The Making of Red Lion | Award Winning Music Video by Oh.
The music video “Red Lion” by the multi-instrumentalist and director Oh. (Olivia Hadjiioannou) is presently a winner, finalist and official selection in 14 film festivals worldwide for Best Music Video, Best Experimental Mixed Media and Best VFX. We’re proud to say that Mettle Mantra VR, FLUX, FreeForm Pro, and ShapeShifter AE plugins for Adobe After Effects and Premiere Pro were used extensively in the project. Also used: Adobe Fuse for the 3D models and the free animations on Adobe Mixamo
Adobe is a fantastic platform for content creators, and this project is a great example of how Mettle can extend the creative toolset. To see exactly how the different Mettle plugins and effects are used in “Red Lion”, see further along this post. As always, you can download a free demo and take our software for a test ride.
Red Lion received the Best Music Video award in the inaugural French Riviera Film Festival (FRFF) in Cannes, France. Winner Best Music Video at the Cosmocinema Film Festival in London. Winner of the Best Music Video Short in The Psychedelic and Transpersonal Film and Music Festival at The Producer’s Club in New York City. Winner Best Experimental Mixed Media Short Film at the Paleochora Lost World Short Film Festival in Southwestern Crete in Greece.
Read more about the making of “Red Lion” and Oh.’s music in her Bio and EPK.
Tima Vlasto, the animator/VFX for “Red Lion” compiled these AE project files for you to use freely. She said it would be very cool if you found these helpful to go and watch “Red Lion” on YouTube or stream the “Metallia” album on Spotify, or follow Oh. on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram and connect with the work going on at olitunes.com
It would have taken us many months to create the 5 minutes of animation for Red Lion if it weren’t for the incredible Mettle 3D plugins for Adobe After Effects and Premiere Pro, Adobe Fuse for the 3D models and the free animations on Adobe Mixamo. These plugins and resources made it possible to complete the 5 minutes animation in less than 200 hours. — Oh. (Olivia Hadjiioannou)
Mettle Plug-ins
Mettle’s Mantra VR is a comprehensive set of 16 stylization effects that work in both 360/VR and 2D, for After Effects and Premiere Pro. In “Red Lion” we used Circular Waves, Esher Droste, Hyperbolix, Mobius Raw, Repeater and Turbulence effects. We also used the Mettle Flux plugin which creates 3D volumetric fractal flames and the FreeForm Pro 3D Mesh Warp plugin that creates terrain, morphing organic shapes, an array of primitives, water simulation and character animation. For a few effects we used Mettle’s Shapeshifter AE plugin that creates 3D morphing shapes.
Learn more about Mettle 3D plugins for Adobe software
Mantra VR > Escher Droste
Mantra VR > Hyperbolix
Mantra VR > Mobius – Repeater – Circular Waves – Turbulence
Mettle FLUX
Freeform Pro
Adobe Fuse & Mixamo 3D Animations
Mettle FreeForm Pro Project File
Here is a free project file to try the.cube visual effect in the “Red Lion” video. You will need the Mettle FreeForm Pro plugin.
You can download a demo of FreeForm at Mettle.
Mettle FLUX Project File
For the aura animation in the “Red Lion” video. Here is a free rough project file to play around with. You will need the Mettle Flux plugin.
You can download a demo of Flux at Mettle.
Adobe Fuse & Adobe Mixamo
Mettle FreeForm Pro – Pool
Part of this pool was used in one scene in the “Red Lion” video. It was made by following the tutorial by Tim Harris on Mettle. Here is a project file. You will need the Mettle FreeForm Pro plugin.
You can download a demo of FreeForm at Mettle.
Mantra VR > Escher Droste
Mantra VR > Circular Waves
Mantra VR > Spherify + Repeater
Mettle Shapeshifter AE
This warped guitar play-through scene using Mettle Shapeshifter was cut early on during the storyboard phase of the production. A small piece of the effect was used as an overlay in one scene of “Red Lion”
Freebie Mettle Flux Auras
We are very proud to say the video was #MadeWithMettle. The plugins opened up so many creative possibilities and we were blown away by what beautiful scenes we could create and make what we imagined a reality. — Oh. (Olivia Hadjiioannou)
“Metallia” by Oh. is an epical prog-metal composition in six parts. A multi-layered sonic piece of ravishing solo electric guitars, time-bending tempo shifts, grooving bass lines and deranged drums.
This instrumental progressive metal album will reveal its intricacies and hidden depths over time. It will extract from your mind pure visions, to mend your mental pictures, preen presumptions and to elicit an element of the unexpected…. because that is what will transmute your subliminal mind map into a remarkable blueprint which will lead you from wherever you are now, to wherever you want to be.
Metallia Available on Bandcamp
About the Artist
Multi-instrumentalist and director Olivia Hadjiioannou as the artist Oh. has been honored for her ingenuity, innovation and creativity in music and video with multiple international awards. She made her debut as Oh. on the international music scene with the award-winning music video, “Trials” in 2013 – cited as one of the 50 top events to mark Greece during the economic crisis. With the advances of immersive video, she released her single “Love of Avalanches“, mentioned in Huffington Post as one of first 360-degree immersive VR videos released by a Greek artist on YouTube in 2016. It was created using the SkyBox tools, pre-acquisition by Adobe.