Progress Update 1

Recently I rewatched the film Brave and was reminded of the folklore surrounding wisps. While will-o-the-wisps are generally viewed as malevolent spirits, the filmed depicted them as more benevolent. In folklore they are often said to draw humans deep into forests or marshes. I was kind of inspired to explore wisps as a way of diving into more effects and using more videos within my work. 

For my final project I would like to animate a wisp guiding the viewer through the woods and through many different peaceful nature scenes. I was reminded of a tutorial I saw many years ago about animating a waterfall, that might be perfect for this video if I can find it again. I also thought this might be a good opportunity to continue my exploration of 3D to add some parallax and a sense of motion between clips (e.g. I would love to end the video with the wisp guiding the viewer up towards the sky as an aurora borealis appears). While this isn't necessarily meant to be an exact replication of nature in its natural form (e.g. nonnocturnal animals may be active during the night), I would like to explore the most inspiring aspects of nature and combine them a bit within this single video.

I used this tutorial to explore creating a glowing orb to mimic common depictions of wisps. I decided to use a photo of the woods at night to make this tutorial practice a bit more interesting, as well as to explore possibilities for the project. I also overlayed two videos to add the smoke and tiny flickering light effects that add more depth and interest to the video.

Storyboard

Since I plan to use a lot of sourced images and video, some of my videos progression may evolve based on what I am able to find online. So far, this is my storyboard for what i hope too explore within this video.