The sequence showing Captain Mo's descent into the ocean is now almost finished. The only element missing is Captain Mo himself! He will probably be added right at the very end of the process, when all of the other sequences are ready, so that the ship can be animated in a continuous path through the film.
This descent to the ocean floor now includes:
- Even more detritus. I added some additional laser cut shapes, a few elements taken from Cranky, and Cranky's head buried in the ocean floor. I used the original compositions I created of Cranky's two layers, and masked these off to bury him in the sand. I used a variety of filters to make these elements blend into the background.
- 'Underworld' sign. I created this image in Photoshop, and added a separate layer of lights. I animated the opacity of these lights to give the suggestion of them gently illuminating and fading. The arm holding the sign was original drawn as a potential limb for Cranky, but I later decided he was better off without. I placed an anchor point at the elbow joint to create a rotational movement.
- A little fishy. I took a drawing of a fish and animated his movement through Cranky's eyehole. This required two overlapping layers of the fish, one above Cranky and one below, and masking these off to hide the appropriate areas of the layers as he moved across.
- The Underworld! I decided that I wanted the Underworld to look like a diver's helmet, which has been neglected at the bottom of the ocean for a long long time. I thought this would relate well to my steampunk references, and would enable me to use some beautiful metallic textures taken from photographs I took in the National Railway museum, and some rocky, distressed surfaces from photos at the beach. I drew an inky outline then filled the shapes with textures in Photoshop and kept building these up. Finally, I added a plume of smoke and an ominous red interior. I added the window layer separately and made this 3D, so that I could rotate it inwards on its z axis.
The only other elements I am considering adding are some illuminating fish in the darkness, but I will decide this after Mo has taken his rightful place in the sequence.
The Underworld original drawing
The Underworld with texture
Ok, I have two comments.
ReplyDeleteFirst one, at the first time when the screen goes black is it me or can we see the curtains at the bottom? Just wondered if I was imagining things or if it was supposed to be like that.
Second, this is just my opinion, I think the speed for descending is a little faster than I would have liked it. Will you be slowing that down when Captain M makes an appearance? Or keep it the same? I think it just needs to be slowed down a tiny little bit.
Otherwise it is a really beautiful sequence. Nice ideas thrown together.
Thanks for the comments! First- I think this is a glitch from compressing the film for the internet-it doesn't appear in the high definition version, but I've altered the After Effects file to make absolutely sure no curtains will show in the darkness! Second- I created the sequence based on the duration of the fabric video, so when I import in into iMovie I might decide to alter the timings a little. I agree that it does descend quite quickly, so when I'm ready to add the sound I might slow it down a bit.
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