Effects work

Amazing Adventure had several shots with effects in them, and the approach was different for each type of effect.

First, there are the words and text boxes that appear throughout the short. These were done as overlays in After Effects.

The P1 and P2 icons were done in Maya. Models of the icons were placed over the heads of each character and connected to follow the root controls of both characters. I could manually control the height, size, and angle of each icon based on the needs of the shot.

Smoke, explosions, and fire were built as objects in Maya and animated by hand. That way they could have dimension and exist in the world while being animated similar to bit art.

The controller cord was the only simulated effect. I built a cylinder along a NURBS curve, which I would then make a dynamic hair. I would connect one end of the hair to the controller and the other to the console. Then I would tweak various settings of the hair system until I got a simulation I liked and bake it out. Since I have very limited knowledge of dynamics and effects in Maya, I felt like I was playing a long, slow guessing game until I could get something that would work. The shot Jeff is pulled into the TV there are actually three cables: from the TV to Jeff's leg, the wrap around the leg, and from the leg to the console. The third of these was the only simulated piece for this shot. Since I needed the other pieces to look taught, I animated them by hand with simple deformers.

When the controller goes through the TV, I just swapped a texture on the TV on impact and turned on some lights to give it the look I wanted.