With this scene I decided to add subtle animation to the high priest and the bird men holding the victim in place. The high Priest and bird men heads were isolated in Procreate and I made a new depth mask without them. I animated a parallax effect in After Effects and then imported the high priest and bird heads as a separate layer. These were animated using pins. I just added a subtle bend to the high priests back and also animated the bird me looking up.
I had a quick pan upwards n the shot but decided to play down that camera move after adding the animation. The trouble with animating using after effects is that the computer tends to produce monotonous even timing. Even after adding slow ins and slow outs, I need to experiment quite a bit to get things to feel natural. The other issue is that After Effects isn’t able to play back the animation due to memory issues. I scrub the timeline to guess what the timing might look like. I have to due a render of the scene and import it into Premiere pro to see the animation in real time. All the extra steps lead me to sometimes settle for a result that could be better with more refinements. I am thinking I will have to go back and rework several scenes from last week after watching them a few times in the overall flow of the film.