BSA 306 part 4

fire animation development  

i decided to start with fire, because it is the most commonly used "magical element" in all of fiction so it has the most reference material.

 1st version: 

 this was the initial concept I had in my mind, without spending to much time and not looking into other techniques it didn’t turn out very well.

2nd version:

 is far more realistic, the key idea was maintain a core to the fire and have concave sections move up from it. Pushing convex sections like waves






I attempted to create a soft edges effect like what is used in avatar , however I found it would have to be completely redone using a soft edge brush, which doesn’t work well with the “fill bucket” tool, rather than just surrounded by it, like my example of the right, due toon boom not having greater options for gradient opacities and the fill would be outlined by the soft edge (it looks terrible)          




       


A attempt at a idea I had for a start up animation that acted like a lighter, without the friction context like a finger snap, used in full metal alchemist the effect looks like bad firework







Using the gradient fill tool, set to Radial paired with the circle shape tool I could create a “energy burst” the result however wasn’t to my likening.   

An interesting visual idea I had for what happens when casting magic is that the symbols used to cast it appear on the casters hand  

Another idea I had was to have the energy travel visually thought the body until it was expelled from it 

To do this effect I created the bones for the hand, copied it onto every layer, and then erased the area in each frame the energy wasn’t  

One layer bellow the bones, but above the skin colour was the “internal glow” made through using a lighter shade of skin and the soft brush