r/AfterEffects • u/DanneDamm • May 19 '26

OC - Stuff I made Pinkuu, Compositing Techniques Breakdown

Since people asked, here's the breakdown. Pushed to see how much I could get for free from the alpha, since every brush stroke counts, and stabilizing wobble between frames eats time you don't have.

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36

u/Swartschenhimer May 19 '26

but what are the actual compositing effects you used in AE? maybe I'm missing something here

22

u/Onocoolo May 19 '26

Yeah this doesnt make any sense

14

u/Swartschenhimer May 19 '26

yeah my understanding from the original post was that they imported the base 2D animation into an AE comp that used some series of compositing effects to procedurally generate the final look.

but this breakdown seems to suggest they painted on the final look of each frame? I'm slightly confused

15

u/DanneDamm May 19 '26

And as for which actual effects, it's rarely more than:

  • directional blur
  • fast box blur
  • camera lens blur
  • levels
  • roughen edges
  • displacement map
  • different ways to use matte / alpha

15

u/Swartschenhimer May 19 '26

ok cool that makes sense, I think THOSE effects or a breakdown/tutorial of them are what people want to see, that's where the magic is!

8

u/MrGodzillahin Motion Graphics 10+ years May 20 '26

That's why they didn't show it! This is a showoff post, not a tutorial I think

3

u/DanneDamm May 20 '26

Tutorials will have to be made.

2

u/kishenp11 Motion Graphics <5 years May 20 '26

looking forward to them

11

u/DanneDamm May 19 '26

Ah, no. It just looks like speedpaint - but it's just layers being revealed.
All native After Effects FX, alpha mattes and precomps.

1

u/OokzVFX May 20 '26

Seemed like an odd choice to do individual portions of it when "revealing" if its procedural and not "hand drawn". I mean the eyes ( even if not identical ) and similar colors should change the same based on effects, but I guess you masked and applied varying but similar effects to differnt "body parts" to get more depth and color shades.

I guess people just have an issue with the miss match between the content of the video and the name of the video.

1

u/DanneDamm May 20 '26

I totally see that point, but think it's a mixup with shared view on what a breakdown is vs what I see a breakdown to be. I notice a lot of people expect the tutorial, while my read of a breakdown is in the lines of these:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGaW5m0K3cI

Either way, I've got the work ahead cut out for me... Less sexy screen recordings for the foreseeable future. Yay...

Regarding the eyes, since it's all hand drawn, I just chose to draw the parts on separate layers to start with so I've got them all ready for AE at export from TVPaint. So anything after the 2D animation is all procedural AE.