animating masks on single image

#1

Hey guys, I was wondering if someone could help me out, I shot 24 images, every hour of the same location on a tripod. So in each shot an hour passes. Now I want to bring in these jpegs into after effects, and stack them one on top of the other and slice the canvas into 24 columns so that each column is an hour passing, so you would end up seeing a whole day in one image, like this image here http://500px.com/photo/42802530

My question is how do I create a smooth seamless mask that will reveal each part of the image as it revolves on screen , kind of like this but seamless, http://i.imgur.com/5PdL6WV.gif

Anyone have any ideas?

Thanks,

#2

After you have all your strips made go to ‘Layer - new - solid’.
Make the ‘solid’ two or three times the length of your canvas.
With the ‘Solid layer’ selected (it will have a ‘red’ bounding box) go to

‘Layer - Mask - new Mask’.

Resize the mask to the width of one of the strips (The mask will have a ‘yellow’ bounding box and is the EXACT same size as the ‘Solid’. Grab the corner or centre square handles and resize it. This is confusing - because you think you are resizing the actual ‘solid’ - but your not. The ‘yellow’ bounding box is actually the mask)

Then go into the ‘Layer’ of the ‘solid’ - twirl it down and you will see ‘Mask’.
Twirl that down and put a tick in the box next to ‘Inverted’.

You can turn down the ‘Opacity’ there aswell.

Animate the Layer from left to right.

I hope this helps you out a bit. Im not 100% sure what you are trying to achieve, but I’m sure it will give you some food for thought. Post a link when your done with it though.

Best of luck.