After Effects Bow and Arrow

shooting an arrow at someone without actually killing them

I used Adobe After Effects, I obviously had very little experience at the time, and was just messing around while making this simple effect.

If you want to do my original simple arrow effect, follow these steps.

1. Take a picture with a green screen background of the arrow you want to animate (or take the time to crop it out of the background manually)

2. load this image as a new layer

3. go frame by frame and rotoscope the arrow through the scene in order to make it appear animated (remember that while its being shot, it will be going very fast so it will only appear in a few frames, and turn motion blur on).

4. Once the arrow hits the target, make it appear to enter their body by placing a mask of a solid null object over the arrow and the body in the places where the arrow and body overlap, and then click on the eye on the timeline for the null object that toggles the visibility of the object. this creates the effect that the arrow is in the body.

5. rotoscope this null object and the arrow EXTREMELY precisely (more so than I did, if you want it to look good) which will take a very long time, but will ultimately produce a good look. make sure that the arrow remains at the same angle the body in which it first made contact, and follow the up/down, back/forth movements of the body.

6. add a simple blood animation, and perhaps some sort of hole looking object around the entry point.

Overall I did this effect with very little After Effects Experience quite awhile ago, and I realize it is not exactly high tech. I will eventually be making a remake of a much higher quality, cgi version after learning more here at Carnegie Mellon University.

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• after effects
• after
• effects
• adobe
• arrow
• bow
• shoot
• lotr
• special effects
• Adobe After Effects
• Bow and arrow
• funny
• outdoor sports
• Legolas
• tutorial

[ElectricBluePenguin7]

how do you make it look like the person got hit with the arrow?

[lachupacabra17]

@ElectricBluePenguin7 after effects, i explained how to do it in the description. its not that difficult of an effect, i made it when i first got after effects 3 years ago

[LuiDeca]

i used to make videos in after effects like you, then i took an arrow on the knee

[lachupacabra17]

@LuiDeca haha i dont get it...you need your knee to make videos?

[slimjim1291411]

@lachupacabra17 it's a reference to skyrim lol

[lachupacabra17]

@slimjim1291411 yeah haha I realized that after being briefly confused

[ziribai]

should have hit the knee

[LuiDeca]

@lachupacabra17 i kinda need it, it would be pretty hard to make videos on a wheel chair. Ramps are expensive

[joec123able]

ha tht was one of those little fifteen pound bows but still kool 

[lachupacabra17]

@cpmatthews thanks