Sometimes you just encounter something unexpected…
Action Stock Footage
I recently created a post on where to find the best action stock footage. In my opinion the best quality action stock footage you can find online are the ActionVFX collections by Rody Polis. ActionVFX offers a huge variety of super high quality, 4K action stock footage elements. You will be able to find anything from explosions, fire, smoke to sparks, muzzle flashes, ground cracks and much much more.
It’s a Bomb is a collaboration with the guys from ActionVFX. I decided to help them promote their amazing stock footage to film makers and VFX artists. In return they gave me access to all of their elements for free. I want to point out that my opinion doesn’t change just because I get something for free. If I didn’t think the elements were first class I would have just turned down the offer :)
However, I felt it was a great fit and I had a blast working on the project – no pun intended. In the rest of this post, I want to give you a small glimpse into the post production work that went into It’s a Bomb.
Post Production
It’s a Bomb is a very VFX heavy short film. Almost every single shot contains some form of visual effect. Most of them have been motion or camera tracked. This allowed me to insert fog, smoke or fire into the shots. Here is the list of the 29 VFX shots contained in this short film.
Most of the post production work was completed using Adobe After Effects. I love After Effects and feel very comfortable working with it even as my compositions grow to dozens of layers and beyond. I used Blender to create the 3D model of the bomb itself. The physics simulation of me throwing the bomb was created in SideFX Houdini. Even though it was a little bit of a patchwork job, I was pretty happy with the final effect of Walter throwing the bomb.
I also had to do a large amount of rotoscoping work. For the most part I used the Mocha for Adobe plugin from Imagineer Systems to make the process a little easier. There was a lot of rotoscoping work because I needed to cut Walter out of a lot of shots. This allowed me to add lighting effects only to Walter and place fog and smoke elements ‘behind’ him in the scene.
One of the collections from the ActionVFX pack I enjoyed using the most were the fuse elements. They looked amazing once tracked into the shot. They were also very easy to composite onto my base footage with nothing more than little bit of glow and colour correction to make them site nicely in the scene.
Rise From The Grave
The primary effect I wanted to create for this VFX short film was the Rise From The Grave effect. I wanted to integrate the Ground Crack stock footage elements from ActionVFX, but I didn’t want to make yet another ‘Hancock landing’ effect. So I decided to have a monster emerge from the ground instead. With the addition of a bit of debris and dirt exploding into the air, the final VFX came out looking pretty awesome!
I do plan to write up a detailed tutorial for the Rise From The Grave effect eventually. For now, here is a link to the YouTube tutorial:
If you want to follow along with the tutorial, you can download the tutorial files here.
