After Effects cloning tutorial

How to clone yourself with After Effects?

This is an intriquing question and it is pretty easy to aswer it. I’ll make here a really short and simple tutorial about that and at the very end of this tutorial you can watch the result; a shortmovie made by me.

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Still interested in cloning?

I know, yes of course. Well what you need to think is a simple idea (of what you would like to clone) — and a way to how to do that? Yeah, I’ll clone myself. Think a scene and create it, assemble your cameras and good spot and there you go.

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Well, how to clone myself?

The easiest way to clone myself is that I put my camera to one place, and leave it there don’t touch it, don’t move it, don’t! Then — I can go in front of the camera and do things and from every doing I’ll take a new shot; Like if I want to clone-sit in my room (this is a little hard to explain):

• 1. Camera steady – AND DON’T MOVE IT!
• 2. One shot where I am sitting in the left corner of the table
• 3. One shot where I am sitting in the middle of the table
• 4. One shot where I am sitting in the right corner of the table

Steady shot #1:

Steady shot #2:

Steady shot #3:

Remember not to cross yourself in the shots!
You can cross yourself if you want to put some extra time in the After Effects and to the post production.

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Let’s move the production to After Effects!

Now in After Effects, create a new composition (recommended dimensions = you source material dimensions). Import the video files in composition and add them in the Timeline.

Now in the timeline you see only one video because one video is above two other. Now you need to “like cut one video from the above” (BY CREATING A MASK) so you can see the videos below. If you have used Adobe Photoshop, you know how the masks work.

• Click active the most upper videolayer
• With the rectangle-tool, add a rectangle around right corner
• One mask done!
• As you create the rectangle, it reveals the videolayer from below!

Adding a mask to videolayer:

Then you can mask the middle layer too and it will reveal the most bottom videolayer. After that, you can do some color correction to your film, but I’m not going to that case this time. Maybe next time.

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Feel free to watch my cloning video:

Thanks for reading!

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