Post-processing

For post, I used After Effects and some third party plugins like Optical Flare. I decided to keep my layers very straight forward and simple, and divided the comp into four stages. The first one had basic passes comped together, with the addition of some gradient maps for generating some color effects (Fig.15).



The second stage had some more detailing in terms of the color correction of the individual parts of the car. I also added another pass, which was for the headlights' lighting. Flare was also introduced at this stage (Fig.16).


For the third stage, I added noise and a vibrant color effect that I liked. It looked like a VFX shot to me, so I kept it and continued on to post (Fig.17).


For the fourth stage, the chromatic aberration was added and nothing more special than that (Fig.18).