Snow White's Potion

It's not Halloween - too bad.

Extras | [<2mb gif] • Source: ??? [imgur]

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.

Window Watcher

I wanted to experiment with the idea of replacing the Reshape Effect within the script to Liquify - ended up messing up a bit so the tutorial will have to be done later.

Extras | no gif, only mp4. • Source: Girlfolio

This does use the J&G script, but has many additional things added on. That being said, almost all of the added on features use the expressions/control added by the script making my life a lot easier.

Also, finally fixed the random post thing over on the right to be https, so now we're all secure up in here.

Jiggle and Grow 4 Script Release

The Jiggle and Grow Script has made it out of beta! While I'm not ready to tell people of it's existence yet, outside of this blog anyway, because the last time I released a major version a major bug was found within an hour and many people thought it just didn't work. (How was I supposed to know everyone would delete all the starting keyframes?) Plus I haven't made the advanced tutorial.

The script is available for download here.
Walkthrough videos are available for download through the J&G page. If you run into any bugs, please let me know and I'll try to get them fixed asap.

To the people that use v3, please be aware this version has changed out you apply the Effects, it's much more lenient now and should make more sense once you see how it works.

J&G 4 - Beta

To try the beta script: Beta Folder
Download the beta script file and put it into your scripts folder (see current installation instructions for J&G3 for a refresher.)

Good news! It's pretty much done. Just need to test it on things and create tutorials.

• First, it does not require After Effects 2018, so any version of After Effects CC should work fine. (Sorry CS6 users) It certainly is more efficient and quicker if you have 2018 compared to earlier versions, but hey.
• Instead of using 20+ effects, it now uses around 8, so it's much, much quicker than before. (Regardless of which AE version you're running)
• No more precomposing, this does change up how the script operates though, so be aware of that:
  • You no longer create a certain number of masks on the layer and magic happens. You now work on layers directly, applying what you need appropriately and when you want.
  • The J&G effects are now visible on the layer itself so you can either put your own effects before them, or after them, or tie effects to them if you so choose.
  • All controls for the entire composition are on a single null layer called J&G Controls. Hopefully simplifying things.
• It does work on video, but I would highly suggest you rotoscope first before using the script! The tutorial will explain why.
• I'm going to try and get the Shadows tool into it before full release, but that may have to wait as my vacation is up soon.

If you try this out and run into a bug, please let me know in the comments so I can look into it. I will need your .aep file and a brief description of what you have selected and what you're trying to get the script to do so I can recreate it. Remember, it's a beta!

Bug fixes 11/26/2017:
Fixed: Expression missing ; for single bounce. [Added ;]
Fixed: Pendulum swings upside down when initial bounce angle was between -90 and 90 or variations. [Took that into account.]
Found bug: function CopyToComp() does not allow the Undo feature... known AE bug.
Found bug: You can apply the jiggle effect to the same layer, using different jiggle types breaks everything.
11/27/2017
Fixed: CopyToComp() by not using CopyToComp() and manually making a copytocomp that does work with Undo.
11/28/2017
Fixed: You can no longer apply the jiggle effect twice to the same layer.
12/2/2017
Fixed: Top Layer Jiggle could not be applied after a Reshape.
Fixed: Reshape was being placed in incorrect order if applied after Jiggle Effect.
Fixed: Top Layer Jiggle would delete Reshape if being re-applied to account for new layers with Jiggle Effect.
12/4/2017
Fixed: Applying Reshape (Altering DMComp) would fail. Similar to above, but not quite.
12/8/2017
Found bug:Pendulum gets out of balance after first pass when running in reverse or grav_direction > initial bounce direction...
12/14/2017
Fixed Pendulum bug: Took a long time to fix this, rewrote it quite a few times and each time it turned into a if/else nightmare. Finally got a method that works, not quite as pretty as before, but still worth it.
12/16/2017
Fixed Speed Bug: When using keyframes on bounce speed the first keyframe wouldn't propagate to the first frame of the comp like it was supposed to.

Jiggle & Grow 4

Off and on I've been working on J&G script 4. It's coming along quite well - at least the expression are.

This post is for those of you who want to try it out:

Beta Folder
You'll need both files. Keep in mind, this is just to test the expressions and effects, it doesn't have the script portion so this is literally just a file with fancy controls, you can't use it on your own image.

First: you'll need the newest version of After Effects (2018). This is because I'm abusing a new feature unique to this version. So yes, that does mean only the people running 2018 or newer will be able to run this script. Don't blame me that Adobe just now got around giving expressions access to mask paths.
Edit: This is no longer true for a couple reason I'll maybe explain later, but the short answer is now the script detects which version you have and will do different things accordingly.

What's new?

• No more Precomposing. It's all handled up front.
• All expressions have been re-written from the ground up, so they are better in efficiency and readability.
• New Gravity feature. As the bounce amount crosses the threshold of the gravity amount, the bounce will transition into a more pendulum like movement to behave more like breasts.
• No more 37 Smears. Instead, I've opted to use a displacement map to achieve a similar effect - way faster than before. (This uses a thing that was added in the early 2017 version of After Effects)
• "Heftiness" has turned into Stiffness. Similar setting, but does a bit more.

and...

• This version will support video! The reason is because I'll have access to the mask paths in the expressions, letting me control many more things on the fly.

I'd love to switch to liquify; however, I'm running into issues with that because with liquify there's no way for me to figure out how the user moved the "growth", so... I'm still using reshape for the main expansion effect.

Vixen

Two versions: Extended scene and just BE versions.

Extras | [gif version] • Source: Kendra Sunderland for Vixen

Extras | No gif, too large. • Source: Kendra Sunderland for Vixen

This was the first time I've worked with 4K footage while using Re:flex, it definitely hurts the computer. I'm sorry for the jump cuts in the extended version, but to get it to make sense it kind of required it. If you watch the source video the jump cuts are really jarring, so I did what I could to tone them down without causing some position changes during cuts. The 4K really saved me in the end with the shadows, I took too many shortcuts, but after resizing you can't really see them.