DD3992: Making a Splash

During a sequence in 'Gopher Golf' when the Golfer is practicing golf in his garden, the golf ball lands into a pond in a shot which only lasts for three seconds. However, creating the water for this one shot needed careful thought, as water is often hard to make realistic in 2D or stop-motion animation.

Scaling the fence to a realistic height, based on the feedback from the test screening of my film.

The entire shot was animated in Adobe After Effects, using motion blur to make the movement of the ball look effective. For the water, I actually reused a clip from one of my earlier films, 'Catch of the Day', where I had created water in stop-motion quite effectively. The water is made from different sizes of see-through clingfilm over sheets of blue tissue paper. In 'Catch of the Day', the clingfilm was animated at different speeds depending on how quickly the water was supposed to be flowing. For instance, some parts were double-framed (animated at 12 frames a second) when the mood was meant to be tranquil, then animated at 25 frames when a man is later seen being carried down the river.

I think the result of this shot in 'Gopher Golf' works particularly well and blends in with the film's style, created using mixed media. Like the explosion and smoke effects I demonstrated in an earlier post, the splash generated by the golf ball was a CG effect free for use.

My first year film, 'Catch of the Day', can be viewed online. Two years later, I'm still pleased with the water effects I created, although I feel my animation skills have greatly improved since then!


Catch of the Day - Uni Short Project from Christopher Blower on Vimeo.