Water and liquid effects are a common theme when talking about challenges in animation, but never more so than in a movie that is set entirely under water. CG supervisor Michael McNeill offers, “We made a conscious decision early on not to hit people over the head with the fact that we’re under water all the time, but we do try to give little clues, like adding bubbles and ripples and little particles floating slowly by, all of which give you that subtle reminder that everything is going on under water.”
“There are a lot of bubbles,” affirms head of effects Michael A. Miller. “I think over 90 percent of this movie has bubbles in some way, shape or form.”
Bubbles were one thing…suds were something else entirely. Cooper admits, “In thinking of all the challenges we would face on ‘Shark Tale,’ the one thing that didn’t cross my mind at first was how to do soap suds under water. Oscar works at the Whale Wash, so that was going to be a huge issue.”
The filmmakers discussed whether the suds should act like liquid in liquid—floating up and dissolving like Luca’s coffee does in one comic moment—or should behave as soapsuds do in the air.
“We ended up somewhere in between,” Cooper continues. “We designed an effect where, when the suds first come out, they act like big, thick soapsuds would in the air; they cling to the whales and run down the sides. But as the workers scrub them off, the soap dissolves into a milky foam that drifts away in the water. So it’s a bit of a cheat, but we do that sometimes when we need something more stylistic than realistic.”
One realistic property of being underwater is that almost nothing is stationary…ever. Sea grasses and plants continually sway in the current, and the fishes’ fins are constantly in motion. In essence, anything that is not “nailed down” is going to be moving. Having to keep the environment in perpetual motion was complicated enough, but the effects team was given a directive that compounded the task.
“The directors told us that we had to time some of our effects to the music,” Miller offers. “The movie had to have a beat, and the effects needed to sync up to it. So the music was an important element for us.”
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