Case Study

This was the last personal project I created in 2023. After spending so much time learning Unreal Engine in the second half of the year, I wanted to do something 2D in Adobe After Effects.

For a while, I had been thinking about animating a blinking eyeball of some kind, but I couldn’t come up with an idea that I thought was interesting enough.

In early December 2023, I was experimenting with Displacement Maps in After Effects to make a futuristic “glitch” effect for text and logos. I discovered that if I used a blurred displacement map it would smooth the motion of the object being displaced. And since I could control which direction (left or right) of the displacement, I found I could create the illusion of something flowing over an uneven surface.

Along with the blinking eyeball, I wanted to reference anxiety and the notion of being uncomfortable for this project. I remembered an old “Looney Tunes” episode where Elmer Fudd has these giant drops of sweat rolling down his face, and that’s when the idea fully came together. I decided to have large beads of sweat dripping down and rolling across a blinking eyeball that is looking around in an anxious and alarmed state.

I found an image of a bunch of eyeballs (right) on Adobe Stock and picked one to use for reference. I created the blinking eye, the iris, and the pupil by just animating the shape layer paths. The blink lasts for only eight frames of the animation. The iris and pupil animation lasts for five seconds.

I created four sizes of drips, placed them across the canvas, and then animated their position on the y-axis. I had to rearrange them a bunch to make sure they didn’t overlap as they “flowed.”

To create the illusion of the drips flowing over the eyelids and across the surface of the eyeball itself, I made a custom displacement map (right). The “raised” areas of the image are represented in white or light grey while the flat areas are 100% black. As I mentioned above, to achieve a smoother displacement I blurred the entire image to get rid of the hard edges. I also added some extra grey areas on the top and bottom of the eye to make it look like those areas aren’t completely flat.

I knew I wanted the eyeball to have realistic colors in the iris and the corners so I just went with blue and pink, respectively. I wanted to add a little surrealism to the piece so I chose a bright green for the skin and drips. I feel like it adds even more tension and heightens the sense of anxiety in the piece. It looks like green slime dripping into the eyeball.

Overall, I’m really happy with how this piece turned out. It looks exactly how I imagined it would once I figured out what the concept and tone would be.