For me, it's not every day that opportunities to do traditional FX animation come along (though I certainly wish that it were, outside of whatever "for fun" personal projects I happen to have time for). So when former SCAD colleague and fellow animator Paul A. Tillery mentioned to me that he was finishing production on his new film The Ballad of Thundercluck: Chicken of Thor, and was looking for a little something extra to add to the film's FX animation, I set aside as much time as I could because I knew it was going to be a lot of fun to work on.
Each frame of character animation got its own accompanying frame of fire FX, painted frame for frame in Photoshop.
Final composite rendering (with added color and glow effects) by Paul Tillery.
This clip shows how the final cleanup animation for one particular shot looked before delivering to Paul for final composite.
Paul's visual styling of Thundercluck is drop-dead gorgeous, and seeing the final cut is just further confirmation that the time, sweat and chicken broth that went into this film's production was very well spent. Some final clips can be seen in Paul's 2014 demo reel:
Thundercluck's public screening debut is at this year's SIGGRAPH conference and exhibition, so keep an eye on Paul's exclusive Thundercluck website for details and the eventual online release of the film.
