ZERO: Ace combat animation

The models and sets

The first thing did was build the sets and models. The planes were built out of regular model kits. For Ciphers plane the F-15 I used a 1/144 scale F-15 model. The only thing I had to modify was making a hole for a stand at the bottom of the plane to be used in filming. But for Pixy it was more complicated, since there are no model kits of Pixys plane ”Morgan”. The Morgan was built out of a 1/144 Macross VF-31C kit made by Bandai. The VF was pretty close to the desired shape so I just had to do some light modifications to the plane and build the laser cannon. I made the decals for the planes by printing them on regular paper. Then I peeled the top layer of the paper and cut them to the right shape. It’s not as elengant as a waterslide decal, but it’s good enought for the video.

 The sets were built out of cardboard and tissue paper. For the big dam set in the opening I would make the rough shape with cardboard and then add some paper that was wetted with a water and glue mixture to create a rocky texture. Then the dam was built on top of the terrain out of cardboard. The indoor sets were made with thick cardboard for the walls and floors and then some thinner cardboard for delicate parts and greebles. I painted the sets and then used some dry brushing to bring out the detail. The wet paint managed to warp the sets despite my attempts to reinforce the buildings. I’ll have to use some sturdier materials next time I want to build something.

 

Shooting the video

The planes were animated with stop motion. This way I could have complete control of their position in every single frame. The planes were mounted on a stand that allowed them to tilt and rotate. Then filmed them in front of a green screen. The green screen was then to be keyed out and replaced with whatever background I wanted. When filming I had to figure out how the plane would be positioned, how the picture would be panning in the final shot and how the background would be moving in the finished video. This was all very hard, since I wouldn’t be seeing how the planes moved before I was done with the visual effects. It became even harder when I had two planes in the same shot. Honestly my head was spinning trying to keep track of it all, so describing the workflow by typing it out might be very difficult. I’ll still try to do it tough.

To create the plane manoeuvres, I took inspiration from two primary sources. How dogfights were done in older movies like Star Wars. And how planes work in 2D animation, like in Area 88 for example. With Star Wars, the models were stationary while the camera moved around them. When the models were keyed out and placed in the right background, it would look like the model is moving. In 2D animation the plane is drawn on an animation cell and is moved by drawing more cells of the plane in different positions. Or it might just be one cell that is being moved in front of the camera. For this video I combined these two techniques. So, I made this video as if a was making a 2D animation, but instead of drawing the planes, I used pictures of models. This might not make any sense if you aren’t familiar with old special effects and 2D animation techniques. This might still not make any sense if you are familiar with both of those things.

Hopefully this Gif will help you understand.
Frame number 1 is what the video looks like when it is filmed.
Frame number 2 shows how the video is moved in the editing software.
Frame number 3 is how the video looks with the green keyed out and replaced with a moving background.

Editing and visual effects.

This video has a ton of visual effects. So many in fact, that I wanted to render a version without them, so that you could see how barren the video would look without them. A link to the no VFX version is at the bottom of the page.

With the visual effects the first thing I did was make the dam sets look better. I edited the images to make the sets look larger. Then I keyed out the green and put in a background image. I also put some rocks behind the set. These rocks are reused props from the Gundam stop motion video I made a while back. The most time consuming visual effects in this video were the green screen videos. Almost every frame of this video has a green screen shot that had to have the support masked out and then the green removed. The Morgans laser and the F-15s machine gun were made the same way. I masked out the right shape out of a blank white image, and then made them look like lasers or gunshots by messing around with the filters on the image. You can see the unfiltered shapes in the no VFX version. The snowfall was made in blender, it’s not the only part of this video that uses blender. When the Morgans laser is shot at the screen, I used a blender screenshot of a long cylinder to help me get the perspective right. The smoke in this video is just an animated noise texture that is masked and blurred to fit the situation. All the explosions in this video, expect for the big one at the control room, are just the same explosion. I wanted to make an unique animation for every explosion but time was running out, so I had to do it the quicker way. The explosion are based on an old explosion animation I had laying around. I drew it after watching old robot cartoons like Gundam and Xabungle. I was trying to mimic the way explosions were drawn in those old animations. I created the explosions by taking the old explosion animation, and using it as a template to make a mask. Then I applied the mask to the texture I used to make the smoke effects, and filtered it to look more like smoke from an explosion. Then I layered the same mask over the smoke, but this time I used the same filters I used for the lasers and gunshots. This created a glowing fireball for the explosion. You might be wondering, why didn’t I just use a ready made explosion effect? The answer is, that I just wanted to see If I could make my own. Another visual effect I added was motion blur. When filming with stop motion you won’t get any motion blur since the objects in the video aren’t really moving. To fix this, visual effects artist invented Go motion. Go motion was an advancement of stop motion, and it did have motion blur. But when it was invented, computer generated special effects were already around the corner, so Go motion didn’t see much use. In Go motion the blur was in the picture when it was filmed, but I was able to add it in later with a computer. Its a simple effect but it adds a lot to the video. In my video you can see it in the tunnel walls, and when a plane flies by the camera.