parallaxBack in November, we shared a great video tutorial by Joe Fellows that walked us through how to animate photos in After Effects by using the parallax 2.5D effect. Though the video received a warm response, there were a few questions raised, like how to stylize and texturize elements in the composition for example, which would in turn make the project look all the more profession and downright awesome. Fellows decided to make a follow-up tutorial that answers a few of those questions (some of which came right from NFS readers). Continue on to check out the video!


According to a post from The Creators Project, Fellows addresses several questions in his tutorial by elaborating on the techniques he used that he didn't explain. Here's a list of them:

  • Using the "pin" technique
  • Creating the shadow effect on the paddle and balls
  • Render and export settings
  • Are those balls animated?
  • Does Photoshop have 3D capabilities?
  • And more!

One aspect of the tutorial I know we wondered about was how Fellows made the balls look as if they were rotating. Did he us 3D compositing? He explains that he began that process by creating a grunge layer in Photoshop, adding a line through the composition to replicate the seam you'd find on a real ping-pong ball. After importing the texture into After Effects, created a composition, and laid it over the image of the ball. He goes into more detail that you can follow along in the tutorial, but the key was using the CC Sphere effect and adding a few keyframes.

Check out Fellows' tutorial below:

Here is the first part of the tutorial in case you missed it the first time around:

Many thanks to Joe Fellows for the follow-up! And make sure to check out the post by The Creators Project to see a bunch of parallax videos that'll get your creative juices flowing.

Did this tutorial answer the questions you might've had from the last one? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Link: Joe Fellows Answers Your 2.5D Photo-Making Questions -- The Creators Project