1st Prize | Charles Yeager | SkyBox Studio 360 CountDown Challenge

Charles Yeager came 1st place in our SkyBox Studio 360 CountDown Challenge. We take a closer look at his winning submission “Wake Up”. He tells us how he did it, and what he was trying to achieve.

What is The SkyBox Studio 360 CountDown Challenge. Participants were asked to create a 360 degree video of a numeric countdown. It had to be made using SkyBox Studio in After Effects. Charles won over $2000 in prizes, including a year’s subscription to Adobe Creative Cloud.

Charles Yeager gives a Breakdown of his SkyBox Challenge Video Creation:

1. First I created and exported the 3D ‘Number Models’ falling and breaking as animation OBJ sequences.
2. Next in After Effects I created my scene using Element 3D and imported in my OBJ sequences of the numbers falling and breaking.
3. After my scene and animations were textured and finished, I ran the SkyBox Creator Script to create my 360 camera rig. This allowed me to see a full environment map of the scene before I exported the Output version of the animation. I also animated the camera rig flying up at the end to give a sense of flying upwards at the end of the countdown video. I did this using the 3D Camera Null Controller that was created when I ran the SkyBox Creator Script.
4. After I exported my video as an Equirectangular video, I brought that into Adobe Premiere to do the sound design for the Numbers falling down and breaking. I knew sound design would help a lot and it would help sell the scale of the scene to the viewer.
5. After that I exported the video out as an .mp4 with the new sound design. I injected the video with the Youtube Metadata Tool and then uploaded it to Youtube.

Goals for the Project:

My goal for the project was to create a countdown that was really large in scale and would also allow the viewer to follow the animation for a full 360 degrees. (Since it is a 360 degree video, I wanted to force them to follow the action all around them.)

Inspiration for the Project:

My inspiration for the project was waking up from a dream. Once the countdown ends, this is actually the viewer waking up from their dream as they fly up in the air.

Charles Yeager.

Filmmaker & Motion Graphics Artist currently residing in Little Rock, and always exploring new opportunities in the production industry. His projects have been recognized by Canon, Tiffen, Video Copilot, RØDE, Vimeo, GSG, VideoMaker, Filmmaker IQ, No Film School, BOOM Library, Film Convert, Tuts+ & Filminute.

Find out more at yeagerfilm.com

Charles won $2000+ of prizes from the following sponsors: Adobe: CC Subscription for 1 year; aescripts + aeplugins: iExpressions 1 Full Bundle,TypeMonkey; fxphd: Lite membership 1 courses; Mettle: Mettle Mega Suite; Rampant Design: 4K Download; Red Giant: Trapcode Particular; Rocketstock: Templates.