April, 2008
If you're stuck in Photoshop making backgrounds, then try using After Effects to expand your repertoire. In this tutorial we'll cover a method to create a smoke and fire background.
We start with a solid.
Make sure to click on Make Comp Size.
Go to Effects & Presets and double-click on Infection.
It should now look like the image below if you haven't adjusted anything.
Apply the Glow filter and change Glow Radius to 50.
Apply CC Light Burst 2.5 and change Intensity to 270 and Ray Length to 30.
Now apply the Colorama filter and choose from the Output Cycle the preset, Fire and Smoke.
You should now have this remarkable image that can represent a variety of backgrounds. You will want to go to Composition and choose Save Frame As to save each background variation. Also, if you move the slider along in the timeline, you'll get different versions of the image which you can use and save in a file strictly for backgrounds.
Download the original source files from this tutorial in Zip format Here
Copyright (c) 2008, Jacquelin Vanderwood, All Rights Reserved