Bringing Photographs to Life with 3D Layering in After Effects

1. Isolating the Ground in Photoshop

2. Placing the Trees on Their Own Layers and Erasing the Backgrounds

3. Masking the Area Around the Figures and Placing Them on Individual Layers

4. Creating a Character Using Parts of Multiple Characters

5. Preparing the Images and Border for the Cards

6. Setting up the After Effects Project and Importing the Assets

7. Placing the Ground Layers and Sky

8. Adding a Camera and Null Object

9. Positioning the Trees in Z-space

10. Placing the People and Setting Keyframes for Their Movements

11. Animating the Man's Face Using Liquify

12. Refining the Camera Movement

13. Adding a Lens Flare to Mimic a Light Source

14. Using the Bird Video

15. Creating Dust Particles with Particular

16. Making Dynamic Fog Using an Image and Particular

17. Changing the Mood of the Scene with an Adjustment Layer and Adding a Vignette

18. Creating a New Composition for the Cards

19. Setting up Two Lights for the Card Composition

20. Placing the Cards in the Scene

21. Animating the Card's Positions

22. Refining the Card Animation

23. Creating the Transition from Our Cards Comp to the Forest Comp

24. Changing the Color of the Main Card Using the Tritone Effect

25. Adding Dust Particles to the Card Comp

26. Creating a PNG Sequence

27. Adding Lens Effect to the Shot to Add Realism

28. Designing the Ambient Sound for Our Scene

29. Adding Punctuating Sounds for Our Scene