Hot on the heels of the First Congress 'In Another Life'artwork comes the accompanying all singing, ice dancing promo. The video features a romantic ice dance routine with Team GB Olympic ice dancers Penny Coomes and Nicholas Buckland and I was tasked with creating an environment for the impressive real-life couple to strut their skates in. The band's Tom Van Can and Team GB's Robin Cousins MBE shot, edited and choreographed the dance routine at Slough Ice Arena against a white fabric backdrop then the footage was handed over to me. Using a combination of Adobe After Effects processes I managed to key out the dancers from the white-ish background, see before/after comparisons above, and apply the new visuals. TomVan Can filmed sodium materials exploding in water at high speed for inserts and I took some of that footage to create stylised animated backdrops and floors that were composited into scenes using 3D tracking where necessary. Colour grading and light leak effects were applied liberally to establish the monotone environments when they dance apart and the increasingly colourful world whenever they are together. All in all it was a rewarding and challenging creative visual effects job to get my teeth into and I'm pleased with the outcome. You can see previous First Congress videos for Found Wantinghere and The Firsthere.
The new First Congress single 'In Another Life' is out this week and has an ice dancing themed video to go along with it, more on that coming soon. Firstly, here's the single artwork continuing that theme with a solitary skater and simple shadow reversal to suggest the other life. I'm enjoying the stripped back colour and stylisation I've established with the First Congress artwork series so far. You can see more of this work on the site here.
Here's a recent editorial for AOPA Flight Training mag on the controversial practice of 'slow landing', a risky technique for improving advanced pilot skills. See more work for AOPA on the site here.
