A Lesson on Floating Fingers

 HOWDY! Today I will be showing you my progress in the context of a tutorial. I am doing this because I feel like it it hard to explain  in any other way and its just more fun.

Step #0

-Mentally prep for the task (I picked 30s of happy thoughts)

-Get a Snack (I went for some Boom-Chicka-Pop Kettle Corn)

-Put on some Tunes (I started with 'Inside Out' by the Traveling Wilburys)

Step #1- Procure Video

I took this video a couple of weeks ago with my sister. We took it in front of a green screens and rested her elbow on a stool for maximum stillness. We played the song so that it would be easier to match up for me and easier for her to keep time. I instructed my sister to be as precise and still as possible as I knew I would be editing it in post and drawing on moving objects never looks as natural as you want it to. 

Step #2- Upload Onto After Effects + Remove Green Background

I started out by cutting the clip to the part that I specifically need and setting the quality to 1/4 to make the temporary faster. I then used the pen tool to create a mask around the hand to cut out my sister's shoulder. I then went to Effect > Keying > Keylight (1.2) and used the eye drop tool to select the green screen. I notices there was some grain/shadow on the upper-right corner so I set the 'view' to 'Screen Matte' and adjusted the black value gradually until the grain was no longer visible. For optimal quality, I set the 'view' at 'intermediate result' and remedied the green edges by going back to Effects > Keying > Advance Spill Suppressor. I just played the clip through to allow it to render and I was DONE! I have done this so much, it has kind of become second nature to me.

Step #3-  Insert + Transform New Background

I inserted the background layers including the brownish-black and many dots in their respective layers and put them 'behind' the video of the counting hand. I later 'parent whipped' the stars to the first star layer and transformed the stars to rotate and grow as the video played. I think this looked really cool but I knew that transforming a couple of star layers in another direction would really give me that parallax-y space effect I was looking for. For that reason I transformed  some star layers in the opposite rotation and TADA! Its done :)

Step #4- Decide Timing

This was pretty quick. Basically I just went through my video and picked the moment and exact timing before the song says "WHHHATT" and after the "Uno, Dos, Tres." This is a simple step, but doing it correctly is imperative. If this is done wrong you have to do the later steps all over again.

Step #5- Take a HQ Screenshot and Air Drop to iPad

I put the rendering at 'FULL' rendering quality and made the screen as large as possible to screen shot the hand. I later Airdopped this to my iPad and opened it on the Procreate app.

Step #6- Remove Background and Decide Where to CHOP

You start the process by getting the eraser tool and getting as close to the hand as you eliminate the 'galaxy' background. It is ok if this is somewhat 'rough' because you don't want to accidentally erase the hand. It is much better to leave some black behind than to accidentally delete any of the fleshy color. Once you have erased what you need you start planning where you will cut the fingers.

Step #7- CHOP

Here I created different layers for all of the elements of the composition so that each could act individually when I out them back into after effects. When you do this, you have to make sure that the pieces overlap and that if you had to put it all together, there wouldn't be any gaps/ in other words, the pieces fit like a puzzle. The elements ended up being the stubs, finger 1, finger 2 and finger 3.

Step #8- Draw Stubs

I then used a pink to create 'stubs' of the fingers. I matched it to the pink of the megaphone used in the last scene to make it cohesive. When you draw these, make them in a layer 'behind' the photo of the fingers so that none of the pink is visible when the tops of the fingers are placed on top.

Step #8-Match Up +Transform fingers individually 

I lowered the opacity of the 'stubs' layer in order to position it perfectly with the video of the hand and trimmed it to the exact moment it overlapped. I then put the opacity back to 100% and and put the 'finger' layers on top of the stub layer. I then used keyframes to rotate and reposition the fingers.

Step #9- Export + Speed-ramp on Final Cut Pro

I exported it from After Effects and imported that into final cut pro because it has better speed ramping options. I changed the speed of the fingers so that they would move fast and then slow for drama.

Step #10- TA-frinkin'-DA