The
Iron Giant - The "Lake
Tidal Wave" Sequence
Part
One - Part
Two - Part
Three
The
final scene from the "Tidal Wave" sequence was
a long and involved one. It starts with the wave crashing
through the trees and hitting the ground. In a very short
time, the water submerges the whole landscape. Dean (still
sitting on his chair) enters the screen, twirling around
under water, creating a trail of bubbles. Finally, the
water recedes as Dean's chair lands back on the ground.
To
achieve the effect of the water surging between the trees,
I had to animate several separate layers (7 or 8) and sandwiched
them between the various painted tree levels. To make the
effect more convincing, one of my colleague, Ryan Woodward,
bended the painted trees with a morphing program called "Elastic
Reality".
Brad
Bird asked me to create a "spray" effect when
the water shoots through the trees. The simplest way to
create that effect would have been to use a CG particle
program, but the resources just weren't there, so I had
to rely on good old hand drawn techniques. I ended up creating
several layers of specks, scanning them in the computer
and plotting moves for each individual cluster. It became
a logistical nightmare and took me way too much time.
Overall,
this was probably the most work intensive scene I did on
the movie with somewhere around 40 levels of hand drawn
animation elements.
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