These coming few tutorials about "MikMak" are not for everyone, I guess. These are made to explore the thought process behind creating the more elaborate effects that were done, and hopefully, will be helpful to someone. It took me some time to assemble these, so I hope you enjoy it.
I was hired by the studio "shortcut playground" last year to do classic animation effects for "Mikmak the movie" which was an interesting experience. My talented friend Doron Meir, who acted as Animation Director there, brought me aboard. A few things were clear from the start, money is scarce ,so...reuse when you can, in order to save money to shine somewhere else.
The real problem with effects, particularly in this production, was that there was no time to explore.
Effects, in order to be believable, has to rely on sufficient research. So...I did what I could with what I had. but enough with excuses. the river.
The first attempt was based on an early design -
It didn't work. The river was, by definition, ferocious. The main idea was indeed to create rapids, but it didn't seem dangerous at all, falling into it did not seem to be hazardous. There was not enough to work with in order to create believable rapids. Rapids occur when water loses altitude through a very short distance, creating fast currents and turbulence, it develops where the river becomes shallow and the rocks are exposed over the flow.
So, I tried another approach.
The idea was based of the way water flow, something like this-
I was thinking about the whirlpools that rocks create when they interfere the water current. it looked pretty good. Fast, and I found some water effects in Pocahontas to assure it works. Check 2:50. Btw, I love the dutch version.
But......it was not practical for multiple shots, it didn't feel dangerous enough, and it went too far from the initial design, which consisted on rapids. Eventually, I gave them class 1 rapids. Children can play there in summer.
Thankfully, Animation Director Doron Meir eventually gave "Princess Mononoke"s river as a reference. Here, in this clip (all rights reserved to Studio Ghibli) -
So...this was my design based on this idea.
I had never worked on a river before and had to think about what makes water fast, do it in many different shots (so I can reuse the technique over and over again) and in no time at all.
We were looking for what is called, class 3 rapids, need to be fast, create foam when the water hits the rocks and add the phenomenon called "white water" which occur when splashes from the rock mixed with air bubbles create what seems to be white surfaces of water, this idea was used also as a way to make the river seem faster.
After testing more added elements right in after effects (sometimes I prefer to design first in after effects and think about movement later) this is what I came up with.
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And here is a clip to see some motion.
By the way....about that splash. When I gave in the splash for preview, it looked like this -
Which one is better? I'm not sure. my version did no justice to the design. There were no translucent water anywhere, but the splash as it was inserted eventually seems as if it is missing some refinement, by my part. A thing that did not stand out in my version. Anyway, I will address this video in the next post to talk about the mechanics of splashes.
