Sunday

Grappling with Dappling and Capture Swing

POSTDATED - 09/05/12

Another day, another animation challenge. 
From my beautiful gif you can see two things. First the lighting is very dappled in this shot, so I saw this as an opportunity to do some lighting effects I hadn't tried out yet. Second, the shot required the wolf to be walking in front of Ky, downhill.
To solve the first problem I made use of some Cinefoil. To begin with I clipped a sheet of it to the spotlight barndoors, but found it made the shadows and highlights far too diffuse, not giving a clear dappling effect. Not to mention it, worryingly, started smoking when it was placed that close to the bulb. So, not wanting to burn the Atrium to the ground just yet, I MacGyvered myself a holding device made from some aluminium and a spare light stand. This also allowed me to put a gel over the barndoors, which better simulated the footage's lighting and just generally looked delicious.
The next problem was the angle of the camera. In a perfect world I would have custom-built a metal animation table for shots like this, bending the perforated steel to match the topography of the live-action footage, so that the puppet would land correctly. Never going to happen. So I tilted the camera to one side, and animated the puppet with his haunches much lower down, so that the captured footage balanced out and the wolf appeared to be walking upright.
Kaboom.

No comments:

Post a Comment