This scene seemed stiff with the painted fire dangling behind the moving motorcycles. I animated the flames on Thanksgiving and I am so thankful that I did. It is now one of my favorite scenes in the film.I am glad I put in the solid day to make all the flames happen.
I had a front tire blow out at 70 miles per hour as I was driving on the highway after I dropped Pam off at the Sanford airport. Putting a spare tire on in the rain, while rush hour traffic roared by was harrowing, but it helped inspire the flaming front tire in this scene.
This is the most levels I have had to animate in a single shot. The flaming tire itself has 7 layers. The foreground bike has 6 layers including the flames. All the layers for each bike were linked to a null which is what I moved to animate the forward movement. Flames on each bike had to be created separately since each bike moves at a different speed.
I learned to use color coding to keep all the bike elements separate. Overall there are 25 layers to make this work.
Up until this point all the flames in scenes burned upward. In this case I had to figure out how to get the flames to blow back in the breeze. Expressions I had used in other scenes needed to be flipped to make the effects orient correctly.
The final results might not be photo real, but they blend well with the overall look of the film.