Strategies for showing movement away from cam, while expanding

[Anonymous]

I'm trying to do an animation for a client that shows a woman's body moving away from the camera, expanding, and dissolving into a blue sky background.

This may sounds easy, but my challenge is how to make her seem to be moving away while her body is expanding.

Foreground is a woman in a meditation position.
Background is a blue sky.

I added multiple translucent layers of the background blue sky image (spaced between the camera and the far background layer) to aid the eye to understand that the character is moving away.  And this works for the first half of the animation when the character remains the same size.  It's easy to see she is moving away.

But in the last half of the animation, i start to scale up the character and fades her out as she continues to move away through layers of the sky.

How do i trick the eye to see that she is actually moving away and expanding...?

[Brock_Lafond · Accepted solution]

There needs to be some reference point for the eye to work with.

Can there be shadows cast upon the woman that would clearly show her moving through them?

What if there were clouds beneath her, and her shadow was cast upon them?

If there's a dynamic element, like clothing or hair, you could imply locomotion by showing her hair and clothing moving in the wind.

[Anonymous]

Brock, thanks for the suggestions.  she will have no hair or clothes, but perhaps I could add a translucent fog or cloud plane beneath her and cast a shadow on that!  I'll try that.  Cheers!

[Anonymous]

The shadow worked until the figure grew too large. After sitting down and showing this to the client, she acknowledged that it's practically impossible to show movement away and expand without a solid point of reference. So she wants to just have the figure expand and dissipate into the clouds. Thanks for the reply Brock!