This is some of my animations. Just like life, learning never stops. Keep animating, keep training, keep trying. I'm far away from perfect, any comments and/or critiques would be very welcomed.
Before the Hilma-as-animator time has come, I was more as a 2D artist. I love sketching, digital painting, and making comics. Although I don't do all of that much lately, I still sketch and paint in my spare time.
It's a good training and application of cinematography. Plus I make alot of friends by it. I didn't have wide knowlededge of any photography techniques. I just use basic theory + my cinematography senses and skill. So I'm quite happy when alot of people love my works.
I was bored that day at office and start to doodle on my Cintiq [office's Cintiq to be more precise], in the end the concept got pretty interesting so after work hour I moved it into my flashdrive and continued it home with my lovable Intuos. It was getting exciting and took me until 2 o' clock in the morning till I finish this.
The close up shot, if it's still to small, just click it for bigger view.
And this is the step by step progress. I've used black and white value technique before which is not quite satisfying for me, but this one does better. I start to have grip for this way of creating depth, and it's faster too. With this I can color the picture as a whole composition, not part by part.
This is for colleague who asked me how to make character turning back in the fastest and simplest way. I did it in 11 minute, hope that's fast enough. For your watching and learning convenience, I speed up the video into 200% of the real duration.
The concept are first, make the key poses. Don't do the steps yet, just make her facing each potition she needs to make the movement.
Now, to make a steps, it sounds complex and you would get dizzy in no time if you make it one by one. Because actually, those steps goes only to the facing position. It doesn't look like stepping because it move the same time with body. To turn it into steps, you just need to adjust the timing. Any adjusting on the basic pose would usually be needed but it would be easier to do it later.
So, make her steps only by moving, copying [and eliminating if needed] the keyframes on the time bar. Here you can start to adjust the foot position for her convenience, make her turns back smoothly, and less like a drunken person with those ugly feet movements.
After feet look nice, go for the hip. Basically just make the pelvis move to counters the weight of her body when stepping. One basic concept: Hip goes to create weight that pulls the foot of the ground, so it moves first. And because foot is lighter, it lands faster than pelvis - which now moves later, creating the save landing for body [and pelvis] and prevents them from falling on the ground.
Now the stepping is done and look nice, you can start to put some delay and secondary motion on body, head and arms. Which one will start turning? Head or shoulder? That's of course depends on the case. (arm will move last, except she wants to punch or hit something).
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I found it among trashes of my old abandoned blog. Guess I'm gonna sharing it here with you, guys.
This is the character model. It's still look too clean for the scene. Since it's for still image, I plan to make it dirtier on the compositing. This way is easier and often gives more expectable result.
Rendering:
As you can see it's still look empty and dull. There is only one ambient light, that's why i tried to put another element like wanted poster and a blue light from the opposite direction. I'm quite satisfied with that. I'll try to make it richer in photoshop.
Don't forget for zdepth render. It's very usefull for very light and machine friendly depth of field making:
Time for compositing:
At first, the explosion look like that. But after a lot of input it looks not real enough, make sense. So I tried to put more dirt and change the blast type of explosion into a real explosion. I also make the clothes dirtier and add some blood sprays on her body for more dramatic atmosphere.
Final adjusting to make the colors richer, and DONE :
Trying for speed painting. But I guess I did it too much and needs 2.25' total. Wacom Intuos 4 on Corel Painter X. It had been soooooo long since i paint. Try to break the routines here.
Spending time on weekend to make another Punyu's piccy. Actually I was trying to make a wallpaper for my Blackberry XD. Posing-Lighting-Rendering-Compositing.
The compositing elements. It is better to break the element like this then compose it on Photoshop or After Effect than to deliver all the works into the renderer because we would have more control on the final composition. Computer are worker, not creator. The creativity should be kept controlled by the man's hands.
The wallpaper version, 360x480 pixels. I needs to readjust position of character and text so it suits My 9530 layout
Here it is when applied. Pretty nifty, eh? Now My Storm is good to go
Because a friend ask me for the other wallpaper version, I tried to make some. The PSP, wide, and HD version, for now, and still accepting request for other resolution.
I move this tutorial from my old blog here because one of my friend asks for it. This isthe step by step (really detail steps) of my "kitchen afternoon" artworks. the softwares I used is painter and a little photoshop for retouching. the hardware is wacom bamboo tablet. I forgot to count the time, but it was approx. 4-5 hours including the sketch. click the thumbnail for bigger images.
sketch and ink are done in traditional technic. I will retrace the lineart with digital pen later for more smooth lines. ok, start to coloring. for the tone, lately I prefer to pick from real photo, since it give more realistic and predictable color combination. predictable means I looks for photo reference who had the tones and atmosphere that I need, then start to pick the color from it. so im like have plan how the pic gonna be, not totally random like what I had always did in earlier artworks. the photograph also gaves me the idea to added the sunlight effect that falls thru windows to the body.
advance colouring with painter.
like usual, my paint technique is just blocking then blending the colour. ill try other technic when im bored with this one :D. for now, this technic gives me the best result that I want. oh, and I even pick the environment color from the photograph.
well, not all tones had been pick from photograph. i also added my own green tone to make the color richer, also to make the dark area more darker.
paint the chair and, sorry guys but i need to add clothes to this character ;)
I achieve the whole atmospher tone in bottom right pic by retouching in photoshop and thats it. It's done!
A friends asked me how I lit the kitchen in the soundsync animation scene. So here's I'll share it with you. It's not a tutorial, I am not a technic expert. It use only a simple technique, the rest is about sense and watching a lot of movies.
I use vray renderer for this scene, It has simple and easy to use global illumination setting. Here's the scene's lighting position.
top view
front view
here's the setting for each light:
Setting for vray light1
Setting for vray light2
Vray renderer setting:
Another tips to enchance the visual is using the SSS Shader for the skin
Okay, you've technically done with the scene light set. Now for the render phase, it's a choice, but i suggest you to split the still background and the moving object (character and props) apart.
Since the background is not moving towards camera, you practically only need one frame to be rendered. For the real time rendering you only need to render the moving object and hide the still background with vray matte feature. Don't just use the hide object thingy or you'll missed the colour bouncing from object to the background vice versa, shadow, and would be a big problem if the still object is in front of the moving object.
final rendering
for 270 frames it needs about 3 hours long total rendering on my phenom PC.
