It's a bird, no its a plane, no it's!?... It's a man with glowing eyes.

Growing up Superman, like most I am sure, was a big inspiration to me growing up. I always admired for his intellect and variety of abilities through film and comic alike. For someone who lives in a world seemingly made of carboard to him Clark chose to fit in and protect.

Which brings me to a super power I would love to have, unlike Scott Summers of the X-Men, Kal-El can control his laser eyes at will sometimes throughout the comics using it more for an intimidation factor more than anything else. I found this really simple, but effective guide to help me acquire glowing eyes of my own! The video was: Eyes glowing effect - After Effects tutorial by Balu Prime.

Getting Started

I added everything I needed to the timeline in After Effects, and then copy and pasted the video to compensate for the mask I would make later. After I added everything to the timeline I then shortened the workflow of the first video down to about where I was going to open my eyes.

After I right clicked on top of the footage I had trimmed down, then right clicked on it and added it to precomposed just like in the tutorial.

I then go to the end of the footage and draw a mask around my eye, I had to admit I do not have a lot of skill with the pen tool, but for what this was I knew I could achieve it. The next stage was to track the mask for the period that my eye was open.

I select track mask, then proceed to go the end of the footage just before I close my eyes and track the mask backwards to right before I am about to open them for the first time.

Utilizing the CTRL + back arrow key shortcut I go frame by frame to adjust the mask with my eye closing, so that it follows the movement of my eye lid. Once I was happy it was time to apply the glow effects.

I go to effects, searching for the fill and then apply it to the mask layer. It was initially red, but I wanted green glowing eyes and went for a sea foam like green and then adjusted the feather to give that fade effect around the edges to simulate a glow.

I then search for the glow effect and drag it onto the mask, after tweaking it to a glow I liked I duplicated the effect it to make a more intense green glow. The next part was to add something like a little more light around the eye.

I then had to use CC Light Burst as the tutorial video said I needed a paid plug in at the end of the video to achieve the effect, I found this one worked just as well and played around with the pre-sets that were available within the effect predetermined settings. The next thing to do was to draw a second mask and repeat the process for the right eye.

I drew a second mask around the eye and the effect applied immediately to the mask, to my surprise I thought I was going to have to do that all again but due to the precomposed layer it transferred the effects over and is a handy tip I will be keeping in mind going forward.

Tracked backwards and forwards to match the left eye, so that way when my eyes opened and closed the glow would diminish when they were shut.

Whilst watching the video back I seen that even when the masks intersect there was still a small glow. I didn't really want this as I wanted the glow to illuminate when my eyes were opening to full opening. I had then added some key frames using the mask opacity, setting them a points to take the glow completely away.

Wrapping Up

This effect was a blast to work on, now with this sort of logic of masking an animating the mask in mind it has given me an idea for a Light Saber effect. Something that I hope to develop would be my mastery of the pen tool, I feel like there is a lot there to be explored and to develop for other visual effects.

Below is the final video for the glowing eyes, thanks for reading!