Research For Mist/Fog Effects

Research For Mist/Fog Effects

In the story of my film, the mist plays a big part. It is what hides the monsters from the view of the Captain. I wanted to make sure that the mist looked realistic. I have looked at ways of creating it during production, including using a smoke machine.

In this blog (Storm The Castle Smoke Effects) I found someone who had used a fog machine for their film and it seems to be quite effective. unfortunately for health and safety reasons I couldn't use the smoke machine.

In Production

To create fog while shooting a stop motion film flags many problems, like continuity, consistency of the fog and the focus of the camera. When trying to make a subtle misty atmosphere, animating material to look like fog could deter the eye away from the characters if not done correctly.

Making realistic fog without using a smoke machine is quiet difficult and from looking at other projects similar to mine it isn't something that is attempted often.

I found this fog test on YouTube using wool and I don't like how static it looks.

As it looked like I wouldn't be able to create the mist during the production of my film, the next step was to research into creating the mist in post-production.

Post Production

I wanted to make sure I had done my research and practiced using these effects in after effects before hand in so that I didn't spend too much time in post production learning how to use the software.

https://www.rocketstock.com/blog/how-to-create-realistic-fog-in-after-effects/

In this blog the person explains how to apply a layer of mist to a still image, this will be helpful towards my project but the mist may seem too static next to my moving characters.

Laika also use computer software to create the atmospherics in their films. I found this blog showing the process of their production.
https://www.fxguide.com/featured/thinking-outside-the-boxtroll/

With the idea of creating the mist for my project in post production, I researched how it could be created using the software I already have at home, After Effects.

I found this fog tutorial on 

http://cgi.tutsplus.com/tutorials/realistic-fog-without-3rd-party-plug-ins--ae-7376

and it explains how to create fog in after effects without having to download any plug-ins.
I thought I could use this tutorial and make the fog effect with a lower opacity to look more like mist.

Using this tutorial I have been able to apply a mist layer to my test animations.