Really good, maybe you could share some workflow about your process of creation.
Yes, maybe I could share stuff here for anyone interested. I’m still learning and changing my workflow all the time but if I find something interesting to share I’ll definitely post it in this thread (hopefully I’ll get some inspiration and feedback from another great artists in this forum). Thanks!
Thanks for this in depth explanation.
I started as an classic hand drawn animator 30 years ago. But it was not the biggest love on earth. No matter what other animation enthusiast are saying. Even 12 frames per second are a torture / at least for me.
So I loved upcoming possibilities of CG.
I was always more fascinate by NPR (non photorealistic render) as I was looking for pencil line replacements.
But.
My Anime / Manga relationship is a bit disturbed by the mass anime productions of my youth vs top notch animations from US, France, UK and East Europe. The anime animations itself looked often very cheap. Hold, mouth open close open close open close, long transition in one pose and windy hair plus animated stripes in background. Close on eyes with some sweat pearls and a three frame jitter. Good effects like explosions. With Akira it changed a bit as this one was massive. But still I am much more this Don Bluth, Disney style friend, than 6 frames per second anime compromise. But anime became fashion and I got used to it. So I am not really missing it in your work. And I like how deep you are getting into it, to please yourself with best result convincing your own taste instead of following fashion.
So cool! I was always fascinated with animation because when you see how it’s done it looks hard; when an animator talks about it, still looks very hard. And when you try it yourself… it looks extremely hard Not to talk about hand drawn…
Do you still work on animation? What apps do you like for digital animation?
Haha I remember reading tricks like
‘If 2 characters were talking on a restaurant and one has to be animated jumping on the table, first they would show one of them talking, then a loud noise of breaking plates and finally the second character already on top of the table’.
So cheap and so creative…
Yeah, very creative….but we called it cheating those days.
Yeah, my son and his friends are eating all Anime stuff, and they are twens already.
I am still doing partly animations in 3Ds max, 2D in Moho, hand drawn in Flash MX 2004….one of last versions letting you export ai image sequences. But I am a super generalist working in multi media doing 3D, Video compositing with focus on laser show graphics. Very special, very reduced, very vector.
Nice model. Very cute. How did you do the render, I love the style
The outline is a paint over , isn’t it?
Very nice btw!,
Thanks guys!
The model has only unlit shading + Screen Space ambient occlusion (not PBR or matcaps).
The silhouette is made duplicating the model, painting this new mesh with black (or any other nice color), inflating/scaling the geometry a bit and using two sided off and inverse culling. I disabled the visibility of some parts in order to see just this second black mesh.
(Note: the eyelashes don’t use this technique, they are just black meshes made with the tube tool because it works better)
This technique is old and but it’s used a lot even today because you can get an outline for free (this outline mesh can be decimated a lot for better performance in games). It’s not perfect but it looks pretty much ok from any angle (but I didn’t put much effort in this model, it was just a test hehe).
And some screenshots from a beautiful game called Okami for the PlayStation 2 (released in 2006)
Uhhh, thank you so much for this in depth explanation. Your result is so fantastic, that I forgot about this technique. Even though I made a short tutorial about this as well… I am getting old.
But heavy decimation for the “outline object” was not possible in Nomad those days. The one I got the trick from used layer to adjust size of outline object, which is clever. Maybe you’ll find something useful for you as well, even though your 3D knowledge seems to be much more experienced than mine.
Thanks for those game screenshots. I never expected to see the outline technique in games where polycount is such an important thing. Very nice. I used to work with illustrate! an NPR renderer for 3Ds max ages ago. Super complicate, slow, but with nice results. Nothing for real-time, but I was after vector output those days.
I don’t know if it’s already been asked, but who is that character btw? the Cheese Wizard lol, did you draw her yourself, or is she from a game or something?
Oh Good to know! That post was really useful and I learned some tricks! Thanks for doing it!
The original character was done by a cool artist called Rinotuna
I also posted the final character on my twitter. It’s not really finished but I don’t feel like working more on it
Amazing job!
Great style, thanks for the tuto.
This September I’m doing the #swordtember challenge on Twitter using only the iPad with Nomad Sculpt and Cozy Blanket (I want to see how much I can get done without a PC)
Day 1 “Crystal”
Your work is inspiring. I love it! Keep it up and keep sharing, and thank you for sharing your knowledge as well. Much appreciated