LONGMIRE

NERDWHISTLE was asked to take some existing fan art that would be used to promote the new 2014 season and break it apart and put it back together again for all on-air usage. Luckily the artist was able to provide the artwork in a way that could be broken into individual layers.  The problem with this was there were many many layers and the shape layers weren’t merged with all the final textures, lighting effects, etc. So in order make this work in after effects, I had figure out how to merge all the shapes into individual layers within photoshop by loading a selection based on the shape, copying a merged version of that selection, and pasting into a new layer. And repeat the process a few hundred times...

Photoshop actions to the rescue! I figured out how to do it semi-automatically - I still had to press F19 a few hundred times but better than the alternative!

One of the other main concerns was how to animate each individual piece without having to actually hand-animate each one! As this was short deadline and there were 4 different character plates to animate plus title cards, I had to find a quick solution.

Luckily there’s a great community online that shares knowledge of all things after effects, in particular how to make use of expressions. I found a version that would randomly place each piece in z-space with some customizable numbers to control speed, distance, etc. The problem was rotation- luckily I was able to write (hack) an expression that would randomly rotate each piece but bring it back together at the end of the animation.

Luckily it worked! And I was able to plug in those expressions for the 3 other character plates and all was merry!

And here’s the final piece that was shown in theaters to promote the show:

Other seasons of Longmire that I worked on: