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We have gotten a few questions about how we achieved the effects in our latest release Illusions, so I thought i'd post some images of our setup accompanied with a short explanation.
We decided to make an entry to Dreamhack Summer's Wild Compo. The only idea we had to start with was that we wanted to do something with water or liquids. I had seen some cool stills of ink beeing dropped in water a couple of months back. "Humm, wonder how this would look in motion" :)
I borrowed a Canon EOS 550D from work. We fitted one of louies macro lenses to it and set it to shoot in video mode 720p@50fps. We hooked it up through USB to my Macbook pro with the Canon LiveShoot software for pretty good preview.
For the actual effects we had this setup in louies kitchen:
What you see is a shoe box with holes cut in it, some aluminum foil, and most importantly a 200W bulb for light from underneat. We put a clear glass plate on top for stability. The whole 200W-bulb-in-a-shoebox-contraption did get very hot (no surprises here) so we cut another hole in the back of the shoebox and pointed a fan towards it. This enabled us to do longer takes without risking a fire. The fan did make small vibrations that moved through the table and shook up the quite unstable showbox setup, so we had to turn it off while we were filming. The heat from below added some quite cool motion as the water rose to the top as it got heated by the bulb.
We used a fork to help with focusing the camera where we imagined the drops would go. Refraction in the water and glass plus the macro lens made the fov extra shallow.
Then we started out testing pouring different stuff in the water and watching the effects.
Most of the stuff didn't make it into the final production. Food dye didn't stand out from the black background even with a lot of light, soy mixed with the water too quickly, vegetable oil looked very cool but we cut it later when we found it didn't fit with the other clips. Then we tried milk, which worked quite nicely, and after that, cream, which is used for most of the effects in the final production. Cream had a very nice viscosity and the thickness worked well with the strong light from below.
For liquids we used very small amounts (0.1-5 ml) in a syringe. We did a lot of takes with different amounts of "spurting-pressure". Both high and low pressure gave satisfying and varied results.
To keep up the tempo in Illusions most of the clips are from the very beginning of the spurts, but we filmed for quite a long time on each take, the patterns that emerged, very slowly rotating and transforming, were quite surreal, almost hypnotic.
We added colors to the liquids in the computer and changed the speeds. Having shot in 50 fps opened the possibility to slow things down without making things look choppy. For many of the shots we slowed down the beginning where the drop entered and made the end faster, just to give things a bit more punch, and to sync it better to the music.
I composed the tune between shooting and cutting/post. If we would have had more time I probably should have composed first, to inspire what kind of clips we filmed. Further time constraints made us cut half a minute from the song, to be able to finish the stuff on time. In retrospect I think we should have kept things longer and made a few repeats of things instead. The final cut felt a bit short.
The high tech computing station. Having things in the kitchen was a must since we changed the water all the time.
Another shot of the setup. The other, flatter, canister we used. This time with food dye and some unspecified very opaque liquid on the bottom. We did tests with white background, but most of these didn't work, especially with the cream (for obvious reasons).
Originally we wanted to write something poetic for the overlayed texts, but nothing felt really right, so we settled for translating wierder and wierder things to french. We thought this could bring a smile to any french speaking lips.
Well, thats about it. We hope you have enjoyed watching our first Wild-Entry as much as we enjoyed making it!
While we have no concrete ideas for other "filmic" productions, it was a very cool experience, so as soon as inspiration strikes, expect another release :)
In the meanwhile, back to the game development!
Huggies!
/Hannes and Louie
