The Boogley trend🐶

Drop a cartoon on real footage and it looks like a sticker, because it is one. Give it a shadow and nobody questions it.

5 steps / 1 song / Free, no signup

Get the Boogley on GIPHY Neil Sanders stickers, free to download

The song’s in step 05, cut to start on the drop.

Why it works

The dancers are Neil Sanders’ animations, @theboogley on Instagram. The reel I broke down is Fabiana Solano’s.

Nobody watching thinks the dog is real. They just need it to touch the ground. Put its feet on a real surface, give it a shadow, and the cartoon stops floating.

01Pick a locked-off shot

Shoot it on a tripod with a clear surface for the feet. A sticker can’t follow a moving frame, so the second your shot drifts, the dog skates. Mine’s 3.3 seconds.

02Download the Boogley

GIPHY › search Neil Sanders › Stickers › open one › Download

Stickers come with a transparent background, so the dog drops in with no box around it. I used Big Dog Dancing.

03Stand it on something

Put it on V3 and leave V2 empty for the shadow. Scale it down and park its feet right on a real edge. A few pixels of air and it floats.

04Fake the shadow

Lumetri Color › Curves › RGB Curves › drag the top right point to the bottom

Option drag (Alt on Windows) a copy down to V2 and turn it black with that curve. Add Vertical Flip and slide it down until the feet meet. Opacity 40%, Gaussian Blur 3 to 5. Now switch V2 off and on. That’s the whole effect.

05Cut it to Playground

MP3 Playground, from the drop Steve Lacy. 44 seconds, 1.8 MB The full song Steve Lacy on Spotify

The cut starts right on the drop, so there’s nothing to trim. Big Dog comes in as a single 1.28 second loop, almost exactly two beats at 96 BPM. Select the dog and its shadow and Option drag copies end to end. The dance stays in time on its own.

The short version

A locked-off shot with a real surface for the feet.
A Neil Sanders sticker from GIPHY, on V3.
A black, flipped copy on V2 at 40%, blurred 3 to 5.
Camera Blur on the dog, and Playground from the drop.

Nobody notices a good shadow. Everybody notices a missing one.

Pull any static shot off your camera roll tonight and give it a Boogley. Export it once with V2 off and once with it on, then compare.

More Breaking Reels Every episode is on my page

Happy creating. Ben
@artzenmedia

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