After storyboarding and previsualising the whole film, we created all of the visual effects for the town and on the water. The underwater and the great fish visual effects were created by JELLYFISH PICTURES and they did a fantastic job.
JONAH SOUNDTRACK
Mark Sayfritz created the score for Jonah. He has assembled a fantastic ambient / dub mix from the work he made and kindly shared it with us all.
STONETOWN TRANSFORMS
After the shoot in Zanzibar in June 2012, we had the challenging task of transforming the old fishing town of Stonetown, into the futuristic, gritty, seedy and magical version of itself. We used the models and assets created in the ARTWORK as well as a whole heap of new material to add onto the facades, rooftops and oceans of the historic town, bringing an extra layer or sureality to an already distinct looking part of the world.
/\ Animating Component
/\ Street Scene Previs
/\ Compositing 01
/\ Compositing 02
/\ Compositing 03
/\ Animated Poster Design
/\ Compositing 05 Posters
/\ Simulation of Cart
/\ On The Road
/\ On The Road
/\ Giant Fish Man Posters Composite
/\ Giant Fish Man Posters Composite
/\ A Forgoten Legend
/\ Projections
/\ Beaches
/\ Beaches
/\ Neon Rooftops
/\ Drunken City
Taking fame to far Mbwanna gets drunk and stumbles outside the bar. The town is still transforming in real time in front of his blurry eyes.
/\ 50 Year Transition.
As the transformation of Stonetown comes to a peak, we zoom into the drunken eye of our main character, the twon still transforming in the reflections in his eye. In a blink of an eye he is an old man, living in a very differrent world. He is a forgotten legend.
/\ Old Statue
Our character heads out to sea in search of the fish as a forgotten legend. Now an old man. He sees statues of himself with the giant fish, just like the famous picture taken years before. All of the water in this scene had to be digital to get the reflections of the rubbish and statue.
FISH FIGHT PREVIS
/\ Fish Fight Previs
We created the storyboard and previs for the entire film including the dramatic fish fish fight section. Jellyfish Pictures went onto developing the final animation and visual effects of both the underwater sequences and the fish for the film, using our storybaord as an initial guide. It was great working with Jellyfish on this and using their expertise to bring the fantastical fish to life.
FISH INTERIOR
After our characters dramatic fish fight, he gives up and is swallowed by the great beast of the sea. In a fantastical and magical moment he wakes up inside. This was a great challenge to design and realise creatively and technically.
/\ Everything Starts With Reference
It was important to get the right feel inside the fish. We looked at architectural references such as Santiago Calatrava. He is one of our favorite living architects and could not be ignored in developing the fish interior. Obviously other real world references of pictures inside whales and other more texture based material was collected. Also other mythologies needed to be accounted such as The Murderous Cave of the Giant Whale, Pinnochio and Moby Dick. Even more mechanical artificial pictures were looked at and discussed as we decided how this would fit on the 'realistic' - 'fantastical' line.
/\ Inside Fish Sections
We used our architectural background to help us in the challange of designing the inside if the fish by using long and cross sections. We could then see where we would want to position our tracked cameras within the spaces and also see the design in full rather than from a single vantage point. Several changes were made at this initial stage.
/\ Monsters In Your Pocket
Taking inspiration from the 80's/90's childrens toy 'Monsters In Your Pocket' this image opened up both sides of the fish, making it look like a fantastical doll house.
/\ Animation
Initially the inside fish sequences were going to climax with the innards of the fish pealing away, revealing the old Stonetown as our main character remembers it. In later iterations we combined these two ideas so that the fish interior was constructed out of the old Stonetown instead of animating into it.
/\ Design 1
The initial design was much more fleshy then the final design. It was also lit with much more red lights. The result was it made the space feel very hellish and not a dreamy representation of the old Stonetown.
/\ Design 2
We took away the flesh, showing more of the bone structures, added a lot more warm lighting and modelled more of the town so that the concept reached the audience better that our character has in some abstract way, returned to Stonetown.
/\ Green Screen Shoot
/\ Green Screen Shoot
/\ Green Screen Shoot
/\ Projections
Where possible we tried to render only a few frames of the space and project back onto it, allowing us to render it in scanline render, taking only about 10 seconds per frame as apposed to about 12 hours. The scene was rendered from this position for 2 of the shots. We needed to render it a few times with and withought the stair columns and light fittings so that we could project the differrent images onto different object, allowing us to have a bigger range of movement for the shot. Otherwise if only a single image was used to project then when the camera moves we would see the stair columns projected on the steps and the illusion is lost.
/\ Awake Inside
The first main shot inside the fish is as our main character wakes up. As he turns on his lighter to see where he is the space magically comes to life with an array of lights.
/\ Revealing A Lost Friend
One of the main shots inside the fish is a dramatic yet subtle reveal of our main characters lost friend. The camera is filmed on location and tracked. The camera rotates and the as our character passes the center his friend is revealed. Projection techniques didn't work for this shot so every frame had to be rendered in full, clocking at around 12 hours a frame with hundreds of lights. The picture above shows both design 1 and 2 of the fish interior which were both rendered to see which option we prefered in context. The previs can also be seen.
/\ Typical Passes
Obvious mattes were created to tweak colours of materials but we were suprised how little we used them as opposed to your normal static image workflow in this case. Almost all of the vray passes were exported, to re-build the rgb and also to add lghts effects in post. A lot of light select passes were exported with different groups of lights selected so that we could control certian areas better in post. The zDepth pass was used a lot in grading, desaturating the background and also adding a red mist to the innards of the fish in places.
/\ A Silent Happiness
The last few shots at the end show our character silently reflecting on his life and where he finds himself now. Is this real? Shown here before and after post.
/\ A Silent Happiness
Before and after post.
Before and after post.
