The Glitch Logo - Premier/After Effects

Premier is used to edit videos and after effects can be used to create animations as well as editing videos and images and creating effects on them. both are used to create a moving image. For the Premier/AfterEffects part of my assignment, I started researching some videos of glitch effects, through my research I happened upon a video of the logo from WatchDogs™.

I really liked how it looked and wanted to replicate it, so I started researching the designer who made it. During my research I found a website discussing the graphic design of the game in which I found a link to the designer's Behance page Alexander Karpazis. Through his page I found out that he uses a multitude of programs for his work, but that he specifically uses After effects for animating his designs. Having found my inspiration, I started looking up tutorials on how to achieve the result of the glitching logo and decided to try it myself.

I started by creating a simple logo that I named after a fictitious company that I made up called "Penumbra" after the lighter shadow inbetween the darkest part of a shadow and the light. I obviously worked on the logo using Illustrator, to make sure the logo was in vector.

Figure 1: Penumbra Logo (Original Source)

After following the tutorial above I managed to create something similar which  I think came out very well. I started by opening Aftereffects and creating a new composition in 1080p 24fps, I then imported the logo I mentioned earlier, I then imported the stock footage for the glitch and dragged it on the logo. I created an adjustment layer and made an effect called displacement map which is going to skew and distort the Logo. Under displacement map layer I chose the stock footage that will give the glitch effect. I adjusted the horizontal  and vertical displacement dials to achieve the desired effect. In then shortened the length of the adjustment layer on the timeline and duplicated the effect positioning them in several parts of the timeline to make intervals in the glitching whilst also changing the values of the displacement to make the glitching more varied.


Subsequently I renamed the logo to red and duplicated it twice and named each blue and green respectively. I then searched "Levels" in the effects and presets panel and applied the effect to each of the renamed logos. I then Tweaked the settings of the effect to make each of the layers the colour of the name I gave it prior, by zeroing the green and blue for the red and so on. I then changed the node setting for the blue and green layers to "screen" and this change the logo back  to its original white colour. Subsequently I created a new "null object" layer and renamed it "RGB Split" applied an effect from  the expression control panel and selected the slider control I then locked the layer. I then chose the layer that I wanted to displace(the red layer) and pressed "p" for Position, I long clicked the clock icon and typed "wiggle(10," and linked it to the slider control using the pickwick tool. This will populate the remaining part of the link, 'wiggle(10,thiscomp.layer("RGB Split").effect("Slider Control")("Slider"))'. then I adjusted the value on the slider control from 0 to 50 and the effect can be seen. Then I adjusted the keyframes for the effect to make some variety and in the end added some adjustment layer with an old TV effect to make some static patches and the glitch was ready.

References

Youtube.com, (2018). (128) Watch Dogs Logo Animation - YouTube [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00pcyRLHO0A [Accessed 1/11/2018].

Theverge.com, (2018). Inside the graphic design of 'Watch Dogs' - The Verge [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.theverge.com/2014/5/31/5768098/inside-the-graphic-design-of-watch-dogs [Accessed 1/11/2018].

Behance, (2018). Watch Dogs | Graphic Direction on Behance [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.behance.net/gallery/16901755/Watch-Dogs-Graphic-Direction [Accessed 1/11/2018].

Youtube.com, (2018). (128) After Effects - Glitch Tutorial - YouTube [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYkqC9uI8Nc [Accessed 1/11/2018].