Creating My Stinger

The first step to create my stinger was to shoot footage for my animation. I went down to the River Tyne in Newcastle to find some spots. I shot over 10 minutes of footage until i was happy with my 10 seconds.



Creating the composite.

Ok so i need a barrel for the tentacle to grab :) Using the tube shapes in cinema 4D i created one, adding torus shapes for small rims around the barrel giving it a bit more of an accurate look. Then Selecting some polygons and editing they position to create dents in the barrel making it a bit more realistic. then adding in a texture to finish it off.





The next stage was to make this composite convincing, i added a composite tag to the barrels to receive shadows. I then duplicated the barrels and sat them on a plane in 3d Space.




Then importing the real footage onto a plane as a background and putting in a sky i hit a problem. I wanted the barrels to sit on top the jetty. So i needed to create a layer in front of the jetty for the barrels to sit behind. Using photopshop i cut the part away from where the barrels would be situated. Imported it as a material onto a plane using alpha channel. Bosh. :D



Animating The Composite

To animate the barrel was fairly simple, all was needed it to key frame movement from the barrel leaving the jetty landing into the water. Using my animating skills and simple knowledge of physics i calculated the movements and positioning of the barrel to make it look as realistic as possible.



I hit a problem. When animating the barrel it hits the water but nothing looked to convincing as nothing covered the barrel. I added in a plane which would act as the water. Adding a composite tag to it so it will reflect shadows just as water would do :) After a few render tests and key frame editing i was happy with the final outcome!





After exporting my final bit of animation I then imported the 10 seconds into flash. As i am going to use Flash to rotoscope my tentacle onto the footage.

I started to animate my tentacle. The first step was to just get the movement nice and smooth. After the animation of the tentacle was done the next step was to create a liquid like tentacle. I added a lot of liquid effects and splashes. Using the real footage as a background i knew were bits of splashes would land onto the jetty. I then cut out parts of the tentacle were the foreground footage would be creating the final tentacle.



The next step is to combine the two final bit of footage's together. This will be on my next update.