Comic Effects on Footage

The animations in this films are all done in the editing. Already from the beginning there are some short segments of comic effects that fades into footage. Just a few seconds here and there, but consistently reoccurring throughout. There is actually NO real animation work done from scratch in or for this short film. The animated effects which is there are all applied onto the footage with plugins to Final Cut Pro X (which is the editing software that’s been used). There are for example some pre-made animation graphics, such as the speech bubbles and the text which is flying around everywhere when the characters speak. As well as spelled out sound effects etc. Most of the text which is moving is actually only selected parts out of entire sets of moving graphics. For example there can be a template (with a combination of animations) that follows with a plugin, where only one of the fonts which is a part of that set, has been selected to be used. In these cases only that particular text has been filled in for that section. And the other sections have been left blank. This means that there is a whole lot of the animations which are left blank, but which is still imported to the footage. And it must be for this reason the project quickly got pretty heavy for the editing software and slowed down the editing process.

What looks animated in this film is actually more accurately said, being done in editing rather than animating. I am bringing that up to let you know how easy it is to create these sort of effects and because I would like to recommend the use of the following plug-ins which really made the job super-easy and so much fun.

Recommended Plugins

The first one out of the “comic-effect”- plugins which I would like to recommend, that I have used in this project is:

“Premium VFX Comic Titles Vol.2”, which I have been doing all the speech bubbles and text that is flying around on the screen with.

Back to the time line where I ended last post about this project.

When the foreigner gets stuck at the wall after the “cameraman” and the “producer” have left the set and the foreigner “looses his mind” when discovering that there is no real film team and that he is being fooled. There is a combination of some animated generators which covers the entire screen. For example the colourful, moving patterns, the comic style- drawn animated city buildings with the pink background and the comic page with the different squares separating images, are all included in a plugin called “Premium VFX Comic Titles Vol.2”.

This one can be downloaded from xFactory for 49 US Dollar here:

The Talking Cats

Then the cats show up. This is something quite random. At the time when we shot this whole thing there was a few recordings left from when I was just walking around and shooting random stuff I passed by on the street. At the time it was of the itchy dog that lived at the entrance of the house where I was living. It was so old and dirty and would never walk far (this is on a dirty blind alley to the edge of a slum area in Mumbai). I just thought that dog looked so terrible that it was worth filming. Then I came up with the idea that I wanted to use it in the film and thought it would be funny to put a voice over on it. But then that would have to be for a reason. I though maybe it would be easier to make something like a dialogue of it and decided to film another dog to make a short voice over to as if the two of them were commenting on the film we were to make, as spectators. And the comment they would make would be something skeptical such as; “what are these idiots doing. They can’t make a short film in just 12 hours”. And the other one would reply something like “It happens all the time that foreigners come here to India with some idea they want to manifest, and end up being tricked by the local people”.

You can also change the background to a subject by cutting out the subject with the masking tool in FCPX. Which is done at the sequence where the foreigner leans against the wall in the film.

 Generally I would say that these comic effects have helped to put some spice onto the otherwise quite dull footage. In combination with that the color grading also haven’t been particularly restrained. Alhough there isn’t necessarily any through behind where these comic effects are applied, nor for how long they would act. But there is a vague attempt not to make it to senseless. Like in a combination with a sound effect which is there to cover up a bad sound intake, or to smoothen out a transition. There is a lot of gradient transitions applied in the cut of a clip where one part have a comic effect layer applied to it.