Frozen Orb

Glass Orbs to Frozen Orbs

The tutorial I chose was the Glass Orb tutorial and i started this tutorial just how this Andrew guy started it.

A smudge image that I applied the CC Sphere effect to. I created two copies of this layer, one set normally and the second which was in front, set mode to inverse, and the opacity turned really low. To animate this layer it took me a day to figure out you're suppose to  alt +click onto the stop watch on the y-axis and type in "time*20". This took me so long to figure out...

   After about this time I decided I liked this background as the reflection than the one the tutorial called for. I found this image after searching for a city panorama and created a sphereized version of it in After Effect. I created a mask to smooth out the edge to make it look seamless. 

Masked and then CC Sphere again. This took me a good day to figure out how to make this longer too. I realized after a while you're suppose to pre-compose the layer. 

I put a circular mask in the center of the sphere and then feathered out the edges. I turned the mask layer off to create a somewhat transparent look.   

By now I decided I didn't want to do exactly what the man doing the tutorial did so I started to do things on my own. He recommended a CC Curves effect and I played with the colors. I put a snow effect later and then added the sphere effect again to make the snow inside the orb.  

I added a background using two separate layers. I added a grey solid layer and let that sit. Then I took an icy floor image and squished that to half screen and added a mask to feather out the top to making it blend. On the layer with the light effects I messed with that layer again and made a nice glow to it. 

This tutorial was really simple and only a few time I didn't understand the video. This was the second tutorial I did after the first one which was the light ribbons required a plug-in that was never mentioned until I was half way through the video. I'm happy I switched projects since this looks a lot nicer than I thought it would be and I could do this again with other images.