Fellow third year student Kelly Brookes approached me a couple of weeks ago asking if I could produce the water ripple effect for one of the shots in her film "Black Dog". The shot in question is where the main character is drawing the wildlife at the local park and features a swan floating on the water.
To start off with, I've been researching how to go about doing an effect that will both fit in with the style of her Flash animation and compliment the look of the film.
Fig. 1. Screenshot of Flash with Kelly's blocked out animation
I also asked her what kind of water effect she wanted. I also asked mostly about the weather in the shot and where the shot actually takes place. Kelly told me the weather is both sunny with a very calm wind and that it takes place at a park.
For primary research I found reference videos online and last week took a visit to the local quay to see how water moves when the weather is calm and how it reacts to the sun i.e. the reflections and swans floating on top.
Fig. 2. Water effect reference online
PROPOSED METHOD ONE
The shiny plate effect I created for Shot 28 in my film (Betty POV of William's plate after he scoffed his first meal), can be applied to the water ripple effect. This technique of masking out the 'shiny' layer with the different layers of water ripples cut out from the PSD water background Kelly gave me should work ok but I will see what Kelly thinks as I progress through this.
Fig. 3. Shot 28 shiny plate effect test
PROPOSED METHOD TWO
Whilst researching other methods of creating 2D water ripple effects, I came across this tutorial on using After Effect's built in FreeForm effect to create a ribbon floating in 3D space. Although the techniques covered produce a 3D animation, I can use the tool and other techniques I've learnt throughout the year to create a slightly more realistic effect for Kelly's film.
Fig. 4. FreeForm effect tutorial
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