We've spent the past couple of lessons at the seaside looking at water movement and foam. Before we shake the towels and go home though, let's cast our eyes out to the ocean surface.
Almost universally, ocean surfaces are considered the peak of 2D animation complexity which is why (especially these days with amazing water simulations possible using cheap off-the-shelf software) it's usually done in 3D. It's also why we are splitting ocean surfaces into multiple lessons to round out your first year in this course.
This lesson may seem short, but what is written and demonstrated
here should keep you busy for years to come. It
lays the foundation for the really difficult stuff over the coming few
lessons.
There are many ways to animate simple, limited or highly stylised ocean surfaces. One in particular is to make it look like a stage play, where large cardboard waves are waved and rolled around for a stylised storybook quality. This is demonstrated brilliantly in the first Battle Block Theater promo cinematic.
As always however, we'll be using realism as a basis for our animation, so this ocean surface series looks at how to design and animate frame-by-frame. It's no surprise that a calmer ocean is easier to animate in 2D so we'll start with some gentle rolling swell before we look at the choppy stuff. The difficult thing with ocean surfaces is knowing where to start. Where do you draw your first line? Even with rough key drawings, what are we drawing?
video 050_designIntro1
video 050_designRolling1
From way back in the beginning of this course, we've learned how FX work by studying and animating them in cross section. Remember the wave motion studies? Remember the splash cross section and how we learned what goes on under the surface?
Breaking down a complex movement into its simpler parts helps us understand how it all comes together. Following on from the design video, let's animate a cross section of a rolling surface.
video 050_animRoll1
Even though the cross-section is just a single line, there are many things you need to keep track of. As each peak and trough of a surface rises, falls and oscillates, you need to constantly keep in mind your previous drawings and how you'll follow through on all those individual components.
Now when you consider adding depth and detail to the surface, and giving equal attention to every individual component, the difficulty and time taken to animate a scene increases exponentially. Don't be discouraged by how difficult it is. Before you tackle the next lesson, practise animating the cross section of a rolling surface as much as you can. It will make the complex animation tasks ahead seem much easier.
