Environmental designs

Since Ollie and I had been slightly too ambitious with wanting to create a proper ocean scene, we decided that creating two flat planes with transparency between them would work much better, because it allows the characters to be seen not just above it but also partially below, making it look more realistic.

Original Ideas 

 At the start we were considering having 2D style water in After Effects, where the waves could be animated and looped. However, we knew that this would not have worked well with the storyline of our animation, we needed the water to be calm and for the attention to not be taken away from the characters.




There was the possibility of having
a proper ocean setting in Maya, however we realised that this would take a very long time to render, and we wanted to be realistic with our goals.


We decided to go with the sun and sky render setting to give the effect of natural light.



Our main scene

For animating we both worked from the main scene Ollie had put together, because this made sure everything was the right scale. The two planes set down for the water worked really well, especially in the scene when the mermaid is swimming under the water, because she is still visible from above which made it look much more effective. We thought this technique for the water was much simpler but would still go far.