How to parallax animate your photos (VIDEO)

 

 

Joe Fellows of Make Productions has made a name for himself by animating still photos, turning a 2D image into not quite 3D by using what's known as the parallax effect. In this video he walks through the laborious task of turning a single photo into a living animation, thanks to a large dose of Photoshop and After Effects.

The parallax effect is the reason why when you're driving, things in the distance seem to be moving past at a much slower rate than things nearby. Fellows has adopted this technique, and used it for a video for the World Wildlife Foundation — leading to him being profiled for Vice and Intel's The Creative Project. In the interview he walks through doing a shoot of himself hitting ping pong balls, and how he then painstakingly separates the objects into layers in Photoshop, paints in the blank areas of the background, and then animates the whole thing using After Effects.

All told, it's a task that's daunting in the precision and time required, if not in the conceptual difficulty. It's an exacting process isolating each object, and then filling in its backgrounds seamlessly. But the final videos are might impressive for all the work he puts in.

(via ISO1200)