After I received a number of requests from my audience about how I created the visual effects for our Zombie Hunter VFX Short Film, I decided to create a tutorial for it :)

The first Behind The Scenes tutorial shows you how to create the ghostly, aggressive zombie speed run effect! Enjoy :)

Initially, I used a simple time remapping effect to speed up Celina’s movement and added a CC Force Motion blur to the layer to make it seem like the zombie was moving at super human speed.

I then duplicated the footage layer and, using the Difference Matte effect, created 3 dark shadow trails that I delayed by an additional frame each. This causes a dark shadow to be trailing behind the zombie as she races from side to side through the scene.

I created the black zombie particles using Red Giant’s Particular plug-in, but you can also create them with the inbuilt CC Particle World effect in Adobe After Effects. Simple create some small black faded sphere particles and set the gravity to slightly negative so they float up nicely.

I am in the process of writing up a more complete tutorial on this zombie speed run effect and will upload it soon :)