fire

giancarlovolpe:

naokiaraiza:

Scale, hierarchy, impacts

From image 1 to 5 we have 5 different scales of different impacts, notice how the shapes of the smoke are all different from small to huge, this is very important in order to communicate the force of the impact.

We have a very small transparent round shaped smoke for image 2 vs a very dense with shadows and lots of little details for image 5. If you want to animate a very big explosion you have to keep in mind that the bigger it gets the more details you have to draw (debris, fire, lights and shadows, etc.), also, massive smokes are more dense and move slower. We are always trying to avoid these huge epic smokes because they are very time consuming, so it’s better to think about ways of showing big scale without actually having to draw it all. For example on image 5 the camera is following julith for a couple of seconds so all the big smokes on the bottom doesn’t need to be animated because they are out of the frame. 

this question was asked by @maginpanic:

can you advice how to handle epic scenes? (Like tsunami flooding the city, or village in fire).

If you want to communicate effectively that something is huge you need to: draw tons of details, they have to move slow, you need something small so the audience can compare and tell how big is the thing you are showing. And I recommend that the scenes don’t last too long, unless you want to spend all your life in front of the computer drawing tiny slow lines… We actually avoid this scenes at Ankama because we are a small team, so I can’t really tell you anything more useful.

Sorry about the late response! 

!!!!