Graffiti in 3D?

Being a reasonably avid photographer, I browsed through my photos and found three I could use for this piece. They were a Ferris Wheel, a sculpture of a Hindu god (Lord Muruga?), and a Chinese lantern. All man-made objects.

To ‘graffitise’ them, I first used Hue and Saturation in Photoshop to take away colour. Then I used Curves to create a high contrast black and white image. Once I was done with the three visuals, it was time to work on the background on which the graffiti would appear. I took two photos, a concrete floor and a wall, and altered their hue, saturation and contrast levels. After I had all the elements I wanted, I dumped them into After Effects to be put together into a composition.

I made a mask with the Pen and Stroke tools in After Effects. I keyframed the Stroke effect so it would look like someone was spraying black paint onto a stencil. After that, I decided to take my project further.

I clicked the 3D button and set a Camera in place. I made my Camera zoom in towards the red rectangle, through the Ferris Wheel graffiti. In beat to the music, I later made the Camera lunge forward, filling the screen with red, and let it focus on the black lantern graffiti appearing between the two gods.

All of a sudden I figured I should turn the composition into an intro ident for a production house. I added a layer of graffiti beneath the black lantern and made text to appear as the composition ended.

Looking at it now, I think cutting out the first half of the composition, i.e. the Ferris Wheel, and starting somewhere in the middle would result in a better piece.

Click here for Temporal Graffiti/Ident: http://vimeo.com/1837025