About the Cinematic Submarine Shot

[robcat2075]

William Detwiler (aka detbear) and I will be collaborating on a brief shot in this forum

William and I have both been long time A:M users but we didn't really "meet" until we were both students in the very first class to enter AnimationMentor and noticed that we were both using Animation:Master for our assignments.

 

William is a professional animator and since AnimationMentor I have contributed bits of rigging, animation and other elements to projects of his. Now William has asked me to consult on a new endeavor, a trailer for an adventure movie he hopes to use for a Kickstarter project and I am eager to see what we can do with it.

 

In particular we are narrowly focusing on one scene here.

 

William has prepared a rough draft to show the essential concept...

 

Detwiler_Project_Waterfall_WIP_C.mov

 

That is not the whole trailer, that is one shot.

 

Out goal is to make it look like a truly cinematic, movie-quality scene. The water effects are the obvious challenge, but we also need to design appropriate lighting and probably rethink the staging a bit.

 

Basically, everything needs to look better and we want to figure out how to do that and we want to do it with A:M!

 

That's what we'll be doing in this Special Topics forum and if any of you have comments or suggestions you may certainly toss those in!

 

 

[itsjustme]

Sounds great and is a fantastic start! Good luck, guys!

[Shelton]

Very cool start!

[detbear]

I'm very excited about this. Just like my "Boomer" show, this has been a few years in the making. So I've got bunches to show eventually and

a hope that it will turn out better than I can expect.

 

 

This is part of a larger project I've been working on since around 2011. I'm very excited about what the results will end up looking like.

I use A:M in mostly all of my productions for just reasons. It is both artist friendly and fast all around. I started with A:M in 1999 after seeing an example

of it being used in the book...... The Animation Book by Kit Laybourne. Prior to that, I had been dabbling around with Ray Dream and a few other

2D programs further back in the 80's on the Amiga computer.(Remember those giants) My how "state of the art" has changed.

 

William

[markw]

This is looking like a Jules Verne/Steam Punk type thing.
Very exciting, can't wait to see more of this!

[detbear]

Yes Mark. It is very steampunkish. But not in a "Victorian" setting.

[John Bigboote]

YAY! Way to 'whet' our whistles! Now we begin the process of 'clamouring' for more. Great team, Will and Rob- I expect big things from these two.

[zandoriastudios]

For the waterfall, you might have an easier time achieving what you want with Sprites. I know that they were used for the extended edition of the Phantom Menace ( they show how it was setup in the behind the scenes), and also in the Dam bursting scene in LOTR: The Two Towers...

Another option would be a video layer(s) of a real waterfall, combined with particles.

[robcat2075]

No particle will be left unturned in our search for an appropriate result!

 

We're going for something that is less "white-water" than a dam burst but not as static as a glass curtain. Somewhere between those two extremes.

[detbear]

At this point, we are after whatever get's the look we're going for.

 

The Massive waterfalls are more ominously cloudy and smoke-like. And the big have water falling

from "towering" heights. We are after a fall with less pressure and less gigantic cloudiness.

 

In a way, a bit more artificial. Kind of like a theme park ride. Hard to explain....but when we get it, we'll know it.

Or....I hope we will