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Back to the Future: Creating Your Own Hoverboard Effect

Back to the Future: Creating Your Own Hoverboard Effect 1

This month marks the 30th Anniversary of Back to the Future. The trilogy certainly brings fond memories of my childhood and really made me believe in the power of movies to change your potential reality.

This month marks the 30th Anniversary of Back to the Future. The trilogy certainly brings fond memories of my childhood and really made me believe in the power of movies to change your potential reality.

Robert Zemeckis was allowed to have his way with movies and spared no expense. However, when you look at all the special effects in Back to the Future, you’ll see most of them related to the famous DeLoreon car—of which, I wanted one, flying or not.

However the hoverboard, to me, was the coolest. I did a bit of research online and found out that to do the hoverboard effect, the characters were suspended from a rig on the back of a truck which drove them around the Universal Studio’s backlot. The hoverboards were nailed or glued to their feet to appear as if they were floating in the middle of nowhere.

Today, we can do it much more simply in After Effects. In honor of the trilogy, Adobe gives you a modern day approach to creating your own hoverboard effect and one of our After Effects guru’s, Brian Maffitt, shows you how it’s done.

Check it out here.

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