Face Tracking

This was more about seeing if I could do something like this more than anything else. Once it was done it just made me kind of sad.

• Source: Busty Buffy (Lucie Wilde)

I only messed with the face, nothing else. You might think that this was done with just a single liquify, but that's creates a big problem when she turns her face. If it was one liquify effect, I'd have to adjust the displacement map every time she turns.
Instead I tracked the face with details, then adjusted the layer so it stabilized her face. Then using 3 liquify effects: Left side, Right side, and vertical; I made some expressions that turn up and down the liquify effects' percentages based on the tracked face details (like turning left and right). For example, when she turns to her left, the liquify effect on that side basically turns off.

Season

Fun with the puppet tool!

Extras | [gif version] [tiny gif] • Source: Amakano ~Second Season~ img 160 in part 1/2

As promised, here are the .psd file and .aep file if you want to pick it apart. They were made with PS2018 and AE2018, so it is highly possible older version will not correctly open the files, but I'm not sure. The .psd file is pretty self explanatory, but the .aep file is how I just work. I did most of the work in the "Assemble" composition, then did some of the final touches in Assemble 2 & 3. I use expressions... a lot, so if you look at something and are thoroughly confused, look at the expressions to see what it's doing.

The .aep file references the .psd file so you'll need both - putting them in the same place should let AE auto-find the .psd file, but in the event it doesn't it will yell at you saying it can't find 10 things. You can point the 10 layers to the .psd file within AE in the Projects area under the e_hon12LI_A Layers folder. Right click on the layer, replace footage, file - then select the .psd file. I don't know if you'll need to repeat this for each one or not.

What takes so long?

Nobody asked, but I'm going to answer the question: What takes so long?

What I enjoy doing is rigging up all these animations and watching them work - up to a point at least. In the beginning of the video you can see the original cutout from the still image. After much time in photoshop I've re-painted pretty much everything so I have a lot of cutouts to use.
On the right what you see is the animation all being driven off of a single point, which is what I drag around to show you how it moves. There's quite a few really subtle things nobody would really think of until they have to actually animate one of these things. Such as when the nipple goes above the breast it has to re-draw the outer line, little details like that. Recreating just the breast is 7 layers.

Now you know! My plan is to release the .psd file and .aep file when I finish this one so other people can really play with it to see how it all works.

Tight(er) Gray Shirt

Angles, angles, angles.

Extras | [gif version] [tiny gif] • Source: ???

This is the first time I've done an angle like this. I wanted to try and do what I kept referring to as "perspective bounces" - and that was nice, but ate way too much time for what it turned out. Basically, since her chest is turned so much, I distorted it so it was angled back as if she was standing forward, applied all the effects, then distorted it back to the original perspective. It added a lot of time to the rendering and general work flow, but did look nice. I just don't think it was worth it when using a slightly smaller bounce for the chest further back is much easier and pretty much looks the same.

Next up is: Amakano ~Second Season~ image 160 in part 1/2.