Thoughts On The Jungle Environment

I was thinking about how we're going to do the whole colour change with the star in the forest and began to think of alternatives to it. 

We've got milo and kay having a cold relationship at the beginning of the story and by the time they reach the big tree they're friends - could we build and texture the environment to reflect this? 

In the clearing perhaps we could have the cold blue/purple colours together with spiky, hard edged, straight, sharp and dangerous looking plants like this:

and then gradually change this from blue through to green and yellow and finally into orange and red with the plants becoming softer and more curvy symbolising their friendlier relationship. A change of colour from green/yellow to red during the chase could look cool too - symbolising the increasing tension etc.

My main thinking behind this is it would be an simpler task to do and wouldn't rely on some time consuming post production trick which we still don't really know how to do and could go tits up. Also applying that masking effect to ~30 shots will take some time which we might not have come the end of the project and of course it would mean one render of the environment instead of two - halving render time that again we might not have come August/Sept. We'd be able to get it right in maya just by changing the textures gradually. It also kind of goes back to the idea of a different colour scheme for different areas which was one of the first ideas we all liked but kind of lost along the way?

I know this changes the role of the star but it can still be a magical object - it could emit pixie dust type particles or a glow or something and that's what draws barry - and at the end the star could still bring colour to kay's bedroom.

I'll think about this some more and talk it through with you all on monday.

J