So I built a simple 3D environment (sometimes called 2.5D) in After Effects to do some moves on some archival photos. I think they look nice. I even built in some depth of field so that I could play with drawing the viewer’s eye to certain places on the screen as the camera moved. I rendered them out and included them in an early cut of the show I’m editing.
Over the weekend, the roughcut was shared with the 3D graphic artist so he can review the sections we need him to cover with high-tech looking, CG animations. He comes back with some notes on what he can do – including this one: “I can make those stills shot on the table look better by redoing them in an After Effects 2.5D project – make them more moody & sensitive.”
He is offering to redo the work I’ve already done. I am not sure whether I should be offended or take it as a compliment. He seems to think the stills were actually shot on a real life table, so I’ve got that going for me. However, in spite of the fact that I seem to have fooled him, I hope what I’ve done isn’t so bad that he’d like to redo it better. If he (a professional graphics person) can’t tell how I created them and is fooled then I may be better at this than I realize…or we’ve got other problems.
