My final project for my video class is to take a still picture an animate it in Adobe After Effects. Just like the cinematic intro for MAGIC: Duels of the Planeswalkers. That right there? Was made with paintings and concept arts, animated in After Effects.

Naturally, I chose my Gyendal painting that I did for TDP's fanmade cover, just because I have it handy. I have the background, the character, and all the junk I need in one picture. The only extra thing I added was the Grim Reaper VX battler. It's also one of my better paintings that would make the video look sort-of-3D-ish. And it's a cool pic.

So, I'm still a n00b and can't compare to the pros who made that MAGIC video, but... please tell me how I did Ignore the glitchy splotches that flash across the screen. I still don't know why that happens >.< (Oh, and if you noticed that art fail on Gyendal, ignore that too)

I'm thinking that if I can get this to work I might try making some kind of trailer for CAT or Aveyond or whatever. Just so I can have more stuff for my portfolio.
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The magic effect is done in After Effect's particle generator. Music from Aveyond 3 (duh) and the monster roar at the end is from the RPG Maker default SFX. Don't remember if it's XP or VX.

By art fail, did you mean Gyendal's hand?
Other than that, it's pretty nice

Anything that fails. This is a new thing I was just learning in class so there's definitely failures abound >____<

Peeps on FB said it's stiff and stuff.

Wow. Gyendal's hot.
I had actually pictured him to be look a little bit more like an older man in his late forties.
Now I'm going to daydream about this dreamy-looking Gyendal.

@Haneul: Well, Amanda confirmed that Gyendal is around the same age as Te'ijal, so he should look about 30 years old In my mind Gyendal is the younger one, so I imagine that he's 29
Wait, THIS is dreamy? I meant him to look sinister! Are you reallly sure? Take a closer look. If that is dreamy, then what about this one and this one?

It is sinister-looking that's true, but I had not imagined Gyendal to be so good-looking and manly.

This is definitely dreamy in my book.

I liked it, but, as your FB friends said, it is a bit stiff. The flow-y hair is cool, as well as the cape and flames. The hair and flames are the better animated, but the cape is still good. The teleport/summon at the end is pretty good, too.

The one thing that's really standing out to me right now, though, is the hand. From what it looks like, Gyendal is drawing his hand back to shoot the fire thing out, but the way he draws his hand back is strange. The way that the hand is moving is strange and unnatural looking, just try it yourself. There's also the fact that the fire just flies away, which also looks unnatural. Even though he is magical, it's weird that the hand doesn't move forward at all when Gyendal throws/casts the spell.

Of course, though, I don't know much about animating stuff like this. At all. I'm just telling you what I see that looks strange and/or good.

@Yuffie: He never drew his hand back. He just waved it once That is, unless you meant something else. As you may already know, the base image I used to make the animation is a painting of the Gyendal TDP fanmade cover. It's pretty much "puppet animation" and there's only so much I can do here without having to paint extra images That stiffness is something that I really can't help

Thanks for the feedback.

What I meant by the hand-drawing thing is that he's moving his hand back, or out. I'm glad I could help, though. ^^

woah! way to go Agas. It's like a still image forced to animate. for some reason I just know somewhere in my head, that making animated object is a pain in the butt, vehemently 3d, it's still a struggle even with software that make life easy. as u said though it's faked. What are you planing to do with it? make a movie? no? a clip parody. that would be epic. your art could pass a hidden object fantasy adventure,(my siblings love playing those.)

I think the biggest problem is the cape. It kinda jumps around a bit, but it doesn't look at all natural. Cloth doesn't work that way. I'm not sure how you would fix it, but that really stood out to me. On the other hand, the hair looks really nice, and I didn't even notice anything wrong with the hand (and honestly, I wouldn't say it's a lot worse than the professional video; I feel like there's only so much you can do with such a medium, and you did most of it ).

@pink: Hmm, odd, the cape was one of the stuff that I thought actually turned out semi-decent. Yes, it's Stiff and looking like it's a bag inflating and deflating, and yes, it needs work, but it's not jumping around.

Are you sure that's not some kind of funky problem caused by lagging computer. Mine does that whenever it lags.
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General note: I just realized that by zooming in up close to Gyendal's upper body, the cape's movement isn't actually visible. Being that the top half of the cape is held in place by his hand, the part that would be moving about the most is the lower half of the cape, and it's not even really showing in this vid!!! D: Boo, fail!

Imma go render JUST Gyendal standing with his cape billowing. Just to see what it looks like.

Okay, "jumping around" probably isn't the right way to put it. What I meant was that its movements seem arbitrary and not at all natural, as opposed to his hair, which looks just right.

Yeah, it totally looks like a bag inflating and deflating. Again, that's because I imagined the top of his cloak wouldn't be moving too much because his arm is in the way, so I put more work in animating the lower parts of the cloak... Which you actually cannot see D:

It looks awesome! You have some nice video editing skill. I did notice some flickers, like "bugs" in the video.
Like one frame part of Gyndel's body dissappeared or turned into a different color. Maybe it was just a bug in playing the video and not your fault.
I think it looks a lot more alive, I liked the motion it's pleasent to watch.

Looking at OPs for various visual novels, I'm quite confident a lot of the effects can be replicated in the same way I did this Gyendal video...

I should try making another one of this someday.

I actually thought the hair looked stiff. The candlelights and the magic thingy is great though.

That's the extent I could do to the image without killing the heck out of the picture. All things considered, I thought the hair looked good compared to the cloak

The flowing of the hair seemed kinda slow. Hair don't 'freeze' slowly in mid-air. If it was faster, it might look smoother. But yeah, it's definitely better than the cloak.

With the right kind of breeze, hair will do exactly that. I don't think it's unrealistic, especially not with the inherent limitations of the medium.