Topic: Animating Underwater Scenes in Brickfilms

I'm working on a brickfilm that has a scene located underwater. I have no idea how I'm going to do this, does anyone have any tips or suggestions to make this work and make it look convincing? Thanks!

Re: Animating Underwater Scenes in Brickfilms

You could always use a rig and animate in front of a bluescreen. Then composite it all together later. Or you could build a complete underwater environment and just use masking, though it gets harder if you have many elements, because masking around fish and things can get difficult.

Sloth did a pretty cool rig for fish, and I'm sure it would be possible to do something similar for minifigures too:

https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5212/5461087184_f1f8a5a543_z.jpgFish swim rig by Chris 'Beard', on Flickr

Last edited by rioforce (April 16, 2015 (05:31pm))

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Re: Animating Underwater Scenes in Brickfilms

Watch Bound, they have a pretty nice underwater scene there.

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Re: Animating Underwater Scenes in Brickfilms

Harborlight wrote:

Watch Bound, they have a pretty nice underwater scene there.

I snapped a quick screenshot of the underwater scene so you can see it if you don't own Bound:

http://i.imgur.com/YuD6nw4.jpg

I'm pretty sure it was composited together, all using separate rigs.

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Re: Animating Underwater Scenes in Brickfilms

well, with lighting, depends how deep you are planning on making the water, I too have some waterness coming up, I'l light from the top, but have it all mostly defused, given that is what water does to lighting, have bubbles(few) on the screen and some perhaps on things that would make them, also, fish swimming would basicly be a auto-sell that this is under water.

Re: Animating Underwater Scenes in Brickfilms

Have you seen the box trolls? In that, they used a sheet of wavy shower glass to project water reflections on the roof of the sewer, I expect that doing something similar in reverse would be cool. projecting water reflections on the ocean/lake/river floor.

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Re: Animating Underwater Scenes in Brickfilms

Thank you all for you suggestions. I'm gonna start animating this scene soon and I will use your suggestions. Thanks!

Re: Animating Underwater Scenes in Brickfilms

rioforce wrote:
Harborlight wrote:

Watch Bound, they have a pretty nice underwater scene there.

I snapped a quick screenshot of the underwater scene so you can see it if you don't own Bound:

http://i.imgur.com/YuD6nw4.jpg

I'm pretty sure it was composited together, all using separate rigs.

Thanks for sharing Rioforce! Actually, we didn't really do any compositing for this shot. Nathan and the fish were shot on poles and then we shot clean frames. Layered them up, erased the stands, and then added layers of effects for the green, floating particles, light play, and density. I lit the set lighter in the front and darker in the back to help portray depth in the water. It was also all very diffused. Cheers!