cornfield test

[Klaus Hoefs]

Cornfield and wind with a pan. It is planned as a background for an intermediate scene with turning up people from different times and spaces.
animation: http://www.khoefs.de/tests/pan_wieseH264.mov

khoefs_006.jpg (41.1 KiB) Viewed 19901 times

[malcooning]

good effort. I like it.
It is right, because it is evocative of a grassy field, rather than descriptive.
it could do with a few more frames, to smooth out the little skip you have in the end of each loop, but even in it's current state it is quite successful.

[Paul Fierlinger]

But these loops were not animated pen strokes, correct? How exactly was it done? It's very effective and lush looking, though I've never seen corn grow like this. At the very end , after the camera stops, the looping becomes too obvious.

[slowtiger]

Looks great, but Paul is right: you spot the trick at the border. I'd cover that with a hand-animated area.

How did you do that? From the end I suspect you used some distortion effect?

[Klaus Hoefs]

... How exactly was it done? ....

1. Project Size sth about 5000 width x 2500 height, with Camera to 1920x1080, it took for me about 2000 frames-> and a lot of HD, my size is > 4.5 GB
1st layer: drawing ca. 20 frames with the help of the Light Table / ping-pong the layer

2. 2nd layer: drawing ca. 20 (which will look different to layer 1) using the Light Table again / adjusting opacity of the layer to get a smooth grey-tone / shifting a little bit on the x-axis / ping-pong the layer

3. Merge both layer (optional)
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3. using the FX-Stack with the Distortion Grid and some Keyframes to simulate wind blowing from (eg) left to right
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4. To get more smooth movements stretching the layer with interpolation (careful, not too much !), taking all the layers to ping/pong

5.Duplicating the interpolated layer several times with different(!) opacity and shifting their starting in the timeline to get more depths and loosing unified moving of the weeds.


Spending a lot of time in the north area of Germany (Schleswig-Holstein), I studied those fields from train and strolls. I have acquaintance with them since childhood, - the reason why I always liked Andrew Wyeth's work.

I think to get rid of the obviousness of the loop I'll put some layers with some hand-drawn animated strokes on top.

[Paul Fierlinger]

It is a wonderful effect because it is not too CGI looking and fits in with the surrounding drawing style very well ... but I live just several miles from the Wyeth house and have to say I have never seen such graceful corn; actually your imagery resembles more wheat than corn. Corn stalks are very stiff and almost paper like (they actually rattle in the wind). On the other hand, what you created here is indeed the perfect effect of tall brown grasses growing everywhere in this area.

[slowtiger]

There's a short story by Ray Bradbury about a sailor far from the sea who wanted to have a sea funeral. Finally he's buried in the fields, the corn providing the waves.

[Paul Fierlinger]

Well, that's a pretty accurate analogy because corn stalks, with their broad and heavy leaves do look a lot like waves on the sea, when there is a lot of wind blowing, but nothing like grasses in the wind.

[Paul Fierlinger]

Here you go; about 2 minutes into the clip is the most typical action:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDPGoSZNsiY" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[ZigOtto]

the effect is welldone and does perfectly the visual trick,
missing the wind sound now, not the easier task imo !

[Klaus Hoefs]

Here you go; about 2 minutes into the clip is the most typical action:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDPGoSZNsiY" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Interesting clip (comments and image), with surprises from the real world:

Screen shot 2011-05-06 at 8.40.34 AM.png (35.09 KiB) Viewed 19835 times

and here is one more, a bit more sea-like , maybe like one Markus was talking about:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDPGoSZNsiY

To be honest, my fields came much from memory (as I implied) and it means that they include abstractions and idealizations, and lots of more or less hidden emotions, desires and personal reflections. For me that's the pulsing heart of hand drawing.
To talk of success, on it's downside it is hard to connect it to audiences, sometimes.
I think, that Asaaf was pointing to it recently (in another thread).
It's a little bit off real life which is much more offered with such youtube-clips (which I love), but it has it's roots.