THE LICH KING
Production dedicated to the Zoltan Streamer.
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1920*1080 px @ 30 fps ; 00:00:30
Illustration made by Blizzard Entertainment - World of Warcraft
"Realization of a 3D rendering accompanied by animations and visual effects in the form of a looped video, from an illustration related to the Lich King produced by Blizzard Entertainment."
Overview 🔎
Zoltan is a French Streamer operating on Twitch which offers content notably focused around video games developed by Blizzard Entertainment, and in particular World of Warcraft (WoW).
The Lich King, also known as Arthas Menethil, is an emblematic character from the World of Warcraft video game. He embodies a Death knight sitting in the Northrend region and who controls the Scourge, armies of the undead.
The purpose of the project was to create a form of “animated and looped wallpaper” from the illustration dedicated to the Lich King, by mixing a 3D effect, visual effects and animations.
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Process 🛣
In order to realize this project, I went through several well-defined stages.
1. Realization of the scenarios (3D, VFX, Animations, Editing) in order to clarify the direction of the project and to know all the elements to be produced.
2. Cutout of all the elements of the poster through After Effects in order to constitute the plans of the 3D part. Deletion of elements, additional adjustments and retouching were necessary to perfect the plans, using Photoshop.
3. Creation and configuration of the composition within After Effects: dimensions of the production (1920x1080 px), choice of the number of frames per second (30 FPS), duration (30 sec.), addition of the plans previously cut and insertion in 3D space, and configuration of the camera.
4. Creation of the various animations.
5. Creation of the visual effects (VFX) using plugins.
6. Editing of the production: camera path, configuration of animations and visual effects to render them “looped” on the composition.
7. Assembly of the production on Premiere Pro: Insertion of the composition, research, addition and editing of the soundtrack and sound effects (SFX).
8. Production export (H.264): 1 video file (.Mp4); 2 cover pictures (JPG & PNG).
Audiovisual production details 🎞
🎞 Composition
• Dimensions: 1920x1080 px.
• Frames per second: 30 Fps.
• Duration: 30 seconds.
• Editing: 3D editing with a shot by 2-nodes camera.
Dimensions based on 1080p - Full HD resolution. For technical reasons (hardware), the amount of frames per second has been lowered from 60 to 30 FPS since the export time of the composition would have been too long. A higher FPS number would have made the production even smoother to watch. The duration of the composition was defined according to the setting of the looped effect based on the duration of the animations.
You can notice that if you restart the video, it will feel to you “continuous” between the end and the beginning. This is called a “looped” effect. This is very useful when you want to display a video that repeats and seems to go on forever,while its initial duration is only few seconds.
🪄 Photo retouching
○ Deletion of the snow
○ Deletion of the Golem and the Army of the dead
○ Deletion of Arthas, the Citadel and the Dragon
○ Minor details retouching
○ Reconstruction of certain parts hidden by elements as part of the realization of the various plans for the completion of the 3D rendering
A significant retouching work was necessary in order to completely eliminate the snow effect present on the illustration with the aim of being able to achieve the various visual effects related to the production, and in particular the snow and the wind. A slight color correction was also carried out, accompanied by an improvement in the perception of details, to make the illustration more expressive.
Also, some elements of the illustration have been minutely erased (not visible on the cover picture) in order to reconstitute certain plans dedicated to the realization of the 3D part.
✂ Cutouts (from the foreground to the background)
1.1.1. The Arthas body and his cape
1.1.2. The right arm of Arthas and his weapon
1.2. The snowy rock in front of Arthas
2. The foreground of the Army of the dead
3. The background of the Army of the dead
4. The Golem
5. The rocks and peaks to the right and left of the illustration
6. The small mountain range and peaks
7. The Dragon and his mountain
8. The Citadel
9. The mountain chain at the background
10. The whole sky
The cutouts that was particularly demanding was the one related to the dragon, named Sindragosa. Because it was necessary to cut out each hole in its wings and each outline of its body dotted with spikes.
Finally, the most specific cut was the one related to Arthas. Did you noticed that his arms are animated? Within the composition, his arm holding the weapon - named Frostmourne - has been cut out, isolated and then animated. This process therefore required locally reconstructing the elements (or planes) appearing behind this arm: the cape, the armor, the snow-covered mount, the mountains and the sky.
✨ Effects & Elements
○ Colors & Brightness
• Color corrections
• Suppression of the fog
• Improvement of some textures
○ Visual effects (VFX)
• Snowfall (x2)
• Wind blowing
• Blue glow emitted by the eyes of Arthas
• Condensation emitted by Arthas breathing
• Blue glows emitted by the eyes and the nose of the hilt of Frostmourne*
• Blue glow (style : soul) emitted by the blade of Frostmourne
• Wind effect on the Arthas cape
• Blue glows emitted from the eyes of the Army of the dead
• Wind effect on the flags carried by the Army of the dead
• Freezing mist at the center of the Army of the dead
• Condensation emitted by the Golem breathing
• Evolutionary brightness emitted by the orange parts of the Golem
• Blue glows (style : soul) emitted by the body and the eyes of the Dragon
• Evolutionary brightness of the white part at the center of the sky
*Frostmourne: sword of Arthas
All the elements and effects were made in After Effects by hand and using plugins like Red Giant.
The effects that required the most work was the soul effect released by the weapon of Arthas, the eyes of the army of the dead and the dragon. It was developed “from a blank page” from scratch by my care using a specific plugin.
⚙ Animations
○ Camera
○ The right and left arm of Arthas
○ The wings and the tail of the Dragon
○ The weapons and masts carried by the Army of the dead
All the animations were made by hand.
The one related to Arthas cape was the most trickiest. Since the cape wasn’t isolated, care had to be taken with the separation of the animation between the cape and the armor.
🎚 Sound effects (SFX)
Wind blowing - from world of Warcraft, by Blizzard Entertainment.
In order to make watching the production more realistic, a wind sound effect has been added.
🎵 Soundtrack
From World of Warcraft, by Blizzard Entertainment.
Takeaways 📣
This project is one of the most important that I have been able to achieve because each part of the production required special attention as well as meticulous work, and its time of realization was considerable.
On the other hand, it will have allowed me to develop a new visual effect and to discover a particular method of implementation dedicated to the isolation of elements within a composition in After Effects.
Personally, World of Warcraft is my favorite video game. I loved working on this production.
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Julien Carlier Productions
2022
