One of the major issues that we had as a team on starting the ShelterBox film was all the water animation that we had to do. We've all not animated water before and it was proven to be a difficult task. We did our research and looked from subtle wave references to tsunami crashing references. It went from looking at Ponyo (by Studio Ghibli) to Moana to CG animated tsunami references. We broke it down to part by part and realised that the best way to 'sell' the wave shot was the colours.

After deciding that we were gonna give that approach a try, Kuan (head of effects animation for the film) starting doing a test shot of a front view of a wave crashing and that I were to colour it as I was the head colourist of the film.

Kuan did a fantastic job in doing the lined shot. I, however, had some difficulties with colouring the shot as I could not figure out what sort of brush to use. But anyway, here goes.

For the first test shot, I used the 2B pencil brush to fill in the main wave colours and the airbrush tool to colour in the foam bit. It ended up with this blurry kind of feel which Derek had pointed out. And so, I tried again:


I added in more strokes to the foam bit to add more of a detailed pattern to it. Although it was accepted, I still wasn't satisfied with it at all.

But until the next trial, I'm going to have to figure out some stuff about it. Back to the books!