To Rule Them All
(JUN 2023-MAR-2024)
This project is complete but the cast study on this page is currently in progress.
This is a reimagined animated version of the intro sequence to the Lord of the Rings The Fellowship of the Ring (here's the original sequence if you need a refresher). For the final piece, my audio is the same as the film, using the voiceover narrated by Galadriel: "It all began with the forging of the great rings..." and will end just before the battle against Sauron starts.
I'd like this page to be a foundation for anyone trying to attempt a commercial project of the same style so if you're reading this and have any more questions then please do reach out directly to me, I'll gladly nerd out on how this was done and will update the page with new info if needed.
There are some areas which I've used my artistic license but for the most part I acted as if I was responsible for strictly following the design styles from the world of LOTR and imagining that I had been hired by the director to set the scene of the film for a first time viewer.
Before I dive more into the details here's the final result:
Thanks to 3D artist James McManus for helping bring Sauron to life (instagram.com/jamesmcmanus.art)
Workflow
This project is animated in After Effects using mostly free FX and native FX (there are some exceptions to this which I'll show later on). It builds on a workflow devised for a previous hand drawn project (Clue Title Sequence). Clue helped me realize the power of sprites - small, simple stock assets that I make at the start of the project; Ever since this project I've been making sprites and using them in pretty much everything I do. If you're a motion designer, these stock assets are normally best sourced from an online library but I like to make these myself as I find them useful bite sized exercises to learn new techniques and by adding my final work it helps craft a style that's unique to me.
Whereas Clue sparked an interest in making mostly 1 type of sprite - Plumes (see my exploration of this here)- a stylized puff of smoke spreading out in one direction, this project has sparked new obsessions - Glowball and Orbs. These aren't specific technical terms but for the purpose of this case study, here's my definitions for both a glowball and an orb:
Glow-ball:
A textured circular sprite to be used as a stylized alternative to a glow effect in Ae. So instead of a perfectly smooth VFX style glow (like you'd get from a deep glow plugin or a native glow effect), this piece contains glow/ambient light that's made out of hand drawn textures. I drew these on paper, photographed them and then animated them in After Effects (more detailed breakdown on this animation later). Here's and example of what one of the finished glow sprites looks like:
Orbs
Similar to a glow-ball but more abstract - swirls of smoke/magic that converge around a point
I knew stock assets like these would come in handy when animating the forging of the rings of power and also would also help with the scene where Sauron forges the one ring. Not all these orbs were included in the Lord of the rings project, this was more of a side quest where I experimented and added to my library of stock assets.
Once I had a few of these rendered, I could then build larger clusters of.
Using sprites this way means there is a consistent texture style for the whole project and more importantly, it saves time; making bespoke FX for every scene from scratch would have been extremely time consuming and having these open ended simple animated.
As well as orbs and glow-balls, I made a few other sprites, my favourite of these is this cluster of smoke which I made from a tool called Zephier (by Ae Cartographer - not released yet, still in early testing but you could get a similar effect with a particle generator) Here's a quick breakdown:
