The main project for the second year was to create a short animated film which sums up the skills we developed through the year one up to now. There was also an additional purpose in the project – namely to prove the work can be done in the group.

To cut the long story short I joined forces with: Lara Margarida (secondary animator/concept artist/story writer), Joe Spink (lead animator), Richard Steenoven (vfx artist, lighting td, editor), Rachel Hadley (colourist, animatic, sound design).
I held the role of secondary animator and layout artist / enviroment painter. We’ve chosen to create 2D animation and the main emphasis has been put onto visual aspect of classic animation rather than elaborated and overblown story behind it.

The animated scenes embrace the moment Nessie – a baby dinosaur dive in deep water with her mother and swims to the surface to see the land for the first time in her life. My task was to create an environment where this action takes place. It includes the painted underwater scene and the final scene with the landscape. 

The video below shows the final render. I am pleased with the fact we managed to submit the film on time, however not particulary happy with some bits like animation of the water surface, mist on the bottom of waterfall and animated pterosaurus as well as colours of the beast. Pterosaurus colors are too vivid and animation doesnt really match the rest of composition. In my opinion water mist should be more gentle likewise in animation I've done shown in the second video on the bottom of this blog. I also think the mist over the mountains should be animated as well to underline the air and freshness of the scene. My layout has 44 layers painted in Photoshop to easy animate it, unfortunately I can't see any depth in the scene after editing in After Effects - but hope we will correct it soon. Remarks I just pointed out reflects just my personal opinion so guys...no offence. Good parts are definitely the music, great animation of dinosaurus on the land and beautifull animation of Nessie swiming to the surface. I am also pleased with title intro and light beams striking through the water - well done.

HERE'S WHAT I'VE DONE FOR THE FILM

I initially came up with the background which both my group and I wasn’t very happy about as it lacked the depth and the overall composition was too messy.

Initial version of the landscape

After consultation we decided we are after some kind of a virgin territory, untamed, primary jungle occupied by prehistoric creatures. Having that projection in my mind I made some rough sketches of the land and decided to merge some of elements from each of thumbnails.

The wide thumbnail below contains certain elements taken from each of the sketches and represents pretty much the final painting.

Considering the fact Nessie emerges from the water abyss, I noticed there are some issues with the perspective on my sketch. However it has been partly mended at a later stage of painting.

Once the idea has been transferred into a visual concept I started to paint a particular image on separate layers using a fairly big, round and hard brush. Testing out the brush dynamics and other settings I insinuated shape of some areas characteristic for its kind. Such as: water, sky, tree crows, structure of the rocks and mountains.

 

At the next stage I started to detail the elements which were only gently implied on the picture above. I got rid of the sketch layer and started to visualize how the landscape would look like.   I defined more the areas on the foreground painting, like grass and palm trees and added an additional layer of mountains behind the existing ones with the glacier to convey the depth in the painting. To get nice reflection I used a displacement map I created from the bunch of filters beforehand.

Creating a realistic water surface in Photoshop is quite a challenge because it is the distorted reflection of the surroundings that makes the water look liquid. The displace filter is an excellent tool for making such an effect. This method does not adjust for wave height and distances, but it produces good results if the water is calm and if the surface is not intersected by other elements. In my project surface does intersects with other elements, however I find a bit of tunning does the job. 

Painting at stage where some elements were determined by greater detail, however the image still makes impression being too flat.

I cleared up the foreground to give the composition more “air” which will be used at the later stage as a field for an animated action.

Thanks to curved background line the image achieved impression of the depth, I also painted forest behind the mountains with some highlights to indicate where the light source is.

A trees on the right hand side has been added to the composition and further layers visible on the very back of the image enriched the whole painting by a depth impression. I also did try to align the clouds flow according the perspective to even more underline this effect.

Some new elements appeared like the bushes of the fern on the left hand-side and the waterfall is more believable. The overall painting needs to get a colour correction and clean up before I apply more changes and start with waterfall animation.

Further touch-up and getting rid of unnecessary layers remains. The mist is going to be animated later on as well as waterfall foam. In the final painting. I've redone the reflection and after creating specific displacement map beforehand I applyed it to the composition. 
Because the amount of displacement can be controlled separately,  I've raised up the intensivity of the displacement. Brighter values caused a shift in the negative direction while darker values shifted an image in the positive direction (in Adobe coordinates).

First attempt to animate a waterfall turned out to be a real challenge as I’ve never animated water before. I used a tweening technique rather than frame by frame animation to achieve a fluent mist transition on the bottom of the waterfall. I also created a few water stream frames and tweened the animation too. While I managed to animate the mist that way successfully, the stream turned out to be hardly visible. For those who haven't hawkish eyesight it's highly recommanded to enlarge above video. 

I've managed to create a believable waterfall which has been nicely composed with the rest of the background. Basically I've been playing around with particles and layer emiters in After Effects to get the nice flow animation. Firstly I had to create a waterfall source and then expand the particles in accordance with  the water stream direction. The final colour correction and shadow helped me to achieve more or less real look. 

Final painting

This is the background for the shot where Nessie emerges from the abyss. It'll be composed together with a character and water surface which indicate the horizon line. I've used the sky sample from the main shot and painted some extra clouds by using a very soft brush and low opacity. Finally I've applied few filters to smooth the whole composition out. 

Top picture represents the quick sketch and rough painting of the abyss. I found painting such enviroments very enjoyable as diveristy of forms is unbelivable great and it is just a fun to play with them. Althought that shot is not included in the film I think it would be a good addiction to the extended version of our animation :)


In the final underwater shot the light beam leads up the viewer up to the upper right corner as that direction is more natural for a human eye. Additionally the whole composition has been enriched with moving plankton and air bubbles. The main idea was to convey the emptiness and magnitude of the abyss therefore I resigned from previous projects where more rocks were painted in a more theatrical way.