Water Colour effect in After Effects

So in Spring/Summer 2017 I was commissioned to create an animated intro sequence for Private Lives of the Monarchs. The show producers wanted something that looked like the Sherlock Holmes/Ripper Street mashup. Design wise the Sherlock Holmes notepad sketch wouldn’t really fit with monarchy. So after a bit of thinking I decided to go with a painting style. The fun/nerdy bit comes when you then think HTF am I going to do that? 

More research followed. I initially took the base of the Ripper Street Mashup to get the outline and shape of the characters. I then applied several types of brush/ink mattes to give the colours a layered appearance. I used smart blur and CC Cartoon to smooth out the detail in the colour to give it a more flat/painted look and then blended them with soft light/hard light overlays. I found this worked better on images with high contrast.

Just like the ripper street mashup, each layer is bled onto the page via an ink bleed track matte. Each layer type can be broken down as follows: Pencil outline, Shading, Colour. Then add some lighter background colour brush marks and that is pretty much the look.

If there is demand for it I can go into a tonne more detail and potentially do a step by step tutorial.

It was an amazing feeling channel hopping and then unexpectedly seeing a title sequence you designed pop up on screen. I don’t think I will ever tire of that. It is the reason I learnt After Effects.