see and understand how it works and what it could be applied to. I discovered that the effect can be used in a wide range of ways, from bringing photos and artworks to life, to creating stunning websites and visuals for things like blogs. I also found a lot of cool ideas that I am now thinking of applying to my brief, like a cool opening shot which pans downwards into the darkness or another setting, which is an example shown in one of the videos.

 

 

 

Looking at these videos and the few others I saw out of the many on youtube, I learned to really appreciate how much our world has opened up and developed. 200 years ago, humans couldn’t capture a moment, and today, not only can we do so with the camera, but we can then bring that moment to life and enhance the experience even further. There are so many cool ways this effect is applied and whilst the art and photos were the obvious ones, I was surprised to find I even thought the websites that utilised it were beautiful!

I understood the effect much better after seeing it in action, and it was time to try it out for myself, following the tutorial that I took notes on. There were some technical issues, however, and I felt that although I had gotten the gist of how to do it, I had missed a few of the details out. I went ahead to After Effects anyway, confident that I could work out what to do by myself.

As per usual, the first step was to create a new composition and import an image. I chose an image of an owl mid-flight because of some inspiration that we got in the lesson. Then, to take the foreground element and cut it out, I traced around the owl with the pen and then duplicated the whole image. I changed the name and colour of both layers and then I hid the background, went into the duplicate, changed the mask colour and clicked ‘add’. With the original one, I clicked ‘subtract’. Or at least, that’s what I tried to do. I had some trouble with the masks, layers and the whole add/subtract step, and I had to go back a few times and redo certain things, but eventually, I got to where I needed to.

 

 

 

I then changed the view to 2 view and added a camera, as well as made all of the layers 3D. I moved the background all the way to the back using the Z value and the foreground element (the owl) all the way to the front. From that point onwards, it was pretty simple, I simply had to animate the camera and the parallax effect would be achieved. Unfortunately, this is where things went wrong. My notes were insufficient with this area and I wasn’t all that sure what I was supposed to do in order to animate the camera correctly. It was actually very simple, I simply had to use the Z value, but at the time, with all of the previous mistakes I made and the weird way I got past the add/subtract step, I was quite stressed and annoyed, and I wanted to be done with this image. So, I took a shortcut and just animated the background and foreground, instead of the camera. I know this isn’t the real 2.5D effect, but I didn’t want to leave my project midway, so I completed it even though it was wrong.

 

 

Even though it isn’t exactly parallax, I tried my best, and for a first attempt, it isn’t too bad. I’d count this as a fail, but it still made a pretty cool little animated image, which is an improvement from the first. I like the way the owl moves, but I don’t like the way the background moves. I learned from my mistake and decided to try again with another tutorial so that I have more complete notes.

 

 

 

I took a little break from parallax before trying to search for a different tutorial because I knew that I would make more mistakes if I was still annoyed over the whole idea based on my first attempt. Once I eventually cooled down, I browsed youtube for a short tutorial that covered the basics for how to create the effect.

Here is the video I found:

 

 

And here are the notes I took whilst watching the demo! I only watched the After Effects one since that’s the best program to create the effect in, although I did have photoshop too. But even the man in the video said that it wasn’t quite the same. I’ll upload the notes I took which explain what I did, but I’ll use my example for the screenshots.

 

2.5D Parallax – After Effects Demo

 

In After Effects, import the photos that will be used in a new composition. This can be one image split up into separate layers, or more than one image which will have different elements cut out and put together. Like before, make all of the layers 3D and add a camera layer.

 

 

 

Select ‘2 views horizontal’ so that you can see the composition from the front and top. Bring the background to the back and elements in front of the front. You can add anything in between the layers, like smoke. Resize everything that is too small (a.k.a the background since that will be right at the back. If you move the Z position of the camera, you can see the effect happening already.

 

 

Return to 1 view. Move the needle to the start of the timeline and in the camera layer, create a keyframe in position. Go to the end of the timeline and using Z space, zoom slightly inwards or outwards, depending on how you would like the picture to be animated. Again, rescale everything to fit, and you can even move the camera slightly down or up at first so that it moves in the opposite direction as it goes along. Then, the final step is using the puppet to add movement to the element(s), just to liven the picture up even more.

 

 

 

And that’s essentially it! I followed the tutorial almost word for word, except using my own images. It was really easy to grasp and I was surprised to find how simple it all was when you look back at the end. The whole process can be summarised in three main steps – split any images up into the right layers, position them in the right order in a 3D space, and animate the camera! Super easy! For mine, I used to separate images; the bridge, and the lady. I combined them at first, and then I saw that the image needed a little extra something, so I threw in some water droplets to spice everything up. With the puppet tool, it was easy and fun to animate the dress and droplets, and I made sure to animate them moving inwards slightly, so it didn’t look like only a few of the drops were moving (I didn’t pin every single one). I love how my second attempt turned out – it is definitely much better and portrays the parallax effect far more accurately.

 

 

My experience with parallax was overall pretty good even with the little mishaps I had in the beginning and I think that it’s super fun and easy to create once you get your head around how it works. I hope to try to and apply this technique to my animation. I know it’s mostly used with photos, but with my example videos, you can see how it can also be utilised when creating animations. I think it will be perfect for my fantasy brief because it can help showcase the world as well as make it feel more alive with the depth.