Face Morph Effect From Micheal Jackson (Adobe After Effects)

Published on January 24, 2020

After Effects Tutorials

Adobe After Effects, Face Morphing, Mesh Warp, Micheal Jackson, Morphing

Another week, another Copy Cat Friday! This week we’re recreating the face morph effect from Michael Jackson’s ‘Black or White’ music video. It’s quite a hard effect because they actually made special software for the morphing which we don’t have. But whether it’s hard or not, it won’t stop us to try and recreate it!

I find morphing a really cool thing, I enjoy watching a movie or series where a person can morph into a creature or another person. There is no limitation to the imagination of morphing. If superpowers were a real thing, I would want the morphing power. It also reminds me of the Power Rangers from back in the days… “It’s morphing time!”

Michael Jackson’s music video did not only had the cool morphing effect, it also contained a lot of different scenes, styles and actors. Did you know that Macaulay Culkin (little Kevin from the Home Alone movies) starred in the music video?

Another fact about the morphing: it wasn’t the first music video were they used this technology / effect. Godley & Creme used it in their music video of ‘Cry’, which came out in 1985. It was also used in the movies Willow (1988) and Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991). And in 2014 One Direction did something similar with there music video for ‘You & I’. I hope that one day there will be an easy plugin that we can download in Adobe After Effects so it will become super easy to make our own face morphing music videos and (short)films.

StoryBlocks Video

This video was supported by Storyblocks Video, an easy to use site full of stock footage, After Effects templates, backgrounds, motion Graphics and much more.