Role:
Video Editor
Programs Used:
Adobe After Effects, Adobe Premiere, Blender, OBS for recording in-game.
Description:
This is a tribute video for the game Punishing Gray Raven's first year anniversary that commemorates its developments and improvements since launch for fans to view. It was submitted to the 1st Anniversary Re-Creation Event hosted by the Chinese game developer Kuro Games.
The video mainly showcases characters from the game "Punishing Gray Raven". It covers not only their silhouette appearance, but also their in-game powers that are similarly exhibited (or suggested). The transitions from one character to the next are either changed or distorted to appear seamless.
Throughout the video, a red, black, and white triad color scheme is visible. The background is usually red, implying the virus that the characters are surrounded with. To represent "purification" against the threat, the characters or items will be displayed in black, while their powers will be shown in white.
One of the art styles I tried to mainly emulate is the BAD APPLE! music video. It takes a minimalist approach, employing only black and white hues, with the foreground and backgrounds opposing each other. Another significant characteristic of the video is its clever transitions between one scene to another.
It would often use a silhouette of a character or an object to blend another character who is taking the spotlight next. This simple approach has left a distinctly strong style that is still impressive to this day. There are also additional inspirations with similar styles but with different approach.
The lack of experience in the drawing and animation departments is a significant barrier in video production. This means that producing 2D or 3D animations from scratch will be out of the question. As a result, a possible option is to screen-record each character doing their introduction or ending animations using the animations already seen in-game. The recorded video is imported to After Effects, which will become the main tool not only for video effects, but also rotoscoping.
Despite After Effects' Rotoscope 2.0 streamlining the process, rotoscoping took the most time due to the game's fast-paced animations, which the program struggled to handle automatically. To ease the process, workarounds were used, like placing a red, black, and white character in an orange-dominant desert setting for easier foreground/background detection. Even with this, significant fine-tuning was still required due to the speed of the animations.
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