COVID Film: Canned Lightning or Hand Drawn?

I spent a day learning how to create some canned lighting in After Effects using expressions and a myriad of effect presets. The effect of all that experimenting is on the bottom. I wasn’t satisfied with the options available. In the original illustration I had created lighting which branches and spread out much further.

I created hand drawn lighting for another shot and realized that by creating the lightning by hand I had much more control over the shapes created. I decided to go back and redo this Zeus scene with the hand drawn approach. Lightning happens extremely fast. Each bolt lasts for just a few frames. So I animated each bolt with a small flash near the finger and then the next frame would have the entirety of the bold painted. The next frame would have a very thin version of the same bolt. After the initial flash, I would create a copy of the lightning bolt and paint it black. That black frame could be felt but not seen. I created the effect the the light was so bright that it burned the retinas.

I repeated the process for a series of bolts in quick succession. The final bold I allowed to trail off by breaking up the thin bolt over two frames. Looking at the scene now I think I want to lightly paint the tips of the flashes a pink color and I need to re-import the hand with a pink glove.

I decided the and drawn lighting will be what I use in the film. It ties in better with the look and style of the film overall.