Sunday, April 27, 2008

The Plague of Locusts

I decided to animate the swarm of locusts for the scene where the head of The Baptist becomes the plague. I initially thought I would use sand for the animation, but I found the sand hard to control and hard to detail. I tried using paint on glass for this animation. At first, it was not clear how I would achieve the movement of the swarm. I tried 4 or 5 different patterns of movement which were more random and spotty. This inspired me to go further, but I still wasn't sure about the effect. Several people asked me why I wasn't using a dynamic simulation for the effect. The proof for the paint technique came when I began animating the whole swarm as one entity. I concentrated on drawing the frame after before erasing the previous frame as I learn from Sheila Sofian. I think this has given me some great results and it was fun to do. I don't think I would have had this much control with either sand or a dynamic simulation.

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