Visual effects in the style of the movie 300

Visual effects in the style of the movie 300

Here is a little Photoshop guide to mimic the 300 style. The effects could also be applied to video in After Effects with a similar setup. The aim here is to build the basic photoshop action with minimal tweaking. I’ve used basic shots but with good imagery you can achieve great results.

The 300 artists aimed to achieve a painterly watercolour effect in combination with photographic elements. They then applied a heavy sepia tone and the ‘crush’ – clipping the levels to pump up the contrast. Nearly all of the shots are heavily sepia. Post production took a year, so obviously there was a lot of work on each scene. No to mention the full CG environments.

In 300 there were a huge amount of ‘sky’ shots. Almost every scene was set against a dramatic sunset with glare. Snyder preferred a polarized look to the backgrounds – contrast at the top, soft and light at the skyline. The photographic cloud shots were mixed with painterly effects – such as coffee stains… really. So to begin: One cumulus cloudscape. One scan of coffee spillage. The cloud backdrop does come down to composition (tweaking).

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