The Process
The storyboard sketch. The protagonist (the green ball) notices aurora unleashed by a charming dancing tribe on the sky, tries to join, fails, and then finally finds a way to blend in.
Final design boards
scene1
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scene3
scene4
scene5
scene6
scene7
scene8
Technical Challenge and My Solution
In this project, how to make the animation of the aurora is a critical problem. I started by making research of actual footages of aurora and tried to identify the key visual traits of aurora.
From the research, I figured out the key visual traits of aurora: (1) wavy transforming form (2) gradual fading of the value (3) sparkling vertical light stripes.
For the fluctuating value of light i.e. the sparkling light, I chose to make a fractal noise layer to obtain the random value change. Then I stretch the layer in y axis to get the vertical form and added a touch of gaussian blur to reduce the sharpness to mimic actual light.
Use it as an alpha matte of a piece of pink texture graphic for color and texture, then pre-compose it as the base of the aurora.
I made a black-and-white gradient layer with wave warp effect and cc power pin effect to obtain the wavy, triangular form and the gradual fading. Finally, I set the layer to be a luma matte of the aurora base comp, and get our final result.
Thanks!
