Smash Hit

Watch this still photo brought to life. Read the PicDrift breakdown below to see how it was made.

PHOTO CREDIT/Instagram: @mpiaia

PicDrift Artist Breakdown:

This type of photography is really great for creating a cool parallax effect!

To build this type of effect without manually arranging every individual candy separately in 3D space, I use a third-party 3D particle plug-in called Trapcode Particular. This plug-in has the option of creating a custom particle from any image.

All I had to do is to cut out all the candy on separate layers in Photoshop, then import everything into After Effects and create a separate composition with all the candy layers lasting only one frame. Then in the plug-in settings, I selected this composition as a custom particle source with the "random still frame" option checked. I also had to decide on the number of particles, as well as the X, Y, Z position. To make every particle look a bit different, there are options to randomize size, opacity, and rotation. There is also an option to select the layer which obscures the particles, in this case, the person in front.

Then it was time to decide on the camera move. It's always best to animate the camera moving through the particles, making the parallax effect even more noticeable.