Cabin infinity scroll
Final Video
Pre-Production
“The first step in the process for this infinitely scrolling video was to plan out the scene that I was going to create. I started with a quick sketch in photoshop to give myself a guide for the scene layout in After Effects.
Like my Sci-Fi inspired After Effects short, this project was built entirely within After Effects 2.5D capabilities, meaning planning on what assets would be needed was required before I started building out the scene.
Scene Creation
Building the scene in After Effects was a simple but tedious process, due to the programs’ limitations.
The main room was fairly straight forward, and I built it using assets that I created from photos I took around my house. The most notable of these assets was the dresser seen on the right hand side of the screen. As shown below, the dresser was an entirely bespoke asset created for this project. I approached the process from a game asset design angle, to make it as straight forward as possible. I took photos of the side and front of the dresser, added my grime textures, and used the cards to build the dresser out in 3D space within After Effects.
Flora Asset Creation
The scene called for extensive grass and foliage assets, this meant that I had two options in front of me, I could source and tweak assets from the internet or I could embark on creating my own 2D grass card assets that I could use in future projects with full creative rights— I chose the second option. I started off with taking photos in my back yard of the grass assets against a plain white background, by holding a paper up behind each one, to make my process of isolating and removing the background far easier. In the end, I ended up with grass assets that were plenty good for my use-case, and served the project well.
Background imagery
The storyboard of the project called for a wall to fall out in the background of the video, exposing the nature outside the cabin. This called for nature imagery to be placed in 3d space behind the scene to create some sense of parallax. Instead of opting for photography, I wanted to bring some sense of tactile painting in to the scene to stylize the background. I set out painting a mountain scene in Gouache.
Greenscreen Plates
This project called for a main character to be working on the cabin to cause the wall to fall, so I set out filming greenscreen plates of myself acting out motions the scene called for. The greenscreen keying and compositing was done in After Effects using Keylight.
Hiding the contact point of my feet and the floor was beneficial as the camera in the scene was moving, while it was not in my plates.
