Flying in Two and a Half D

I'm late but it's finally time to animate and although its been talked about before it's finally time to face the problem of the moving background. In the animatic quite a few seconds worth of in perspective scrolling background are needed where Zoe flies really fast over some scenery.

Originally after effects was the only way I could think of doing this but then I was inspired by 'The YuYu' by Adam Philips. he has achieved something very similar in terms of animation to what I had envisaged for my own film. I can't embed it here so you can watch it on youtube here:

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=n9QHEbU0cWY

or in better quality on Newgrounds.com:

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/310851

After watching this several times I decided that the ground itself was animated by hand and the mountains and other passing objects may have been also been animated but certainly on layers. Some things done here are achieveable in after effects, but for the ground traditional animation appears to be the only way to achieve this effect. So my first line test may well be that.

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I wrote all that yesterday and today- after consulting tutor Adam C it turned out that a similar effect more in keeping with my aesthetic was achievable with 3DS Max but the same process could also be done in After effects and seeing as I had desired to use as little 3D animation as possible I attempted it there instead. I decided to use Adam's process on my initial aesthetic design and animate it in " 2 and a half D ". I dunno if Adam came up with that term but its cool so I'm gonna keep using it as "2.5D".

So..here is my 2.5D attempt:

What your seeing is a combination of after effects' clever 3d camera on top of 2d images. I made a shot using this 3d camera travelling at high speed over my grass, which I took from one of the layers in my original painting, duplicated and spread out over a virtual 3d plane. This shot was rendered out as tiffs and re-imported on top of the cloud/mountain background. Motion blur is applied to make it look cool and fast.

You'll probably have noticed the grass is pulsating blue at the back there which is due to a plugin which adds realistic 'fall off' in colour and opacity as objects get further away from you from Videocopilot.net (thanks Tom!). I havent quite got it right but it will look better on the next test. Also next time I will not be looping my high speed grass, instead I will just make a scene of correct length for the camera to travel over. I'm really proud of this so thanks for everyone's advice today!