THE WITCHER
Personal production.
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1920*1080 px @ 60 fps ; 00:00:25
Official poster of the series The Witcher broadcasted on Netflix.
"Animation of an official poster of The Witcher series."
Overview 🔎
The Witcher is originally a story written by Andrzej Sapkowski taking place in a fantastic and medieval world, blending magic and imaginary creatures, centered around a very particular character: Geralt of Rivia, a witcher.
This project was shaped from a poster of the series The Witcher, broadcasted on the Netflix streaming platform. Its completion relied on a staged representation, through an audiovisual production, of the transformation of the character’s face after he drank one of his potions making him stronger, exclusively through visual effects.
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Process 🛣
In order to realize this project, I went through several well-defined stages.
1. Realization of the scenarios (VFX and Editing) in order to clarify the direction of the project and to know all the elements to be produced.
2. Cutting and retouching of the poster elements through Photoshop in order to prepare the realization of the production.
3. Creation and configuration of the composition within After Effects: dimensions of the production (1920x1080 px), choice of the number of frames per second (60 FPS), approximate duration (30 sec.).
4. Creation of the visual effects (VFX) using plugins.
5. Editing of the production: camera path, Intro & Outro.
6. Editing of the production on Premiere Pro: Research and addition of the soundtrack.
7. Production export (H.264): 1 video file (.Mp4); 2 cover pictures (JPG & PNG).
Audiovisual production details 🎞
🎞 Composition
• Dimensions: 1920x1080 px.
• Frames per second: 60 Fps.
• Duration: 25 seconds.
• Editing: 2D editing.
✂ Cutouts & Retouching
○ Merged of 2 similar illustrations (different dimensions) in order to enlarge the picture
○ Deletion of the text elements
○ Deletion of the snow
○ Minor details retouching
○ The picture has benefited of a surface generation to its edges to make it larger
Considerable work has been done to make the poster “blank” of any effect and diverse element in order to be able to reproduce them in an animated way in a video format.
Also, the creation of the composition with the previously mentioned dimensions required a particular operation. At first, I superimposed 2 posters of different dimensions to the exactness. Then, using a specific tool, I recreated a surface to the empty spaces (located at the poster’s edges), which I then reshaped so that it was “continuous” in relation to the poster. It is this process that made it possible to adapt the poster to the composition dimensions (1920x1080 px) without “extending it”, and therefore without deforming it.
✨ Effects & Elements
○ Transitions
• Intro in fade to white
• Outro in fade to black
○ Colors & Brightness
• Color corrections
• Addition and correction of drawing elements on the background
○ Visual effects (VFX)
• Snow (x2)
• Embers
• Changeable brightness of the character's orange irises
• Pale skin color
• Purple/pink eyes contour
• Black eyes
• Black veins
• Series title (cinematic style) and fractured apparition
• Addition of a wave in motion of brightness increase of the background
All the elements and effects were made in After Effects by hand and using plugins like Red Giant.
Two elements within this production required me a significant time of realization.
The first is the realization of the black veins that emerge from the skin of the face starting from the eyes. It was necessary to create them in any shape, place them in a certain way relative to each other, adjust their design, setup their appearance and the propagation speed.
The second was the design of the text from a texture that was created from scratch and incorporating a reflection effect. Its appearance results in an “inverted” animation of a dislocation of an element, thus obtaining a “reconstruction” of it from fragments.
🎵 Soundtrack
"The Knight Who Was Taught to Save Dragons" from Sonya Belousova & Giona Ostinelli.
Takeaways 📣
This project wasn’t easy to achieve given the complexity of elaborating certain parts and the patience it asked me to complete them. On the other hand, these various operations finally carried out pushed me to find solutions and to sharpen my skills to get the desired results.
Julien Carlier Productions
2022
