Minor experiment: Giving life and also light
Yesturday had marked the first day of animataion, and had decided to use today as an experimentation on the creatures movement and how the beast would interact with various light sources.
One of the inspirations for the interaction with shadows and light sources rather than a simple lighting setup came fro one of ray harryhausens final films he worked on Clash Of The Titans (1983) in which the monsterous medusa appears. the scene is dark and dindgy with the only light sources on here being the dim torches lit around her lair, giving the scene almost a horror film vibe. This is greatly an important example for me as in the scene of the creature, he is only suppised to be seen via a silouette and with the only glimpses the audience sees of the creature are through sudden flashes of the lighthouse followed by the red flared that drove the creature back into the sea
Shown here was my setup with my lighting souly focused on the green screen. shown below is a frame of the animation, from which you can see that the creature is ominosly silouetted. However upon inspection i fell like i should of had a very dim light near the armature so that you could get small bits of subtle shining texture on the creature to give it more life.
However i am very happy on how the lighting came out when revealing the creature, creating the sudden glimpses of the horror that waits for the audience
What was also really good to have on hand was a remote trigger, which allowed me to animate more smoothly without having the need of possibly accidentally moving the camera during the process.After keying out the footage and implimenting the footage into my plates, i then finally created a small sequence with the footage seen below
I am quite happy with how the animation had came out, not only did i manage to set out what i wanted to do but i also gave my creature some sort of charicteristics, such as the flick of its tail and a raction to light sources becoming more angered towards them. Going forward however i will be implimenting a 2nd light to the creature making sure its not just a black silouette