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#also I’m obviously not a 3D animator so I don’t like. have any knowledge
flamingplay · 27 days
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Interview: Everything Everything’s Jonathan Higgs on AI, Education, & New LP ‘Mountainhead’
by Eric Schuster
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Atwood Magazine: Each album you all release has a unique style and theme. I read that Mountainhead draws from an allegory regarding “an alternate society whose existence is dedicated to endlessly growing a mountain by digging deeper at its foot — all in pursuit of a mythical mirror that sits atop its peak while avoiding a massive golden snake that lives in the pit below.” What are some of your favorite sci-fi films or novels?
Jonathan Higgs: Definitely Predator. Definitely Terminator. I like any sort of sci-fi slasher genre like that, like Alien where there’s people being picked off by a monster. It’s not very close to what I’ve written though, for this album. Yeah, I think I was looking for something that was simple enough to say in one sentence, but that could have a huge amount of different meanings if you wanted it to. I guess it would be something like, I don’t even know. It’s way too simple for a film. I think it would have to develop a hell of a lot more, but I think in terms of music, it’s sort of enough to hang everything off without it getting too complex and too bogged down with these rules of the world. It was more like, no, there’s just this big one, big idea and everything is sort of under the shadow of that rather than getting too conceptual kind of puts me off if particularly if albums get too wrapped up in detail and all that stuff. It’s fine for films or novels, it’s essential. But I think when you are making something like an album, it needs to be, the songs need to live without that knowledge. They need to be able to be good by themselves
That’s why it has such a simple setup, because I think anything, I think you can go a bit further, but I want you to keep it really monolithic and simple.
You tackle some big issues in Mountainhead, like the unsustainability of unlimited growth and income inequality and Raw Data Feel tackled the problems associated with AI. Do you see AI helping or exacerbating these issues?
Jonathan Higgs: I think it’ll help a little bit. I don’t see why it would make things worse. It’ll probably be some big tech advances that it’ll help speed up things like sustainability is the big one that everyone’s trying to do, so I don’t see how that could make things worse, but it does, of course, rely on some kind of thing. They keep mining for chips, right? I can’t remember. But there is quite a big environmental impact of making the brains of AI and obviously we’ve seen with crypto what sort of length people will go to improve their computing power and how much energy that uses, et cetera, et cetera. But no, I think it’s probably going to help bring about some of the stuff that we need to happen a bit more quickly, like renewable, wherever that may be. Some kind of advancement will probably occur thanks to ai, but it’s not just a one solution type thing. It’s more like it just looks through the options much more quickly. That’s kind of how I feel about it.
You all are very academic and methodical in your approach to writing music and creating art. Do you have any artists that you are currently listening to that are also pushing the boundaries of music?
Jonathan Higgs: I’m more in touch with what some visual people are doing. There’s this guy called Umami who makes these amazing short videos and he’s made this big long series of them and he does do music in it as well, but it’s primarily like an animation project, and I follow a lot of 3D horror guys. I mean, that’s not music either, really. And I guess musically, oh man, this year has been thin on the ground. It’s only a month in, it’s only a few weeks in. I don’t know. I’m not really tuned into anything new at the moment. I guess it’s because I’m working on other projects, I’m just trying to clear my head of musical stuff at the moment, so I can’t suggest anything.
Your website Edexhell mocked the exam quality that you were issued in school, what do you think of the current state of education?
Jonathan Higgs: I have no idea, is the truth. I don’t have any connection to people of that age. Well, my brother’s kids I guess are teenagers, but it’s Scotland and things tend to be better up there anyway. I don’t actually know. Actually, just about an hour ago I read a report saying that girls are doing better than boys at every age from primary up to uni. And that made me ponder for a moment. I dunno if that’s a problem with education, but there’s definitely something going on there, which is pretty odd. But also my mom, she’s retired now, but she was a teacher and teachers used to get it in the neck so much when I was growing up that I kind of made a soft promise to myself never to diss the education. Well, teachers in particular, I think it’s generally the same as it was. I don’t know, is the truth. I’m not involved.
Did you all see the movie Everything Everything and if so what did you think? How do you feel that they co-opted your name?
Jonathan Higgs: No, we didn’t see it. We were not very pleased with that, to be honest. It meant that 99% of Google searches for us just end up with that. Nothing against the film, but it can fuck off.
What job do you think you would have if you were not a musician?
Jonathan Higgs: I’d be in movies. I think I’d be making them, not in them. I’d be somewhere along the creative line, hopefully directing, but who knows? I could happily do that now. I do that now. I’ve directed, most of our music videos have been by me, so yeah, I enjoy that hugely.
Do you have any favorite directors?
Jonathan Higgs: Yeah, well, there’s a lot of good ones at the moment, aren’t there? I really liked Robert Eggers. I thought The Northman was brilliant. I know it was a bit silly, but I absolutely loved it. I just saw Poor Things. I thought that was pretty good. I think it’s actually a pretty great time for film at the moment. This year’s last year’s Oscar bait sort of, well, not Oscar bait, but just the things that are about to get awards in about a month and lots of really great stuff. I thought Anatomy of a Fall was amazing. I’ll always watch whatever Ridley s Scott’s up to. Yeah, I prefer, I get more excited, not prefer, but I get more excited about movies than albums recently just because I’m not, I feel like I’m so in bed with music that it’s a bit like work sometimes and movies is a bit more like I can be a fan rather than somebody who’s involved.
You mentioned that the mirror at the top of Mountainhead represents the fact that even if “you’ve got it all, what have you really got?” What is your favorite material item that you own and why?
Jonathan Higgs: Oh, my PC, no question. I’ve had a PC since I was in middle school, and then there was a long period where I didn’t have one and then I got one again and I was like, fuck, why did I have that period in my life without one? It’s the best tool a human has ever created, easily outside of the stick. It’s brilliant. I absolutely love it for creating. The power I have as one person now compared to when I was a kid on a computer is just extraordinary. The things I can make, the level of quality that you can make now the consumer can make is astounding.
This album deals with what it means to be a “human,” which is something that has been explored for centuries but has gotten harder to define as technology has infiltrated our everyday lives. What do you think are the best ways to connect with other people?
Jonathan Higgs: Sitting round a fire, the oldest one, it’s always being the best one, but if you can’t do that, then face-to-Face Place with breathable air is probably the next best thing. And obviously you can’t always do that, but doing what we’re doing now is okay.
A lot of songwriters seem to slow down as their careers progress, but you all are as prolific as ever, perhaps even more so now. Where do you find the creative energy (and literal energy) to keep creating such thought-provoking and high-intensity albums?
Jonathan Higgs: Well, I don’t have kids, so I’ve got all the energy I ever had, and a lot of my job is sitting down, so to be honest, I could use up more of my energy. In fact, a lot of my songs are about the fact that I don’t use my energy, don’t use my body. So I’ve never had a problem with that. We don’t really get, well, I don’t really get drained of juice because I don’t think making an album is very difficult. Really. We’ve done it seven times and making another one doesn’t sound difficult either. Making a good album is quite hard though.
You said it's not very physical, but that music video for Cold Reactor, you guys are out there in the cold and that looked pretty physical.
Jonathan Higgs: Well, that was a big day. We actually made five music videos that day.
Oh my god.
Jonathan Higgs: Yeah, we did all the whole album’s worth in one day, and there was a big storm that was coming into the Slate Mine, where we were. So that had a bit of a hard limit on it in terms of when we could be there. We were about to die, so that made it kind of fun.
Manchester is a modestly sized city in comparison to many other major cities in the world, yet some of the biggest and best bands of the last half-century have formed there. What do you think it is about Manchester that makes it such a hot-spot for artists?
Jonathan Higgs: It rains all the time. There’s lots and lots of venues that are good, and I think there’s good unis, so there’s good students starting bands, but there’s also this culture of music that’s already, what, forty years old, and I think people go there with the intention of being involved in music, whereas you wouldn’t get that in a lot of cities. I mean, I’m one of those people. I’m not really from Manchester, and I went there to start a band. I knew that was a place where bands could exist. It’s not like a fantastical idea that you might start a band, whereas there’s plenty of places you can go and no one will join your band. Manchester’s always been good for that. I think it self perpetuates really. Now we’ve got this culture and we’ve got this history. Then it generates more good bands.
You all have accomplished a ton in your Manchester is a modestly sized city in comparison to many other major cities in the world, yet some of the biggest and best bands of the last half-century have formed there. What do you think it is about Manchester that makes it such a hot-spot for artists?
Jonathan Higgins: It rains all the time. There’s lots and lots of venues that are good, and I think there’s good unis, so there’s good students starting bands, but there’s also this culture of music that’s already, what, forty years old, and I think people go there with the intention of being involved in music, whereas you wouldn’t get that in a lot of cities. I mean, I’m one of those people. I’m not really from Manchester, and I went there to start a band. I knew that was a place where bands could exist. It’s not like a fantastical idea that you might start a band, whereas there’s plenty of places you can go and no one will join your band. Manchester’s always been good for that. I think it self perpetuates really. Now we’ve got this culture and we’ve got this history. Then it generates more good bands.
You all have accomplished a ton in your tenure as a group. Is there anything you still hope to accomplish in your musical career?
Jonathan Higgs: Career? Oh yeah, definitely. We want a number one album. We want to headline Glastonbury Asbury, all the things that a band could ever want. I feel like we’ve achieved 1% of it, 8% of it. So yeah, you name it. I’d love to have a whole new chapter of the band.
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asyipyip · 3 years
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3D animation gets a lot of flak on this site but honestly it’s potential is incredible? I think people got (justifiably) frustrated with the same face syndrome that it became a means of saying the animation style is lazy as a whole? Which isn’t true at all.
I mean you look at movies like into the spiderverse and you can see the potential the style has. It takes the tools of 3D animation abd goes CRAZY with it. It’s unique and artistic.
But hell, it doesn’t even have to be crazy stylized like spiderverse. The snow effects in frozen, the costume design in the sequel, the city of the dead and intricate skeletons of coco, the EVERYTHING about moana (the ocean, the bizzaro realm of monsters, the island vegetation- MAUIS TATTOOS- the style change during ‘youre welcome’, te fitis lava and vegetation- just. All of it) these things are definitely more about realism but gorgeous nonetheless.
Just because they aren’t drawn on paper and instead are done using modeling doesn’t change that there’s tons of work put into it- and that each detail is artistically and meticulously crafted. I mean look at before and after stuff:
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The lighting, the vegetation, the water!! Even if moanas model was already made, she still has to be rigged, and all those finishing polishes that changes it to the final product still has to be done. I wish I knew more about 3D animation so I could really get what happened in the process from a to c here
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I can’t find any WIP pictures of spiderverse but you KNOW it took a ton to get this to look as it did. The explosion effect, the lighting, the particles emitting from the crash site, the half tones!! How much time did this one shot take!!
Anyway, yeah. Sorry for rambling I just think think that “Disney being really lazy with the facial structure of their characters in their 3D movies” has warped to “3D animation is lazy” which is crazy because, 3D modeling is not only just challenging but also has the potential to be breathtaking in both realistic and stylized ways
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corpsentry · 3 years
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january: an art retrospective
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i did some stuff last month (but it’s a lot of stuff and there’s a photodump + some Serious Fucking Reflection, so it’s all below the cut)
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so ok, let’s start with this. here are some heads. each head has a red arrow. that red arrow is what i call the red line of the devil. it’s the slope of the face from the side of the eye to the cheekbone and then down towards the chin. up until like 2 weeks ago, i couldn’t draw it. i couldn’t fucking draw it. i would edit over that part of the face over and over again until i was frustrated and tired and i had a raging homosexual headache and it still never looked right. notice that each head is different. notice that each head looks wrong.
at the start of 2021 i finally admitted to myself, as per the image above, that i was deeply, deeply unhappy with my art. what was the problem? i dunno. but i decided i was going to fix it and i was going to do so via another one scribble a day event wherein for every day of january i would find a photo of a human head, and i would draw it.
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january 1st, 2021. i was embarrassed to tweet this even on my private account where like 5 friends and a rock would see it. in retrospect, you can also see all of my bad habits emerging like dicks from a hole in the ground. it’s disproportionate. the brows look flat. the eyes are slanting upwards. the entire drawing looks flat, like this isn’t a 3d person but a caricature of one.
january 2nd, 3rd, 4th:
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on the 2nd i decided to start a separate thread for doodles and applied learning. here’s the first set of tests
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the rest of the week is kind of uneventful so we’re going to skip those. fast forward to january 11th
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this one is especially bad. i am acutely aware, suddenly, that i am not changing anything at all. i’m stressed and miserable about it because i’m still trying to see people as people and trying to draw people that look attractive and proportionate and hot. my friend, leny, reminds me that i need to think about faces in terms of planes. i have a moment. my other friend masha sends me some links to anatomy tutorials. i have another moment.
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january 11th. applied sketch
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january 13th is when i start the troubleshooting process. the link above drives me mad because i’m pretty happy with the face but then i realize that there’s something very fucking wrong with the shape of the head LOL and then i realize that i’ve never had any idea what the proportion of the face to the rest of the skull is so i grit my teeth and i open a new canvas and i
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bald studies. it seemed like the right thing to do. can’t draw heads? ok draw some heads. look at some photographs. i traced each photo but tried to stick to straight lines so that i could replicate the shapes more easily. i broke each face down into shapes. i thought about airplanes
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i got really excited. i started doing studies, then applied studies, then stylized studies.
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sketches. i’m not sure what’s going on (as always) and it’s very rough, but they look different from the sketches i did on january 2nd. that’s a start
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january 16th’s daily study. looks more like a person now. juuuuuust a bit
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more applied studies
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on the 18th i take a break and go stare at some lips because i don’t understand how the fuck they work. again, i focus on shapes, on volume, on the fact that these things exist in 3d. holy fuck lips exist in 3d. holy fuck we are real
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january 19th. i’m working on it.
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january 22nd. some sketches + a daily study. it has finally occurred to me that heads can tilt up and down and that things look different accordingly. yes i was not aware of this before. yes i have been drawing for over a decade.
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january 23rd. by this point after doing my daily sketch i almost always go back and do an applied study which is basically to say i drew a lot of fucking links. this one looks kind of okay. i’m kind of proud
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january 25th. links. trying to make sense of everything i’ve learned
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26th, 27th, 28th. daily studies
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january 1st. january 31st
The End Of The Photo Dump (dab)
ok NOW i get to talk about what i discovered while studying the shit out of human beings
FIRST OF ALL, there is something precious and magical about drawing shit without the explicit knowledge that you’re going to tweet that shit out to 45 people later. it takes the burden of perception off your shoulders and that does something to you, or at least that’s my theory. i told myself i wouldn’t post any of this stuff until the end of the month (if i wanted to post it at all) and kept everything off my public social media accounts and that meant i could draw ugly as hell without worrying about who would point and laugh, which i absolutely fucking did. a lot of these are fucking trainwrecks. most of these are fucking trainwrecks. why do they look like that?? why??? this doesn’t look like the work of someone who’s allegedly been drawing since they were in kindergarten, does it?????
here’s why: because that person took a huge motherfucking swing at everything they’d ever known about art and spent a month building something new in its place. the abstract explanation is that i grew up on shoujo and weird old anime and my understanding of anatomy was unironically kamichama karin and while i love kamichama karin, when kamichama karin is your rule even if you try to break it, you’re going to end up going nowhere. “you have to know the rules to break them”, yeah? well i didn’t know shit. the abstract explanation is i’ve been miserable about my art for a few years now because i saw other people doing things effortlessly which i couldn’t and instead of going back to the basics, i tried to do what they did (not plagiarism, mind you, i mean i literally tried to copy the red line of the devil i mentioned above because i couldn’t even make that happen) and then i fucking failed.
the simple explanation is this. i had to unlearn everything, and relearn it again (like some kind of new renaissance clown, what the fuck is this?)
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take this for example. all my life i’ve drawn faces in the order: eyes, nose, mouth, face shape, head. this works for some people, im aware, but it was something central to how i had always drawn, so i decentralized it. i said fuck you to the old me and changed the order up. now i start with the nose, then the eyes, mouth, the chin line, and the sides of the face. now i force myself to think about the human head as a series of parts interacting with each other instead of a bunch of disparate features which i want to look pretty.
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or let’s use this zelda from last year. something about this looked wrong last october, the way something about all of my drawings looked wrong, but i couldn’t pinpoint it for hell the way i couldn’t articulate Any of my feelings about the visual arts. now, looking back, here’s what i see. that nose is sticking out far too much given how she’s not really facing very far away from the camera. that ear at the back shouldn’t be there. her forehead is too big. she doesn’t have a forehead. what the fuck is up with the shape of her head?
so apparently reject modernity embrace tradition has its roots in alt-right terminology and i’m not very horny for the alt-right (you understand), but the spirit survives here. you know sometimes you have to admit that you have no idea what the fuck you’re doing and draw people for 31 days. i’ve spent my whole life drawing stylized people and while again there are artists who have no issue with this, i veered off the track of the Good and the Holy and couldn’t get back on. i had no point of reference because i’d never thought about what an actual human being looks like, so i had no way to fix what i knew in my gut looked wrong but wouldn’t come out better.
this was hard. this was like oikawa tooru swallowing his worthless pride and admitting that ushijima wakatoshi had gotten the best of him for the last time in his high school career, but in haikyuu!! by furudate haruichi oikawa tooru fucks off to argentina and then joins the argentinean national team, and you know what, i think i’ve made it to argentina (not the team just the country). as per the golden rule of dont fucking move until you’re at least two thirds of the way through the month, i only started trying to draw Shit shit on like the 22nd or something, but i was happy with that i created. i am happy with what i’ve done. i’ve posted like 2 things this month that involve people with what i now call ~applied Knowledge~~ and they’re, like, not perfect obviously (perfection is an unattainable ideal), but i’m fucking proud of them. i didn’t spend 5 hours hunched over my laptop adjusting the red line of the devil because it’s not a devil’s line anymore. because i finally sorta get how people work. because i sat down and i said ‘we are not going to fuck with this misery shit anymore’ and then i did that. it’s just a line now.
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here are 2 collages tracking my painstakingly carved out progress from january 2nd to february 2nd because i’m a slut for collages
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and here’s what i’ve done to my art! the same person drew these but also Not Really! you know! for the first time in a year i don’t immediately hate what i’ve drawn. you know what guys? art is fucking fun. zelda’s forehead doesn’t scare me anymore because i know how foreheads fucking work now, and i don’t know everything, and i’m going to keep troubleshooting stuff as i go (i want to draw a skeleton. like a. i want to draw a goddamn skeleton guys) but i’m honestly and genuinely proud of what i’ve done in the span of a month, and i’m also in disbelief. i started this month-long challenge out as a last ditch effort to make peace with my art because i’ve been tired for a long time and i was ready to kick the bucket on drawing people altogether. i didn’t think anything would happen. nothing’s happened for years. i’ve been miserable for years.
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this was the caption for january 1st, 2021. i was super, super fucking embarrassed and it looks like super fucking shit, but you know what, i think i did in fact triumph over the bullshit. surprisingly enough, when you put in consistent effort into something, You Will See Results. didn’t see that coming, did you? i know i didn’t.
this isn’t a success story. it’s a happiness story. i never gave a shit damn about the institute of art or whatever, i was just mad at myself because what i saw in my head didn’t match up with what was on the canvas. and now it’s getting better. now i’m calibrating the compass. now drawing not just backgrounds but also people is exciting to me, and i can stick my links in your face and tell you ‘they hot’. i’m going to keep doing that. i’m going to keep going until i drop off the side of the earth and then spiral towards mars like some kind of fairy, and then i’m going to create something beautiful.
thanks for reading. here’s a pr department link for sticking around until the end
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woolieshubris · 3 years
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OKAY im going to preface rant with this- 1) i know none of yall know this game cuz while its popular enough to get a series, its not really popular enough to be part of the general consciousness 2) I've only played the 3rd and 4th installments, so I dont have an extensive knowledge on the series. What I'd want to see in Girls Mode 5 (Aka, style savvy 4, or new style boutique 4) 1) UPDATED TEXTURES. this game has been going on since the DS days, and they just port the old clothes into the new games to pad out the inventory. It's nice because it means you can pretty much move on to the new games with little to no regrets, however the textures on the 3ds XL screen, and emulator (because emulator is the only way to get HD screenshots lol rip) are really really nasty. It's super pixelly but not in a nostalgic way, and it clashes heavily with the newer textures and clothes, making it harder to coordinate outfits. The new game would be coming out on the switch, so the old textures would be even more noticeable when on a TV. You don't need to update the models itself, just the textures on the models. 2) KEEP THE MINI PLOTS. GM 4 has a really cute system with the characters, making it so a handful of them have reoccurring stories and plots! (Not every single one of the characters, because there are tons). I really like this, and it genuinely makes me play day after day. 3) FIX THE DAYS SYSTEM. GM 3 had a day system similar to animal crossing, where the stores and story would only update on a day by day basis. I liked the stores only updating once a day (made it less overwhelming to check for new clothing) but the story progression was longer. GM 3 did have less plot to follow however, so it made more sense. GM 4 has a day system typical of life sim games, where you go to sleep when you run out of tasks to do for the day. I like this system because it doesn't limit the things you can do in one play session, and it can make the story more engaging. It also updates the stores more often, making it easier to 100% and collect all of the clothes, however, it makes the game less engaging over time, and doesn't give an incentive to play day after day. I think a mix between the two could create a more interesting game, but I'm not sure how they would go about doing that. There are pros and cons to each system. 4) BRING BACK RAINBOW Rainbow was a character in GM 3, where by taking screenshots of the game and showing them to her, she would find and unlock hidden colors. I really like this mechanic and think it is interesting, even though it can be a bit tedious at times. Maybe a system where instead of you showing the pictures, she automatically tells you if you unlocked them + shows you the photo that unlocked it? 5) REMOVE OR CHANGE THE DESIGN CLOTHES The main gimmick of GM 4 was designing your own clothes. The game doesn't really push you to do it at all, and the clothes they have you design don't match the clothes already in the game. Most of these "customization" options in games aren't actually that useful and I personally just ignore them in favor of prebuilt pretty clothes. I think either changing it so that certain clothes can be recolored by you/dyed, or changing it so that you can recycle clothes into new ones would be interesting, and a good way to add the mechanic to future games. 6) CHANGE THE BUILDING EDITING SYSTEM. GM 3 and GM 4 both struggle with a clunky furniture moving system. The design is similar to happy house designer, however the menus feel clunky to navigate through and are overall more difficult to use. I think revamping it a bit to make it smoother would be the way to go. GM 3 had a dollhouse theme, and so changing the furniture and collecting new pieces was referred to as collecting miniatures, which I liked. 7) INCLUDE MORE STYLES OF CLOTHING. One of the biggest draws of the GM series, that brought me to it specifically, was the subculture themed clothing! They have punk/emo, classic/sweet lolita, gothic lolita, "retro", preppy, decora kei, and probably more. Adding more styles, such
as Mori, would be a good move for the series, and also a good way to market it to a young teen demographic, especially as dress up games become more popular. 8) REMOVE/CHANGE THE BOHO-CHIC ITEMS. A lot of the boho-chic items in the game are actually just culturally appropriated from native americans, which while true to the style it is trying to emulate, is a bit weird to see, and could cause controversy later in the line. This game is made by a japanese company and translated to english, so I understand why they are still in a game that came out in 2017 but still, it isn't a great look for nintendo. 9) ALLOW YOURSELF TO CHANGE YOUR PERSONA LATER IN THE GAME. In GM 4 and 3, at the start of the game, you get to design a character and choose facial features, skintone and height. You should be able to edit the character later in the game, possibly through settings or something. Fixed character customization is a bit of an outdated thing anyways, with most modern games allowing you to change your avatar as much as you want. 10) CHANGE ONLINE PLAY. Currently, in GM 3 and 4, online play usually consists of sharing the building and your personas outfit. I think there should be less of an emphasis of sharing the building, and more emphasis on sharing outfits, since that is what the game centers around. Obviously the boutique interior is the place you are going to see the most in the game, but focusing on outfits you have created makes more sense for the series and genre. There are more additions/changes to the series that I'd like to see, such as a larger male catalogue/allowing to pick a male avatar, a range of body types, LGBT rep, or disability rep, however, I know those are mostly too much to ask for a light hearted dress up game RPG made for a young female demographic, sadly. I think marketing the game largely to young teens on platforms such as instagram and tiktok, and emphasizing the subculture styles such as punk and y2k would be a great marketing strategy, especially since those demographics are flocking to online dress up browser games that have a similar focus. Promoting the shareability of the ingame outfits by having an easy/quick to use photo booth and an easy way to crop the photos/videos to fit a phone format would also be a great way to have the game spread through word of mouth. Of course, nintendo can kind of suck at marketing their games, especially more obscure titles like this, so I don't expect most or really any of this to happen.
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canmom · 4 years
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semi-realistic animation & anatomy & stylisation
it’s been interesting watching season 8 of The Clone Wars with a little more knowledge of sculpting and anatomy. the models are stylised, but in a way that clearly shows quite a lot of care to get anatomy that’s fairly realistic. stylisation in 3D graphics is often about softening features and removing detail, in The Clone Wars’s style, the deviations from realism are things like introducing some hard edges here and there to accentuate features.
like check out the three face models here (left to right, Trace, Rafa and Ahsoka):
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like just to point to stuff I’ve struggled with while I’ve worked on my own first face sculpture, they’ve taken care to get details like the shape of the muscles underneath the mouth, the sternocleidomastoid muscle on the neck (I’ve gotten obsessed with that one) and the way it connects to the clavicles, the various 3D forms of lips the way the muscles in the face move when someone is speaking...
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then they like stylise this a bit: the eyes are bigger, the chin has a sharp edge, hair is a solid volume. they’re also textured in a way that kind of emphasises a painted feeling, with like deliberate evidence of brush strokes. it’s not to create the impression the final image is a painting, but to like use a rendering pipeline designed for realistic images to create something that feels ‘right’ while obviously not being realism.
now have a look at some clones:
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here, there’s more hard edges (because Gender lol): along the temples, the jawline, the top of the head, the bridge of the nose. although they’re clones, and based on the same model, they have differences: Rex (the guy in the middle) has a much thinner face and sharper features, the clone on the right has a bigger jawline. of course they emphasise this even more with the ‘Bad Batch’:
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note how Echo’s cheekbones are accentuated and cheeks hollowed out, and Wrecker (the big guy at the back) has a much more emphasised brow ridge. every clone has a strong nasolabial fold.
the clones are at least nominally based on Temuera Morrison, who played them in Attack of the Clones:
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tbh i’m not good enough at this stuff to be able to say if they were using any specific aspects of Morrison’s face in the clone designs.
of course the main characters Anakin and Obi-Wan are also based on actors, and you can see how they emphasise e.g. Hayden Christiansen’s cleft chin in Anakin’s model with a hard edge, or Obi-Wan’s cheeks seem to be quite sharp.
some of the designs are really extreme. Mace Windu, originally played by Samuel L Jackson, is given a really elongated face and hyper-exaggerated brow ridge and nasolabial fold:
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vs. Jackson in the films:
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looking at these images side by side, I can see that stuff like the shape of the nose and the eyelids is very clearly modelled on Jackson’s face: it’s a mix of fidelity and exaggeration.
I do wonder what led them to decide to emphasise the brow ridge though, like at least in this photo, Jackson doesn’t have a really prominent ridge there, so how did they know it would still be recognisable? (cynically, they could get away with more because Windu is almost the only Black character in Star Wars...) was it necessary to like, make him look suitably ‘badass’ as a 3D character? here’s a hacky edit with the clone brush tool to imagine how this design would look if they didn’t have that really sharp brow ridge:
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does it allow them to more clearly convey expressions with the eyes? I don’t know... further study needed
anyway, whatever face rigs they’re using are surely just as detailed as a rig you’d use for a realistic model, and allow the animated characters to do a lot of acting and expression. I’ve been really impressed by how well they’ve animated body language in this season.
I feel like this emphasis on stylised anatomy is like, not that common in animation outside of anime. anime is interesting because it’s a mix of very carefully observed ‘realistic’ drawing, and really stylised exaggerated stuff. although their proportions are typically exaggerated, anime characters have 3D forms: almost all anime draws its shots as if shot from a particular camera angle and takes a great deal of care about how they move through that 3D space.
i’ll focus on anime that has ‘realistic’ drawing styles, e.g. shinichiro watanabe’s work or a lot of production IG shows. Jet from Bebop for example is p much an anatomy study:
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this tends to be very gendered though, according to the design ‘rule’ that adding more lines to a design tends to make it look older and more masculine. contrast Faye Valentine, also from Bebop:
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in a closeup like this you’ve at least got e.g. the clavicles and a little bit of shading in the eye socket area, but there’s generally a lot less emphasis on muscle definition, and like her face is pretty much a blank space.
(I’m really looking forward to watching the anime adaptation of Dorohedoro, which has some fantastically solid and weighty character designs with lots of accurate muscle definition in the manga, and it looks like they’re doing that in the anime too. can’t wait to see what I can find out)
in anime, a lot of the time for budget reasons they just animate the mouth on a totally still face - a trick they sometimes even apply in profile. at extremes you have the Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex style where everyone’s an incredibly solid, well-drawn 3D figure but also everyone stands extremely stiffly, just moving their mouths. (these examples are from TV - film animation generally has the budget to animate things a bit more ‘properly’)
one odd thing I noticed watching Psycho-Pass recently (a production IG show) was a style of shading cheeks on the villain:
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for the most part this is a really anatomically accurate face, but this character always has this hard, shadow-casting line on his cheeks. in a front view it kind of makes sense, as a way to show he has fairly hollow cheeks and sharp cheekbones with the limits of cel-shading:
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but it makes a lot less sense in side view, like what physically is actually casting the shadow there? (by contrast, the nasolabial fold, which probably would be casting a shadow when a character is smiling like this, is not marked at all)
despite the ‘unrealism’ though, it mostly looks fine. and this is where cel-shading often falls down: the way we draw lines is only partly to do with the actual 3D shape of an object. the lines suggest a particular curve (e.g. the short lines on the nose) but they don’t directly correspond to, e.g., areas of high curvature or overlap.
it’s an artistic choice to put a line to emphasise the way something is curving... like the lines on the nose, most of the nose doesn’t even get a line, but they put a few lines on the tip of the nose to suggest how it’s curving. part of the trick in anime style drawing seems to be knowing when you can get away with leaving a line out, and letting the brain’s ability to interpolate do the work of knowing what’s there.
anyway, of course it’s practical to do more full-face animation in 3D because you have automated inbetweening and a bunch of shape keys for recurring face shapes, which you can render and light from different angles. the challenge of course is to make a rig that’s flexible and accurate enough to blend between those shapes in a believable way.
in general, you can ‘cheat’ a lot more in a drawing than you can in a 3D model. though we’ve now mostly crossed the uncanny valley with improved shading and animation technique and the ability to directly simulate muscles, it wasn’t easy! and it’s not easy for someone who’s just teaching herself this stuff T_T
all of this is trade-offs... the more detail and accuracy you put into a drawing, the longer it takes to draw a frame. if you do 3D, you have to put in a ton of work to get a suitable model beforehand, and you usually lose the power given to you by a suggestive line (unless you do what Into The Spider-Verse did and literally draw on top of the rendered frames...)
after all that... I don’t have a conclusion or recommendation to draw from this, just some observations of how the pros do this stuff which will hopefully help in making my own animations.
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mikumutual · 4 years
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answers aa themed questions nobody asked because i’m cool and sexy
also i havent played the 5th or 6th games so
YOUR FAVOURITE…? 1. Favourite Ace Attorney game? honestly? phoenix wright ace attorney! everything’s fresh, there aren’t many weak characters, and the plot is remarkable (especially the fifth case). the whole trilogy is really good as one unit though 2. Favourite case? 1-4, 1-5, 2-4, and 3-5 are tied lol, i can’t make a decision to save my life. 2-1 is really really funny tho 3. Favourite defendant? as a defendant, lana skye. as a person, edgeworth 4. Favourite prosecutor? as a prosecutor, franziska von karma. as a person, edgeworth 5. Favourite ship? wrightworth obviously... ive probably put more thought into them over the last 3 years than any other ship 6. Favourite victim? probably mia fey or gregory edgeworth... but for non-relevant victims, neil marshall :( 7. Favourite murderer? shelly de killer, i LOVE that guy. but dee vasquez was very cool as well 8. Favourite assistant? maya fey!!!!!!!!!! but i like kay faraday a lot too (im so sorry ema) 9. Favourite witness? adrian andrews... or maybe iris? i mean i didn’t like iris but god what a person 10. Favourite quote? “It doesn't matter how many underhanded tricks a person uses... The truth will always find a way to make itself known. The only thing we can do is to fight with the knowledge we hold and everything we have. Erasing the paradoxes one by one... It's never easy... We claw and scratch for every inch. But we will always eventually reach that one single truth. This I promise you.” - Miles Edgeworth i made this one of my senior quotes :]
YOUR LEAST FAVOURITE…? 11. Least favourite Ace Attorney game? uh fucking apollo justice. literally what the hell was that 12. Least favourite case? turnabout visitor wasn’t very strong? i guess it’s fine as an intro, but it’s also wonky with the timeline of aai 13. Least favourite defendant? max galactica. he’s better in the anime though 14. Least favourite prosecutor? manfred von karma, obviously. i like every other prosecutor (who i know of) though, even winston payne is pretty funny in hindsight 15. Least favourite ship? “miles edgeworth/female oc”. there are a lot of bad ships though, mostly involving phoenix & his assistants. dont do that please 16. Least favourite victim? zak gramarye for kickstarting that shitty, shitty game 17. Least favourite murderer? again mvk... but also fucking frank sahwit LMAO 18. Least favourite assistant? i guess trucy 19. Least favourite witness? fuck everyone from turnabout big top unless it was the anime episode 20. Least favourite memory of Ace Attorney? repeatedly trying and failing to download the emulator for aai2 hbjsjhdb i eventually got it but someone had to send me the download fully pre-patched and i felt kinda useless DO YOU PREFER…? 21. Phoenix Wright or Apollo Justice? phoenix wright. fuck that “GOTCHA!” mechanic jesus christ 22. Maya Fey or Trucy Wright? maya fey. nothing personal against trucy but i just dont like aj hbjsdjhsdb also maya is really sweet and fun and she has the best sprites. she seems like she’d be a good friend, it’s too bad that she doesn’t have the time for them as a spirit medium and all :( if maya ema and kay got to hang out together itd be wild 23. Investigations or trials? trials are easier in my opinion because investigations have several things you could be doing without such a linear style, so if you miss something, you won’t really know until you wander around forever 24. College Phoenix or Hobo Phoenix? college feenie!!!!! he’s like trilogy feenie but more emotional and less witty. i like to pretend that hobo phoenix doesnt exist 25. Klavier Gavin or Kristoph Gavin? who would say kristoph 26. Ace Attorney or Ace Attorney Investigations? ace attorney but only because phoenix is in it lmao. im actually rewatching a playthrough of aai now, and playing aai2 at the same time, so while it is on the mind, i feel like the cases characters and mechanics - while loved - don’t hold up to the OGs 27. Apollo’s perceive, Phoenix’s magatama, or Athena’s Mood Matrix? i actually kinda like the mood matrix more than anything because it has a really good UI and the magatama is kinda grating. but FUCK the gotcha mechanic it is SO FUCKING STUPID and IMPOSSIBLE TO USE.  where is logic chess 28. Ace Attorney trilogy or Apollo Justice and Dual Destinies? you already know my answer to this one 29. 3D models or sprites? i do like the 3d models a lot but i like the original sprites more! imo original pixel sprites > 3D models > HD sprites. mostly bc the hd sprites are garbage (see here, here, and here) 30. Ema Skye as she is in Rise from the Ashes or Ema Skye as she is in Apollo Justice? rfta !!!!!! shes actually really nice as an assistant, esp considering the fact that we actually see her interact with her sister, which is something maya didn’t have very often. also her random appearance in aai was well appreciated by me
MISCELLANEOUS 31. Did you like what they did to Phoenix in Apollo Justice?
NO I AM SO FUCKING MAD WHY WOULD THEY DO THAT TO HIM ISN’T HE A LAWYER WHY COULD HE NOT JUST DEFEND HIMSELF FROM THE FACT THAT HE “FORGED EVIDENCE” IT WASN’T EVEN HIS IN THE FIRST PLACE SOMEBODY ELSE FORGED IT AND HE DIDN’T KNOW THAT, MANFRED VON KARMA GOT AWAY WITH A FUCKLOAD OF NONSENSE AND SO DOES EVERY OTHER LAWYER SO WHY IS IT THAT PHOENIX CAN SURVIVE EATING A POISONED GLASS NECKLACE AND GETTING HIT OVER THE HEAD WITH A FIRE EXTINGUISHER AND FALLING FROM A BURNING BRIDGE INTO A RUSHING RAVINE AND BEING HIT BY A CAR BUT HE CAN’T FUCKING DEFEND HIMSELF LIKE HE DOES IN EVERY OTHER CASE BECAUSE THAT’S THE POINT OF THE GAME AND ALSO HIS ENTIRE CHARACTER
32. Your opinion on Dai Gyakuten Saiban? haven’t played it! it looks pretty cool though
33. Do you think Dai Gyakuten Saiban and/or Miles Edgeworth Investigations 2 will get localised to the West? doubt it, since the creators have said that it won’t be. but the fan translations are pretty good, so i think it’s okay
34. Do you think Miles Edgeworth should get another Investigation-game or do you think another character deserves a spin-off? i mean he already has two, so i guess he doesn’t need another? like i love edgeworth but he’s not as fun without phoenix around. ngl i would play a franziska game. or a maya game, or any spinoff revolving around a side character. hell i’d play hotti game if it meant it took place in the trilogy era
35. Opinion on the soundtrack of the Ace Attorney-franchise? REALLY good. really really good. i love how each game of the trilogy has different composers but each track has the same theme and feel!!!
36. Do you like where the franchise is heading or did you prefer the atmosphere in the original trilogy? seriously absolutely completely prefer the trilogy. i’m sorry but the rush of youth and trust is way, way more enjoyable than whatever “i’m 35 and therefore middle aged” nonsense is happening in the 2020s
37. Capcom suddenly announces that Phoenix will no longer appear in the Ace Attorney franchise! Your reaction? He’s been replaced by Penny Nichols. Fuck you.
38. Capcom suddenly announces that the Ace Attorney franchise has ended for good! Your reaction? it was me i ended it
39. Would you like there to be another Ace Attorney/Professor Layton crossover game? i didnt play it but i really like the idea!!!!!! aa crossover games are really funny to me, i mean have you seen edgeworth in project x zone 2, lmao
40. Would you like an Ace Attorney anime? we have one now! honestly i don’t think it did a very good job of representing the cases, but it did do a good character remix of turnabout big top so that they’re not creepy anymore. they also did a really good job with the anime-specific cases, like the one on the train! it feels a lot better paced when it’s intended for that medium rather than just adapted.  also the childhood episodes made me cry
41. Opinion on anime cutscenes in Ace Attorney? like in 5 and 6? mm, the art style is kinda weird, and i don’t really like the voices, but i guess not everything can be pachinko and prozd
42. Would you want to play an Ace Attorney game where you take on the prosecutor’s role? YEAH ACTUALLY!!!!!! it might be kinda weird being on the right side of the screen though lmao
43. Do you like having DLC in Ace Attorney-games? uhhh i hate having to buy extra things, but i’ll admit that they are pretty funny
44. Opinion on Lamiroir’s storyline? i only played aj so if shes in other games idk but i thought she was fine
45. One thing you think the Ace Attorney games can improve on? stop having creepy characters please. also jesus christ if phoenix and edgeworth arent wearing rings in aa7 i will become the ceo of capcom myself
46. Capcom suddenly announces an Ace Attorney movie! Would you like it to be based on an already existing case or would you like an all new storyline? i mean the musical did a pretty good job of adapting existing cases, so it might as well be new. it would be kinda hard to balance the games’ timeline & character development without being repetitive or an au
47. Capcom suddenly announces an Ace Attorney movie! Would you prefer it being live-action, 3D animated or 2D animated? stylized 2D animation, probably? i would want it to feel more like into the spiderverse than an anime, though. in my dream ace attorney movie, they’d just need a high art budget, several plausible deniability wrightworth scenes, and prozd to voice edgeworth
48. If there could be an Ace Attorney crossover with whatever franchise you’d like, which one would you choose? (Does not need to be a video-game franchise) your turn to die is probably closest in characterization, although its premise is more “locked in a room” than the open-world investigation of aa
49. Opinion on recurring witnesses? (Wendy Oldbag, Lotta Hart, Larry Butz, etc.) honestly, i like them a lot! i don’t know why people hate them so much - i mean, i know lotta lied, and wendy is a horrible old flirt, and larry just kinda sucks all around. but they’re also pretty funny to have around! larry is a constant comic relief who reminds you how much better nick & edgey are in comparison, lotta is likeable as a general character (like in 2-4, although yeah, not remarkable), and wendy oldbag is really funny. she’s so fucking funny. none of you appreciate wendy oldbag’s quirks and you are SLEEPING ON IT!!!!!!!!!!!!
50. Do you think Dual Destinies deserved its M-rating? no idea, holy shit, it got an m-rating? i mean every game before it has had blood violence and very mild swearing, and since DD probably doesnt have anything too sexually risqué, i doubt it deserves a rating any harsher than the rest of the series
okay thanks thats all
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neutralsupply · 5 years
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Deco Sims - A Tutorial
FINALLY IT HAPPENED!!
I promised this tutorial forever ago and I finally got around to writing it.
DISCLAIMER: This tutorial assumes you have a basic knowledge of blender/studio. The steps described below aren’t advanced by any mean, but they do require you to know your way around the programs.
THINGS YOU WILL NEED:
a. Blender
b. Studio
c. Photoshop
d. THESE psd’s for the sims’ base (they include three skintones and three eyecolors already, feel free to add your own)
STEPS TO FOLLOW:
1. In studio, go to CAS -> create 3D mesh
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2. Choose whatever dress you want your deco sim to wear and create a package. You will be throwing this away when done so don’t worry about keeping it safe.
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3. Export both the diffuse map and the mesh of the dress. 
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4. Repeat steps 1-3 for shoes, hair, and any other accessories you would like to apply to your sim.
5. Back in the Studio main menu, select Animation -> clip pack
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5. Select EA Clip and click export. Choose whatever animation you want to use. Most are self explanatory, others you can just play around with.
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6. Open the animation in blender. Drag the timeline along until you find the frame you want to use.
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7. Append the dress mesh you exported earlier to the animation (it may have more than one mesh).
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8. Select all the meshes in the dress and join them. Delete the rig that came with the dress (it should be rig.001) and any other “bones” or “empty” that came with the mesh. 
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9. With your dress mesh selected, go into your modifiers tab. The armature modifier should already be there (if not, add it). Select “rig” as the object and the dress will mold to the rig. Click “apply”. 
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10. Repeat steps 7-9 for hair, shoes, etc.
11. Expand the rig so it shows all the sims body parts. The only one you will need is the head, as the dress and shoes already have all other body parts covered. Select the head, go into modifiers, and click “apply”. Now delete the rig, as well as all the other body parts. Join the head, dress, hair, shoes, etc, together.
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12. Go back into studio and select Object -> Create 3D mesh
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13. Choose a statue mesh. I like to use the suit of armor. Select it, and export it. This will be the file that will become your deco sim, so you want to name it and store it properly. Once in the file, export the statue’s mesh.
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14. Append the statue’s mesh (both mesh and shadow mesh) to the sim. Edit the shadow mesh to fit under the sim’s feet.
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15. With the sim mesh selected, go into the object data tab. Delete all the vertex groups you find there (there should be many). Now select the statue first, then shift+click on the sim mesh, and go into weight paint mode. Transfer weights.
NOTE: You can obviously also just add a “TransformBone” group and weigh the mesh 100% on it, I’m just too lazy to type and would rather click 100 times.
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16. You can now delete the statue. Select your sim mesh, go into scene tab, and in the studio CAS tool change type to “none” and cut to “1″ (do as I say, not as I show - I accidentally took the pic with the shadow mesh selected).
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17. With the sim still selected, go into edit mode. In the tools panel, click “remove doubles”. This will help reduce vertex count and keep the mesh intact when you decimate it to make lower LODs.
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18. Save the mesh as DecoSimYOURNAME
19. Now select the shadow mesh and delete it. Select the sim mesh, go into scene tab, and change cut from “1″ to “0″.
20. Save this file as DecoSimYOURNAMEShadow
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21. Back to studio. Go to your deco sim file (that is currently still the statue) and import your DecoSimYOURNAME mesh for LOD 0. Import your DecoSimYOURNAMEShadow for your Shadow 0. For LOD 1 / LOD 2 and Shadow 1 / Shadow 2, simply decimate your sim mesh in blender and save the result as DecoSimYOURNAMELow and DecoSimYOURNAMEShadowLow.
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22. Now onto editing the texture. Open the PSD that is linked at the beginning of the tutorial. Also open the dress texture. Copy the dress texture, go back to the psd, and “paste into place”. 
23. Repeat the same steps with shoes and hair.
24. Save as either png/dds (I just use png tbh).
NOTE: because this dress doesn’t cover the bra straps, I had to edit them out in PS. You might have to that depending on what clothes you choose to use.
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25. Go back to studio, and import your new texture. And TAAA DAAA!! You are done. I don’t have a photo of the finished product because my computer crashed, but you get the idea.
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Hopefully these steps are easy and clear enough to follow! As I have mentioned before, making deco sims is not hard, just time consuming. 
Also! Don’t forget to change the catalog name/description and give your deco sims the correct tags :)
HAPPY SIMMING EVERYONE!!
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heavennozetsubou · 5 years
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ReActivation Update!
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Alright so this is going to be a big update note for our comeback to this project for the people on Tumblr who haven’t been around to get the news in Discord, let’s do this!
Let’s begin with: I AM indeed back, I am announcing that this project, parenthesis UDR:HoD, has OFFICIALLY been reactivated! Sorry, but you can't get rid of me and this project that easily, I'm here and I'm here to stay. M8. I had a lot of time to think about many things these past months, and I got a lot of new directions for this reopening.
First thing first, we're going to have a
𝓝𝓮𝔀 𝓥𝓲𝓼𝓾𝓪𝓵 𝓞𝓿𝓮𝓻𝓱𝓪𝓾𝓵
Yes, it's going to be *everything* visual. Splash, CG, sprite, the overall artstyle in general, are to receive one massive upgrade. If you think these arts can't get any better then boy you wrong cuz I'm about to do just that. And this would also include a few changes and adjustments to the character designs as well, don't worry they would stay aesthetically the same, I'd just like to make a tweak to them and polish them up a notch.
It's going to be big, I can tell you that much.
Now, I've been thinking about this a lot, as you probably might or might not know, this project still lacking in staff. I didn't mean it in like arts and stuff, those are pretty fine as it is, but other categories, say, video editing, 3D modeling, animating, music composing, which I'd love to do all of them, but obviously I can't you know I'm just a one person. So I decided to hey maybe it's time for me to open a spot for some talented hands who're willing to do it for the good of this project. But again, I really lack the experience and knowledge on how to effectively manage any of this, I pretty much only know art and basic idea on what to do to make a good story, and I'm going to need help into bringing all of that to life. So in short, I'm in need of staff that specialized in the categories above, I don't have any other detail more than that right now, I'll get back to this once I do.
I also have to mention the character voice's audition. The last time was, well, it was a mistake. I had literally no past experience with this sort of thing like at ALL, and it ended up being pretty messy as one would expect, good thing I only opened up just one position to test the water so not too much was going on. I have to apologize for you guys who submitted your performance to the last auditions, it was very overwhelmingly underprepared, I just didn't know how to manage it, but lesson learned and I'll try to do better next time whenever the project's ready for another round! For now, you be patient, aight?
So here's the basis of what's going to happen to this project:
The project is now officially active again! Means more content!
We're going to remaster the art/visual direction and designs.
We're going to start slowly but steadily scouting for potential new staff members to help work on the project.
The voice audition will be officially postponed for the time being. I don't know when we're going to have one again, it's just sooner or later once everything's ready.
There, of course, might be something else that I haven't stated in this announcement, and will come up in the future, so keep your eyes open.
I'm really excited about this new direction and I'm wholeheartedly looking forward to this project's future. I can't express it enough how much I care about this project, it's now and always will be like a part of me. Sometimes I care about it too much and end up damaging everything else about me, my health, my education, and even my moral, I need to find a comfortable balance in all of this. I'm going to keep pursuing my dream, while maintaining balance in my life, I won't have that much time for this passion project as before, but I will always find time for it whenever I can, because this is what I wanted.
I love this world and the characters I've created, and I want you all to be able to feel the same way.
Thanks a lot if you've read all of this, and well I wouldn't blame the people who didn't, but what matters is the people who did. Thank you every single one of you who is still by my side all this time, a loyal follower is the best thing a creator like me could ever ask for.
I guess that's it for our super epic comeback, I hope you like that poster I've made for this occasion alongside my Uni's final, you can tell me what you think about it, and if you like it so much you can reblog the post and share it with your friends! It would mean the world to me.
It took me like 5 hours to come up with the script for this so I hope this is worth it, it's always difficult for me to find a right for whatever I wanted to say but I'm trying my best to be as genuine as possible and not a pretentious generic corporate speech. It is who I am and there's no point in hiding anything right? We're all friends after all.
I guess this is going on for long enough. I'll take this as a wrap for the time being, next I'm going to have a talk with my staffs and discuss our next move.
So yeah, see you around. I will be seeing you.
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brokenmusicboxwolfe · 5 years
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On a photo of a not exactly human face I sculpted....
labratbren said:                                                                                                                            What do you do with them when they are done? Do you ever post pictures of the finished product? 
Ah, well, um....short answer? Nothing.
Here’s the longer answer (VERY long)....
While I was always drawn to sculpting, I really didn’t sculpt growing up. 
I mean, I tried to use clay I dug out of the ground, drying it in the sun, when I was tiny. Naturally it crumbled except for this lump of a head I still have. In Kindergarden the art teacher had his own kiln and let us use the scraps left over from the pots he had us make. I still have a loop armed alien and creature head I made, but he left with his kiln the next year. The dough art they had us make in second grade was gone by the next year, ‘cause this buggy and humid climate doesn’t agree with it. My parents gave me modling clay, but I hated it. I wanted something that would “stay”. 
But everyone acted like sculpting was hard, so maybe I wasn’t missing out. 
Then one day, when I was 19 or so, my hands got bored. Anyone would have laughed if I’d said I was bored right then. I had a book open to one side of me, a magazine on the other, as I went back and forth reading both. I was also  listening to music AND watching the movie The Brothers Karamazov at the same time. I have this problem where I always feel like I should be doing more, and when I am doing something I get itchy to be doing something else. Like my brain isn’t fully occupied even if I’m really enjoying whatever. That day my hands needed something to do, and there was this block of clay left over from a project one of Pop’s projects (a river system display, I think) It was just sittin’ there on the porch so....
And it turned out sculpting was easy! I mean, maybe not art bit doodling around having fun making faces. Do NOT be intimidated by sculpting! It comes so much more easiy than trying to convert our 3D world into some 2D drawing. Seriously, try drawing a nose head on! But toss on any wedge on a sculpted face and you have a nose...
Ok, maybe I just am bad at drawing! But I really do wish more people would try sculpting.
Anyway, the clay was another dead end, but it did inspire me to hunt for something I could “make stay”. And that something was sculpey. 
Whenever I was certain I would have the place completely to myself for a full hour I’d go stand out on the ramp behind the house and sculpt. It wasn’t too often, what with the house also being the office of the family business and my family being the sort of close one that did everything together. I couldn’t sculpt and be watched. All I needed was an our because I sculpted quickly. In an hour I’d have a little bust, rough as heck but with some detail I liked.
But then I ran out of places to put my busts in my already overstuffed bedroom. I solved this by just slicing the faces off and just baking them. I could glue magnets to them and line all the edges of my metal bookcases.
I did dabble in other things. I tried a full figure and made a few little stick figures. I sculpted something from Babylon 5 for my brother, mixed my box painting (I used to paint boxes when I had a table) with sculpting for a Discworld box for Mom, Easter bunnies for my parents, magnets for everyone, Christmas ornaments...
When she saw the Christmas tree ornaments my cousin Katharine, dollhouse collector, roped my into making her a doll. She had specific requirements for a 6″ tall Beast in what I gathered were Regency era clothes from her decription. In my ignorance I assumed the doll would have to have a jointed body, fabric clothes and furry fur, which kinda drove me nuts! But somehow I pulled it off! I sculpted a few more of those little dolls (no sewing on these!) as gifts for my parents and brother, as well as a bit of goofing around for myself (I liked my little  Sleestack a couple decades late for little me). But that was that.
Then the weirdest darn thing happened: I was suddenly stricken with a full imaginative block!
I stopped sculpting. I stopped painting boxes. I stopped writing stories. Worst of all I stopped dreaming! I still remember how upsetting that was, this sense of loss. It was like having a part of me paralyzed.  
It lasted years. Terrible years.
When my father became sick right after my irreparable rift with my brother, as I was facing the most terrible external loss of my life, something woke back up in me. Constant, vivid dreams, elaborate epics spiraling through night after night, images and stories that writing didn’t full  satisfy the need to express. I started painting miniature boxes again. Box after box after box....
But no sculpting.
I dunno why I still didn’t sculpt. I just didn’t.
Then my father died.
Pop’s death was a devistating moment. My father. My best friend. When Pop was sick I told him he couldn’t die because I wouldn’t have anyone to talk to. There is a lot of truth in that.  I love Mom dearly, but our brains work very differently. Pop might have been smarter, and his depth of knowledge was certainly mind blowing, but our mental wiring followed a similar eccentric pattern. That said, somewhere along the line my parents and I had become a sort of unit, functioning as one. Think one of those anime giant robots made of smaller ships, Voltron or something. Then imagine it functioning with the head section missing. Five years later we still feel that void.
So anyway, Pop was dead, the family business gone with him, and I was unemployed with no qualifications in a rural area with few job opportunities anyway. This was, and frankly still is, not a good situation. And my cousin Katharine thought she had a solution.
Katharine sent me a letter suggesting I make dolls. She’d shown the doll I’d made her to a dealer who said I had talent, and she sent me a copy of Art Doll Quarterly to show me that my “weird” stuff might have a market...
Honestly I felt inspired by this. I immediately seriously considered it. I’d work a bit bigger than 6″ scale, sculpt the clothes instead of the stress and tedium of sewing, and figure out a way to do ball joints. Because each thing would be unique (until I could teach myself mold making) and letting go of something I make is soooo hard for me, I decided to use the story of one of my painted boxes as inspiration. I’d make wolf people, which I figured would create enough sameness to help me let go, but enough variety to keep me from being bored. I quickly sketched out a reasonable design and got to work.
Obviously things didn’t turn out to be so simple. Sculpting ball joints by hand is fiddly to manage. It would need a bit of experimenting. I could do a head on day, casually. I could do the upper body, arms and waist joint  with a lot of effort another day. A third day would be waist and legs. Fourth day was the hellish threading. I wasn’t set up for safely storing unbaked work in progress, so I had to do these marathon one sitting sculptings on the bodies. Then I’d rest up a few days and just sculpt a few heads.
The ball jointing drove me nuts. So I gave myself permission to not worry about wolfheads, but just sculpt whatever head happened. From the backlog of heads I’d just pick one to experiment with body making. In just a couple months I was making progress.
The first discouragement came with an art show. The county has a sort of art society and they were having a sculpture show. I was scared silly to show my work to anyone, since at that point it was 2014 and I wasn’t even on Tumblr. No one had seen them. Still, when I went to see about entering the lady there was encouraging. I was soooo nervous and tentatively hopeful when I went to the grand opening with Mom amd my cousin Shirley. I was soon deflated. No one seemed to notice my figures. My work was the odd one out anyway in a sea of found object sculptures, colored paper masks and ceramics abstractly suggesting the figural. Also, everyone there knew each other and so no one was talking to me. At one point I did this really sad thing of hovering near my figures in case anyone came near so I could sorta maybe get them to notice them....
When the show ended a few weeks later the lady very nicely said at least a couple school children had liked weird figures, ‘cause, you know, kids like that fantasy stuff.  I definitely should sculpt a lot bigger and maybe use terra cotta instead....
Yeah. I felt my stuff was crap. I was crap. Why had I ever thought anyone would like my crap? Heck, I’d thought I’d at least find a club I could join, belonging, friends....
But, I kept at the doll making experimenting, crap or not. That winter it was too cold for much sculpting in my unheated house, but I could work on trying to figure out how to paint them....
Then life happened don’t ya know. At first I thought it was a temporary break while I dealt with crisis after another. I kept sculpting heads, strictly sculpting a head a day (still just an hour each)....until the spreading collapsed floor situation forced me to move the box I’d made for storing the bodiless heads out. And that was that for doll making.
Still, I kept sculpting. I went back to just the faces....
And that’s where I am now. I gave up sculpting every day, because I no longer have time. I watch a movie and sculpt. I bake the face and take pics I post on here. I wrap ‘em in tissue and put them in a storage container....
And that’s it.
I don’t do anything with them. I’m not entirely convinced there is any point anymore. My life isn’t going to include free time. Or tables to work on. It has been years after all, and it gets less and less likely I’ll make anything more than a few boxes full of chipped up sculpey faces for the nephews to find when I die. Well, unless they follow my brother’s advice and throw them out unopened! LOL
I sculpt just ‘cause I sculpt. I post pics of them on Tumblr, ‘cause Mom isn’t really all that interested in looking at them. They aren’t ever going to be anything, but I guess if I enjoy making them and someone out there likes looking at them that’s okay. They may be nothing, but that’s something.
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nickyvmlp · 6 years
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My Top 10 Characters I Want in Smash Ultimate
I got a couple of requests for this in my last Smash reaction video, and I didn’t want to make it a full video, so it’ll go here, HERE WE GOOOOOOOOOOOOO.  (Also, none of my top 10 need to be echo fighters, but I’ll throw in a few echos near the end.)
10) Alex Roivas from Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem
This will not happen, especially with Simon and Richter filling the horror game niche, but I can dream, darnit.  For the unaware, Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem was a 2002 GameCube exclusive psychological horror game; it’s basically Resident Evil meets Call of Cthulhu, and it’s my favorite horror game of all time. In the game, you play as Alex Roivas, a few of her ancestors, and few other schmucks across history unfortunate enough to stumble across an ancient book called the Tome of Eternal Darkness, which drags them into a conflict that could destroy the world.  Alex ends up using the knowledge she’s learned from the Tome to stop the rise of three ancient deities, each bent on world domination.  So in Smash, she could have the Tome at her disposal and could even carry it into battle like Robin does.  Her standard attacks can involve normal weaponry she uses like guns and knives and stuff, while her special attacks can all involve using the Tome to summon something.  For her Final Smash, she can hit everyone in a set radius around her with a huge sanity effect that adds 100% damage and breaks the shield of anyone caught in it, leaving them wide open for a heavy attack and a KO.  Plus, more strong female Smash characters, never a bad thing.
9) Decidueye from Pokemon
Every Smash game has a new Pokemon rep, and there’s quite for few on the rumor mill.  Gardevoir and Gothitelle get brought up a lot, but they’d draw a lot of comparisons to (and may end up being an EF to) Mewtwo, especially in Gardevoir’s case.  They could also throw in a currently unannounced Pokemon from Gen 8 with that being right around the corner.  But, Decidueye makes the most sense to me.  It’s got a cool design and there aren’t many characters that uses arrows in their arsenal, basically just the Links and Pit.  Plus, his Flying type would give him really strong recovery, most comparable to Charizard’s.  For his Final Smash, give him Zelda’s FS from Brawl, a giant arrow that KO’s everyone in a straight line.
8) The Eeveelutions from Pokemon
If you like Pokemon, odds are good that you like at least one of the Eeveelutions.  Espeon’s my favorite Pokemon ever, and Jolteon, Umbreon, and Sylveon are up there too.  And there’s eight Eeveelutions at the moment (not counting Eevee) and eight alternate costume spots for each character, so here’s what I’m thinking.  You reveal the Eeveelutions in the next Direct, and put up a poll on the Smash website: Who is your favorite Eeveelution?  The winner of the poll is the default character, while everyone else are the alt costumes.  This does mean that the Eeveelutions will have to be virtually identical, but that shouldn’t be too hard, a Flamethrower can look like a Hydro Pump, a Thunderbolt, a Psyshock, etc. with some small cosmetic changes.  And their Final Smash could either be similar to Mega Man’s where everyone joins in for a giant combined attack, or if you wanna get cartoony, have them get into a big dust cloud fight with other Eeveelutions joining in before the victim gets launched offscreen by it.  Plus with Let’s Go Pikachu and Eevee coming soon, it’s a great time to give Eevee’s family some love
7) Black Shadow from F-Zero
You know me, I love F-Zero GX more than I love three square meals a day, and at the moment, there’s barely any Smash representation for the GREATEST RACING GAME OF ALL TIME, so let’s change that.  Samurai Goroh is already an Assist Trophy, so how about Falcon’s other main rival, Black Shadow?  Taking a quick look at him, he’s obviously a big, strong character which makes him well-equipped to be in a fighting game.  But taking a second look at him will make you chuckle, because he’s kinda goofy looking.  He’s wearing a full-body black spandex suit, with bull horns, cloven feet, and a cape.  Yea, he’s a sadistic monster in the games and the anime, but still he’s a little hard to take seriously.  And that can work in his advantage.  In Nintendo Directs, they like to use villains that you can kinda take the piss out of in certain places, like Dedede, Wario, and surely in the future, K. Rool.  Black Shadow can exist in a similar role, and maybe the four can form some evil alliance if they decide to make Subspace Emissary 2.  (Please make Subspace Emissary 2.)  His Final Smash can be identical to Falcon’s, hit your opponent with the Black Bull, works just fine.  Plus, maybe a new F-Zero character could build hype for a new game in the series?  Please?
6) Paper Mario
I’m not sure why some people want Paper Mario to be Mario’s EF?  Wasn’t the point of Mario and Luigi: Paper Jam to show how different those two are?  Anyway, Paper Mario has a bevy of ways to attack that would help him stand apart from his 3-dimensional counterpart.  His standard attack can involve his hammer (which Mario doesn’t have), with the directional standards involving various badges like the Hammer Throw and the Ice Smash.  His special attacks can use his various buddies.  Parakarry can be his recovery, Vivian can be a Down-B defense tool, you could even use Thoreau as his throwing mechanic.  And the final Smash could involve one of the realistic items from the new games, like the electric fan blowing all the opponents offscreen.  I don’t know much about the newer games, they didn’t look as good.
5) Shadow the Hedgehog
This is another one that COULD be an Echo Fighter, but Shadow plays pretty differently to Sonic in their games.  He skates instead of runs, he uses weapons whereas Sonic just uses his speed, Shadow has a FUCKING GUN, there’s plenty that you can do with Shadow to separate him from Sonic.  Particularly involving his Final Smash, Chaos Control.  When it’s used, everyone on screen freezes for ten seconds.  In that time, Shadow can use one heavy attack after another after another, and when the time runs out, all the damage and force from those attacks hit at once, and that character will go flying.  It’d be kinda like Link’s Stasis from Breath of the Wild (which should be Link’s FS, but oh well)
4) Spring Man from Arms
So, Arms wasn’t as big of a hit as people were hoping.  That’s a bummer, it looks like a fun game.  How about we give it one last shot in the arm (teehee) to try to boost its exposure?  Put Spring Man in the game, and have him focus on long-range attacks and throws.  His recovery can be a long whip that grabs ledges like Olimar’s.  And for his Final Smash, give him a big winding tornado throw that KOs whoever he grabs and damages anyone who gets hit by the swinging arms in the process.  Show what he can do in Smash, and maybe it’ll entice people to see what he can do in Arms.  I just want that game to be successful.
3) Rayman
I was shocked that Rayman didn’t get into Smash WiiU, since it seems like Nintendo and Ubisoft have been on great terms for a long time, like how Rayman Origins and Legends ended up on Nintendo consoles when it had almost no third-party support.  Rayman even had a trophy in WiiU, so it was really surprising to me that he wasn’t one of the DLC characters.  Let’s fix that.  His unattached limbs would give him some good range, he’d have some magic that he could use at his disposal for special attacks.  And for his Final Smash, how about summoning a swarm of mosquitoes to fly across the screen, doing massive damage with each hit, like a super-powered version of the Beedrills from Smash 64?
2) Geno from Super Mario RPG
I’m not a huge Final Fantasy guy, but I’m so glad Cloud got into Smash WiiU/3DS, because it throws the door wide open for other Square characters.  A lot of people think this will lead to Sora from Kingdom Hearts getting in (doubtful), but I want Geno to finally get in.  He did get an outfit for the Mii Gunner in the last game, but seeing him actually in Smash, not just as a Mii, would be so great.  Mario RPG is criminally underrated, and it laid the groundwork for the Paper Mario and the Mario & Luigi games.  He’d, of course, be a long range fighter, using his finger cannons as his main attacks, and for his Final Smash:  the Geno Flash, which would be like a combination of Pit’s and Jigglypuff’s FS.  You’d go offscreen and aim a point on the map.  From that epicenter, a giant blast grows, trapping and damaging anyone who gets in the blast radius, before launching those victims off the stage.
Honorable Mentions (Echo Fighters)
Donkey Kong: Jungle Beat brought Funky Kong back into the fold, and he’s got a very similar body type to Donkey Kong, so that makes perfect sense to me.
Hyrule Warriors could use a representative, and since Midna’s already an Assist Trophy, how about Impa?  She’s got a great look and could borrow Sheik’s moveset quite well.
I never bought Wart as an Echo Fighter, since the characters he was usually attached to (Bowser or Dedede) didn’t feel similar enough.  But K. Rool, on the other hand, fits just right.  K. Rool looks like a caricature of Wart.
People seem to like Xenoblade Chronicles 2, so let’s add to the Xenoblade cast in Smash.  I don’t know a lot about Rex, besides his goofy pants, but I’m sure he’d be a great fit.
This might seem odd, but how about Andy from Advance Wars as an Echo to Bowser Jr.?  Andy could ride in a tank and shoot projectiles while using the turret as a short-range melee attack?  Could work.
1) Sans and Papyrus from Undertale
No, but could you imagine?
1) Crash and Coco Bandicoot
This would be the kind of Internet breaking character that you put as the last character added to give one final hype boost to the already unstoppable Smash hype train.  The N. Sane Trilogy is already out on Switch, so the publishers already have their foot in the door, so let’s just go for it.  And as an added bonus, you could announce Coco Bandicoot at the same time (like Simon and Richter) for added excitement.  (I would absolutely main as Coco.)  Their standard attacks could revolve around their spin attacks, while their specials would involve using their various powerups like the fruit bazooka and the belly flop.  And the Final Smash would involve using Aku Aku to turn invincible for a brief time.  Yes, they’re kinda doing away with that kind of FS, maybe they could make a cutscene out of it and cause an instant KO or something.  I don’t know, just gimme Crash in Smash, please. 
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nikashepard · 6 years
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2.5D zDepth Animations Tutorial
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Due to the popularity of this post, I decided to write a simple tutorial for whoever wants to try the same thing with their favorite game. This method will work with every title that supports ReShade and Depth Buffer (and pretty much every static image you want to animate).
What is ReShade?
It’s more or less a mod that alters the original graphics, adding in more effects (like lens flare), different tones and fixing bad looking edges.
What is the 2.5D/Parallax effect?
2.5D is a method used by many editors to animate a completely still picture, from simple sceneries to characters. This creates a sort of 3D depth on your pictures, used a few times by many professionals to bring famous paintings and advertisements to life.
Note: This tutorial is mostly about scenery animation faking a camera movement and adding in a 3D space between layers. For the Parallax animation on characters I’ll write a separate guide.
What you need:
• The game (duh) (in this case I’ll use Assassin’s Creed Syndicate as example) • ReShade (I find myself more comfortable with a previous version, because I somehow cannot achieve the same results with ReShade 3+ at the moment. This should easily work with the latest version too, but for any problem or if you want to follow the guide better, grab ReShade 2.0.4f from here) • An editing program like Adobe Photoshop, anything that allows you to separate parts on layers and fill empty areas. • Adobe After Effects
A basic editing knowledge is required, along with a good understanding regarding Adobe programs in general. If you make graphics and gifs you’re already a step ahead, but you actually don’t need to be familiar with AE to do the animation.
The tutorial will include four parts:
1) In-game screenshot w/ Depth activated 2) Editing/preparation for AE 3) Compositing 4) Animating
Part 1: In-game Screenshot with Depth Buffer
1) If you are using ReShade 3+ you can follow this tutorial regarding its installation, otherwise copy the ReShade folder, ReShade.fx and ReShade64.dll (or ReShade32.dll if the game is 32bit) into the main game path (where the exe is, so to speak), then rename ReShade64/32.dll as dxgi.dll.
2) With ReShade 2 go to ReShade directory > Presets > Default and drag Shaders_by_CeeJay.cfg into Notepad, then scroll down to the very last line where you see a shader called DisplayDepth. Next to #define USE_DisplayDepth change the value from 0 to 1. With ReShade 3 press Shift+F2 and look for the same name, if you properly downloaded it along with the other shaders of choice it will most likely be already activated. It is highly recommended to set a hotkey for this effect so that you can easily turn it on and off in game (for example, #define Depth_ToggleKey VK_F12). 
3) Open Pipeline.cfg and look for the line #include EFFECT(CeeJay, DisplayDepth). Select it, cut it away and then paste it to the very top before any other shader listed. This will allow you to obtain smooth shapes instead of jagged edges (you should also play around with AA options, specifically SMAA and/or FXAA, both included in CeeJay.cfg). Sadly I’m not sure how the setup works in ReShade 3+.
4) Now that your options are properly set you can start the game. Find an area you like and want to shoot, then press F12 (or any other key you chose for it). If the game has a photo mode or custom made free camera tools, you should totally use those for the best results. You can check this post for a few listed titles and all their respective links.
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ReShade allows you to automatically store your screenshots directly into the game’s folder by simply pressing the print screen key. This is how the scene looks normally, without UI and with the free camera activated.
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This is what happens when you turn DepthBuffer on.
Note: If all you get with Depth is a fully white or black screen, chances are you need to “reset” by simply entering the fullscreen mode (and switch back to borderless/windowed if that is what you usually like playing with). ReShade usually reloads whenever you apply a modification to the settings, but if even after this the effect doesn’t show up it probably means the game has no DepthBuffer support (or there is some incompatibility somewhere, which may be related to other shaders).
Part 2: Editing
1) Grab your depth screenshot and open it with your editing program of choice, I use Photoshop. In order to animate this, you have to create different layers (renaming them for an easier use in AE, but that is up to you) being sure each hole is covered, or else the empty part will definitely show up in your animation.
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2) Make a selection around the areas you want to separate, I’m starting with what is close to the “camera”. Try to be as precise as possible to keep most of the details, especially around the character. Once you’re satisfied with your selection press CTRL+X to cut it out and then paste it into the same position, a new layer for it will be automatically created.
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3) If you hide the layer you’ve just made, you will obviously notice an empty shape on the background right where you cut it. The easiest way to fill that properly is by selecting the layer (CTRL+LMB on it), inverting selection and going to Modify > Fill > Content-Aware.
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As you can see the empty area has been filled completely, but a few fixes are required. You can use the clone stamp tool or the healing brush, in this case I choose the latter because it makes the process quicker.
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It can be a bit tedious in some places... especially if there are a lot of buildings or trees, depending on your scene. Photoshop covered the outline using the existing content to generate the missing parts as I dragged the brush over it, but you may want to use the clone tool as well and even draw here and there where the brush failed.
Repeat the process for all the other layers you want to separate and then rename everything to know what you’re gonna edit in AE (again, this is optional). You can also make the back layer bigger to hide imperfections behind the other layers, which won’t be too visible while animating. Further edits will be done in AE later anyway.
Part 3: Compositing
1) Save the PSD file and load Afer Effects. I’m currently using the CC 2015 one, but even if you have an older version this method will work without problems.
Go to File > Import > File and select your PSD. 
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Be sure the importer is set on Composition and Editable Layer Styles is checked, this is essential if you want to work on each layer.
2) Double-click on the left to preview the PSD and convert every single layer into 3D. To do so simply check the third square on the right, under the cube icon:
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Now we need to add a Camera. Go to Layer > New > Camera and leave the options untouched (the default configuration should be okay for this).
3) Right under your preview you should see a button called Active Camera. Switch to Custom View 1 to move the layers and create depth between them.
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All you have to do is select each layer in the lower panel and move it using the blue arrow (z direction) to push it backward or forward. Use the order you’ve got as reference for the best result, then change the view to Active Camera again when you’re done.
4) Now that you have changed the original positions you need to fix their size to fit the composition. Select all layers at once, press S and activate the little watch icon that appears followed by the effect name (Scale). You will see three values then; place your mouse over the 100,0% one and drag it to the right or left in order to resize the layer(s). Use the directional arrows to also move them up or down eventually.
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The stopwatch is absolutely fundamental, because it tells where to place each frame in the timeline. Whenever you apply an effect or any modification you need to be sure it’s recorded at the very start, this way it will affect the entire sequence and you won’t risk to only see it taking action in a few frames later instead.
5) You can move the upper bars in your timeline to change the final time. A few seconds for this kind of animations will suffice, I always set it around 4s.
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Part 4: Animating
1) Now we can finally animate, woo!!
It is highly recommended to make all the planes bigger than the composition, so that you can move them around without risking to get empty spaces. In this case we want to fake a camera movement with a sort of 3D perspective, like the gifs I’ve posted in that photoset.
Let’s start from the first layer. Click on it and press P (position) to store the current location on the first frame, then move the time indicator at the end of your sequence. I want the main layer to slide horizontally, thus I will move the red arrow on X axes.
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As soon as your first animation is stored, another frame will be generated at the end of the timeline. After Effects automatically creates all the frames between the first and the last one, if you are happy with it select the second layer and do the same, then the third and repeat. You can also use the R (rotation) key to add more realism. Remember to ALWAYS check the stopwatch on frame 1 before doing anything else.
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You can preview the animation with space bar, the rendering times change according to the amount of virtual memory installed on your PC.
For a nice camera shake you can follow this tutorial.
2) Once you’re happy with your animation you’re ready to export it. You can pick a simple video option, but that usually requires a second rendering in Sony Vegas or any other program for video editing to fix the bad-looking fps drop. I suggest you to export in frames instead, especially if you plan to make gifs. Go to Composition > Add to Render Queue, a new panel will appear on the bottom. Click on Lossless and pick PNG Sequence next to Format, then on Not yet specified (output to) and select a destination on your computer. Press Render, wait and it’s done! Again, the rendering times will highly depend on your RAM and composition size. The bigger, the slower; if you play in 4k you should reduce the screenshot size to a common 1920x1080 at least, even smaller after that for the final gif (tumblr has a 3MB limit).
Result:
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Questions? Send me a note!
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22azania2 · 3 years
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What is life to me ?
The polarity of things creates new scales of balance and ideas. To every concept exist it's contrary; hot and cold, fragile and strong, black or white. All those concepts have a contrary whit whom it is often attached to but can also live without. 
When you think about life, it can be seen as plural experience like it can be seen as an individual one and as human being we have the chance to see both side of it. We all know the objective truth about life. The objectif troth as to What is life really ? 
The real truth is that life objectively is 'the condition that distinguishes animals and plants from inorganic matter, including the capacity for growth, reproduction, functional activity, and continual change preceding death.'. Simply, the objective truth, the 'real' truth about life is that it s a place for growth, renewal, time period between birth and death. Life, is also associated to the body, as earthlings, life shows through our body, and this concept only could be another subject but this really only a mental note; back to our subject. Life shows through our body, without body in this 3D experience we are not seen as 'alive', we are 'lifeless' as I may say. 
This is what life is on the logical scale, for the real truth matter. But, if you ask someone in the streets what life is changes are that you will come across a bunch of different ideas and conception about what life is. People always add extra adjective to what life is, a great and good life, an healthy beautiful and wealthy life, a wonderful life. And to each adjectives comes a different meaning for each, people will say. I believe that as people 'living', or more like : navigating in a capitalist society,  living a 'ameliorative adjective' life is living comfortably, without money problems and healthily. Obviously the scale of money income can change but overall thats the idea. But see, there's so much different aspects within different aspect on what life can mean to one, this is were the line between objective matter and subjective matter, 'real' truth and subjective truth. What life is to one might not be the same for another one and the beautiful truth -may be untrue- is that, the only one who can make it true is you. The subjective matter of life is shown through you, all the individual lifetimes creates an other definition of what life is, theres no right there is no wrongs to subjectif truth and it is especially true when it comes to what life is to you.
I've gained knowledge on many aspect of life, from energy fields to relationship, to the main aspect of it which is myself I've always missed one point, and, although im trying not to overwhelmed my self with new informations on those various subjects, I've always found myself looking for the missing piece in other people story and timelines : what is life ? And not on a objective matter, but What is life to me ?
As crazy as it may seen I've never went deeply into myself to know what the fuck life is to me. I was never getting stuck into knowing that but I just never really tried to know, and to me, in my personal journey it is one of the most if not the most important question to ask to myself. 
I found that I often, like most humans I believe, am not confortable in the unknown. Not knowing is such a scary things; starting project without knowing if its going to work, starting a new dish with the incertitude that it might taste good, see failure and un-achievement take a big place in my life. Life itself doesn't require any questions around if you are going to make it or not, objectively it doesn’t even matter. Life already has a meaning for itself so I shouldn't be scared to add some flavor to it. Lastly, my life would always be infused and inspired by other people lifes and that's were you see how collapses realities act and what they can do on one person. Here's a little entry to my head. 
Disclaimer : ideas will not always be 100% clear as Im going to put myself in a state of extreme rawness it is more of tool for me to know really what life is to me, it's a genuine questioning time that I just tried to compact in here. 
As I already pointed out, as we live in a capitalist society our way of thinking will always flow with the capitalist view. As detached as you are from it -and lets be honest not everyone has the privilege to completely disidentify with it-, you will always feel a certain attach to your capitalist ways, and one main reason is : money matters. This may be seen as a subjective matter, but it is my matter. Some people will tell you that you don't need money to be happy, to me, this is only bulshit... I do strongly and oh my goodness my needs think like me that money is important. However, I distinguish the need of money with need of peace of mind, because I can. Therefore I don't want to identify 'making it' in life with money as the main center. Making it to me looks like me being older and having done as much things as I wanted to do throughout my life time. Making it will always have different meaning. In the smaller scales, I already made it. I had goals for myself, younger about ascending, which I did, and I came to the understanding that life was made of healing, constant healing. Today I have different goals for myself, I have different needs etc. I also learned that I shouldn't live up to the perfect idea of what making it is to me. I don't want to put boundaries in making it, I want to create my own recipe for each sauce in order to make it. Im not scared of failings and changing fields, trying new things. Obviously there some areas where I'd really like to make it but that's the reason I know that when you program your mind into one goal it doesn't let go, at least for me. I don't want to put limits to my life, to my experiences and everything. Because we live in such a vast universe and with my believes, -which are in reality felt by many others just not articulated the same way-, life is unpredictable. So why should i put limitations to it or only certain goals and not seeing all the other things possible ? And im not saying that because I really feel like I will never be in the same field my whole life, well, maybe thats the main reason why I think like that... At the end of the day it is my story and I like to call myself an experimentalist. Im always in for a new ride a new experience it is what makes me feel alive. It is why I love to create so much because it provides a new experience, why I love to connect so much again it creates new experiences. Experiences might be the core of my life, what keeps me feeling alive. Because as I explained in the beginning, life in it's objective matter is the place for growth and a body living because of it's heart beating, but what keeps you alive is different, and this were comes the subjective matter. This matter, helped creating religion and spiritual belief because the consciousness doesn't identify with its living body because it knows that it's still alive without it, the consciousness lives through thinking and peeling the reasons why its here and many spiritualist showed that it actually only needed to be in the present moment. So as im writing that im sensing that having a goal is a really ego way of seeing life. I gave my honest and pretty materiatistic definition of life, because, ego is part of me and I don't want to get rid of it entirely because what would be the point of entirely putting aside a part of myself -again could be an interesting aspect to discuss on-. That is another reason why I will not beat myself up because I 'did not take it' only because it is my story and im sticking to it.-hopefully you listened to sza's album CTRL-
Therefore, I still havent gave a 'true' definition on what life is to me. Well, it is only a game. At a certain point of my life I even felt like it was a simulation but I quickly came to realization that this belief was not meant for me. I'd rather see it as a game. I play, you play, we all play. Using the word 'play' also puts everything in perspective and it helps detaching from the matter of life. As a privileged person, saying that life is a game gives it a lighter dimension, it makes things less serious and harsh, cause life be damn harsh. I understand that if I play, others do to so I might as well play to my fullest and certainly play to please myself. I also see life as the fourth elements, I recognize that the four elements, air, water, earth and fire, are the pin-points of the Man kind experience. I had an awakening on those elements and what they represent in my life or should I say in my experience of life. These elements are obviously important in physical matter as they also are in mind matter. Just like christians with transubstantiation, I see those physical matter transform into mind matter, lecons or even traits of personality for some (blame it on astrology). Without elements there is no life, no human life, no plants, no animals no nothing. Nature, is a unconditional source of learning, physical and mentally. 
I think, for now, my idea of life is to just do it, to stop chasing the dream and to stop limiting myself but rather to act and live the dream. Life is what was offered to me before all the Man creation, Life is in me, through me and around me.It was important to me to find a definition for myself because I'm all about knowing how to navigate through certain wave, and if I don't know what wave life is to me I might drawn. And although drawing would most likely happen because my mind is constantly changing, I needed a structured self explanation to know where I am physically. We all know where we are, right now im in my bedroom, in my bed for more details, but I didn't know and feel really where I was in terms of space. In which picture do I want to set myself ? In which movie do I feel more confortable playing ? Those are the questions I think I answered and I think everyone should answer -to this questions and or more questions that come to mind because at the end it is your life- because we live in a world were everyone has expectations  but most of the people don't even know where they are, people are lost and losing there ground that is there life.  I don't think you should stay in a shell and hide yourself from the world even if you have the opportunity to, unless you really want to. I just think that your reality should be your main priority. There is no picture perfect life obviously but you have the choice to make it something that is yours. Create your reality. Obviously, with social medias, friends, family members and every other big institutions like church, school, work etc it is hard to own your reality. That is the reason why you should always hang around people who inspires you to live in your reality and respects it, not everyone will because your reality comes from a subjective matter. Own your reality in ways that it helps you grow and flowing in the wave of life, but, don't own it with the ego, own it for yourself and for no one else. If it ends up resonating with other people realities it is beautiful if not its okay. But don't surround yourself with people who take you out of your ground and directly your grind; because its when you know in which game you want to play that you start making decision towards it. 
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scrawnydutchman · 4 years
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My Animation Journey: Thomas van Kampen
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Hey everyone! It’s been a VERY long time since I updated my blog, huh?
So for this post I thought I would do something a little different. For those who don’t know, I’m a professional animator. I have been for about two years now. I’ve worked on shows like Trailer Park Boys: The Animated Series, Care Bears: Unlock the Magic and Curious George. I’ve also been a part of a few other projects before that like the crowdfunded feature film Dawgtown. Reason I bring all of this up is I figured it might be helpful to some folks if they knew how exactly I got to this position. Nowadays it feels like if you throw a rock you’ll more than likely hit an aspiring professional artist, but for as many as there may be a lot of them aren’t actually sure if they can make it due to a number of doubts. Maybe they can’t afford schooling. Maybe they aren’t in a region where the industry is prominent. Maybe they just don’t know what they have to do to get studio attention. I personally feel that the story of how I broke in to the industry is pretty unique so my hope is that reading it might help many an aspiring artist gain confidence and maybe even fill in the blanks for their own story. So without further ado, let’s start at the beginning.
Part 1: The Beginning
My entire life I’ve always been a storyteller. When I was in elementary school I used to make little comic books out of stapled pieces of printer paper and hand them out to my classmates. In high school I wrote a 100 page fantasy novel and wrote/directed a play in drama class. My grades were never all that good, but I always scored high in art and creative writing projects. Here’s a comedy skit I put together back in high school with my friends (warning: incoming cringe):
youtube
As a testament to my love for storytelling, I thought for a very long time my destiny lied in live action film making. But that didn’t exactly pan out the way I hoped. For one, I was rejected from my nearby institute’s video production course 3 times. For another, I didn’t exactly have all the skills necessary to direct a production involving multiple people. Film proved to be a difficult path for me because I couldn’t work around peoples’ schedules and I couldn’t find the locations I wanted for the types of stories I wanted to tell. Best I could ever do was comedy skits. All this compounded failure left me drifting for a little while after high school.
But then, on my 18th birthday, my dad pulled me aside to give me a proposal. He said that since 18 is such a milestone, he and my mom wanted to do something extra special for my gift. He told me I have two options: I can either get $100 dollars to spend on whatever I want . . . or, if I had something in mind for starting a career, he would spend as high as $800.
Obviously I wanted to take the latter. But I wasn’t sure what to do. Film wasn’t panning out. My mom and dad at the time tried to pressure me into app development and computer coding because they seemed like safe ventures, but I couldn’t entertain something like that. Whatever it is I chose, it had to allow me to tell the stories that I wanted to tell.
Then, it hit me. I suddenly remembered hearing about this animation program called “Toon Boom” back in high school comm tech. So I thought “why don’t I do animation?”. After all, I could already draw. Plus, with animation you don’t have ANY of the limitations of live action. You can create anything you can imagine with animation and you can make everything yourself from the comfort of your room. I knew it was going to be a time consuming thing, but after a bit of soul searching I knew this is what I wanted for myself. So I told my dad about it and he managed to find a student copy of toon boom animate for cheap on Ebay (back when it didn’t go by Harmony). So I got that for my birthday and got to work. I still have my very first cartoon here:
youtube
Oh yeah, it’s awful. I had a VERY rudimentary understanding of how animation worked. I drew everything haphazardly with my mouse. I didn’t know how to use motion tweens all that well so in some places I just copy pasted assets and rotated the drawings slightly. I stole copyrighted music (which miraculously I haven’t been caught for yet). I recorded the dialogue on my phone. Worst of all, I didn’t even know how to properly compress my video. Believe it or not, this took me a month and a half to make.
But you know what? Everyone I knew loved it. My feed blew up and everyone made a point to tell me how funny they thought it was. I remember my dad saying “toon boom seems like a good investment!” Needless to say, the positive reinforcement was very encouraging. 
I’m hoping the takeaway here is two things:
1. Knowing what you want in life is a deep, soul searching process, but once you find it, committing to it isn’t all that hard, even if it’s tedious as hell.
2. The best way to get started in anything is to just, well . . . get started. Make something. ANYTHING. even if it’s not that great. For as poorly as this cartoon has aged, it resulted in me getting my very first commission from my brother where he asked me to make a music video for his band. It also resulted in me getting a drawing tablet for Christmas later that year. Even bad content is better than having nothing in your repertoire at all. Try getting your ideas out no matter what.
This boost in confidence eventually resulted in me going for making long form content. I wrote, animated, edited, voice acted and directed TWO episodes of a show featuring the character you see in my very first cartoon. The first episode took me half a year to create and the second took me a WHOLE YEAR. But you know what? I was showing clear signs of improving all the way.
Here are the episodes:
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Part 2: Making connections
So at this point, my motivation to break my way into the arts was in full throttle. I was SURE that animation is what I wanted to do in life. Making little shorts was cool and all, but I still needed to learn how to get professional attention. So there’s a number of things I did:
For starters, I needed to know what employers were looking for when I apply for a job. I remember way back, around the time i was halfway through making episode 2 of the Peacock, I was talking to a friend of my brother’s at his birthday party. I told him I wanted to pursue animation professionally (I believe this was after we were talking about the music video I made for my brother) and he said that he knew a guy in Vancouver who was doing 3D animation. I asked for his name and then later that night looked him up on Facebook. Once I was sure I was talking to the right guy, I wrote him a lengthy message about how much breaking into animation would mean to me. He told me that he was visiting my home town for a little while anyway and he generously donated his time to answer my questions about the industry over coffee. He told me all about demo reels and how I would need to structure it and what kind of knowledge that studios were looking for and all that type of stuff. I was also recommended to talk to another professional in my home town and she told me to get started on a portfolio website. So I took everything they were telling me and started applying it.
my niece told me about this organization in my hometown that she found out about through the grapevine. This place called the “Quickdraw Animation Society”. It was this organization dedicated to helping local artists find their voice and gain the skills necessary to make their own animated films. I thought this was perfect!! College was sort of off the table for me since my dad highly encouraged getting an education at this trade school and he told me he wouldn’t pay for an education that didn’t guarantee a job at the end (and looking back knowing the kind of debt i could have fallen into, I kind of side with him on that one). But Quickdraw was offering animation courses for cheap! Even i could afford it on my part time retail salary! So I took Quickdraw’s classes and used them as a vehicle to start making even more of my own projects.
Here’s just one of several short animations I made while studying under Quickdraw:
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But my involvement with Quickdraw didn’t stop there. I made a point to volunteer for them  in their move and their fundraising efforts and their little animation showcases. I made a point to REALLY get involved with their community. That ended up being arguably the most instrumental decision in my career. After a while I got done making my very first Demo Reel. I was ready to start officially applying for jobs:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fx5OHGfYz-4
I know this reel doesn’t seem like much, but believe it or not, with the help of the Quickdraw Animation Society, this reel ended up getting me my first two major animation gigs.
The takeaway here is: get involved with a community. Reach out to people. Get yourself out there. Don’t be afraid to ask professionals questions and accept that a lot of this is going to involve relying on the kindness of strangers. Nobody gets anywhere without somebody helping them.
Part 3: Thomas the Freelancer
After I completed my very first demo reel, as fate would have it Quickdraw began emailing me among others about new job opportunities popping up. The first time they informed me of a job post, it was somebody looking for an artist to create animated backgrounds for a stage play performance of “Curious George”. I was among the very first to send my application and this was the very first time I used my demo reel to try and land a job. The next day, their recruiter contacted me on the phone and started with “thank you for including a demo reel instead of putting the illness on me to track down your work like other applicants”. See how important a demo reel is? I ended up creating every background for every scene of that play, which was projected onto the screen behind the performers as they did their thing. 
After that, Quickdraw informed me of ANOTHER job post. This time it was a children’s book author in Edmonton looking for an animator to help her win an animated film pitch contest. The winners of this contest would get a grant of $10,000 to create their animated short which would then be featured on Telus’ Storyhive platform. I sent her my demo reel and she brought me on to help put together the assets we needed to make the cut. And guess what? We were among the few who were selected to earn the $10,000. This resulted in me flying for the VERY FIRST TIME IN MY LIFE to Vancouver, where we would attend a workshop detailing the conditions of the contest. I also happened to meet even more animation friends on the plane (they were sitting right across from me and were other winners of the Storyhive competition). 
In the following months I would dedicate almost ALL my free time to this short film. I even quit my part time job so i could commit to it full time (a decision my dad was thrilled about, I’m sure). I did all the storyboarding, background design, character design and animation BY MYSELF. If anything in the development cycle was visual related, I was the guy that did it, taking notes from my directors all along the way. In hindsight, I definitely should have asked for more help since the final product has a few flaws, but this is still a milestone achievement in my career.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmTuwIeEoqA
At this point, I had somewhat made a name for myself. I had credentials. I had recommendations from clients. Gerry Mouse would go on to be featured in multiple film festivals: My film festival debut in fact. As you can imagine, my ego was at an all time high. After the film released I updated my demo reel again and felt like I was ready to officially start applying for full time studio work in the industry.
As I would come to find . . . it wouldn’t be that easy.
Part 4: The Dry Spell
Gerry Mouse was the last big success of mine for quite some time. What followed was an entire year of doing ‘freelance work’ . . . .which is a polite way of saying I was mostly unemployed with only a few small gigs inbetween. I was relentlessly applying for studios all over Canada, hoping SOMEBODY would give me the time of day. In some places, a few studios even offered me the chance to do a test . . . but due to circumstances that I’m honestly embarrassed about in retrospect, I either failed them or couldn’t complete them at all. My dad eventually started pressuring me to get any kind of employment I could get my hands on, but even trying to find work in low requirement fields was proving to be fruitless. I was getting depressed, which was compounded on by the fact that I had gone through a hard break up around that time as well. it wasn’t ALL bad though. Around that time I made another short film called “A Lovely Stroll”, which would later be featured in both the Florida Animation Festival AND the Open World Animation Festival (which is kind of like my debut as a writer and director, not just the crews animation lead). 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afN2v3pBiqQ
It was also around this time where I got a month long remote gig from a studio in Toronto that was . . . honestly? Best paying gig I ever got to this day. It’s too bad that never amounted to anything bigger. I also started doing a wee bit of animation for Dawgtown too, but that eventually ran dry due to production complications. The bulk of that time was just spent by me being depressed and uncertain about the future, earning what ever money I could with small commissions here and there.
Then, within my endless pushing of applications hoping for any studio in all of Canada to notice me, I happened to send an application to Copernicus Studios in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The human resources department responded to my application saying that they weren’t hiring at the time, but they were gearing up to recruit for something that summer and may contact me again with the opportunity to do a test months down the line.
And that’s exactly what they did.
When I received the animation test from Copernicus, I was more determined than ever. I was going to dedicate as much time as I possibly could to making this test look the best it could be. I remember spending VERY late nights being very paranoid about every little detail and frantically looking up whatever I didn’t know about Toon Boom at the time. After I submitted my test, I was counting down the days for their response.
They got back to me in a reasonable amount of time and asked if I would be interested in a video interview. I was freaking out and wanted to make ABSOLUTELY sure I could impress. I cleaned up as well as I could and made sure to answer all their questions honestly and concisely.
And then . . . they officially offered me a role on the production. You can’t imagine the rush of joy that went through me when I first read that email. After years of grinding and twiddling my thumbs I finally broke my glass ceiling. The idea of a random kid from Alberta breaking into a niche industry like that with no college education was unheard of. They told me in the video interview that the contract was for a Netflix animated adaptation of a classic adult Canadian sitcom. At the time I thought it was going to be Corner Gas. It turned out to be Trailer Park Boys. Once we got the news, I celebrated with all my family and friends and my dad and I planned my move to Halifax; a city on the complete opposite side of the country.
This next bit has nothing to do with the animation stuff, I just think it’s an interesting tidbit to share:
At first, my dad and I were struggling to find a place for me to live in the city. The problem was that my new contract wanted me to start in late May, but every lease of every apartment naturally wants you to start living there the first of the month. But, the biggest stroke of luck in the universe would happen to me. My dad happened to call one apartment’s office and explained to them what my situation was and they said
“funny you should mention that . . .I have two tenants here in my office RIGHT NOW that are looking for somebody to sublease for them and they need to be moved out by May 25th. If Tom subleases for them he can be in there before June no problem.”
WHAT. ARE. THE. CHANCES. OF. THAT??????
My apartment’s previous tenants were super nice too. for a thousand dollars they gave me their double sized bed, their microwave, their working desk, their couch, their vacuum cleaner and a bunch of other things to help me get started. They also went out of their way to get me nice things like a laundry card with $20 on it, a map of Halifax, a cupboard stocked up with insta-noodles, some cheap cutlery and bowls. . . . they went super out of their way to be nice to me on my first move and I’ll never forget that.
At the time I thought a stroke of luck like that was a sign from God that I was pursuing my destiny. To this day I think that still might be true. My takeaway here is don’t give up no matter what. Even if things seem uncertain at times, perseverance and tenacity will pay off in the end.
So with that, I said goodbye to my family and friends and moved to Halifax to begin my adult life as a full time PROFESSIONAL animator. I felt like I could take on anything.
And that . . . wasn’t 100% true.
Part 5: Growing Pains
I was very excited to work on my first studio production in house and it was through this contract that I met some of my closest friends ever. I learned more about toon boom and animation in 3 months than I did in 3 years of freelancing. But it wasn’t all fun and games. In fact, a lot of it was VERY VERY stressful and I ended up making more mistakes than I care to admit. In retrospect it’s easy to forgive myself because that’s just what happens when you’re that green, especially with a journey as unorthodox as mine, but at the time I did NOT take it well at ALL. See, at this point I was 100% motivated to be the best artist I could possibly be. As far as I was concerned not much else in life mattered that much. And that made me toxic. I had a hard time emotionally with taking criticism for my work. I started getting argumentative with my friends. I overworked myself. I tried to have a sense of humor for my problems but the self deprecating jokes only made me feel worse. What followed was nearly 2 years of feeling what the industry pros call “imposter syndrome”. I had it BAD. But luckily, I get by with a little help from my friends. I started opening up about what I was going through and luckily the people around me have been very reassuring about my right to be where I am. But the feelings of inadequacy DID end up leaving a dent in my work at the time and by the time Copernicus was recruiting for another toon boom show, I was not one of the few selected. But there WAS an alternative. They had just opened up some positions for their flash show (which was Care Bears: Unlock the Magic). They gave me the opportunity to do the flash test and I accepted. At the time I didn’t know very much about Flash . . . like, at all . . . but I sat down to learn as much about it as I could in the week that I had and I had done JUST well enough on the test to get myself another contract. From then on I spent nearly a year mastering Flash. Then, I was eventually brought on to Curious George to help on shadows and revisions. Then, shortly after, Copernicus asked me if I’d be interested in doing the builds test. I said yes, learned a bunch of stuff on the fly and got that job too. That’s what I’m doing right now.
The takeaway here is more an important lesson for when you DO make it rather than your journey to that point. When you break into the industry, you’re going to be met with a LOT of challenges. this industry is highly competitive and highly demanding. It’s not enough to be a skilled artist; you also have to have the grit to be a dependable team member. Matter of fact, at a time when my skill wasn’t cutting it, my grit was what helped keep me from washing out. And also, don’t be afraid to try new things. In an industry as volatile as animation being a jack of all trades is a HUGE selling point.
My advice is stay determined and, more importantly . . .try not to let failure get to your heart. keep your head up, allow yourself to heal, and forgive your mistakes. You’re not always going to stick the landing, but that’s okay. If you stick with it, you’ll still come out of that situation with more than when you entered.
Conclusion:
So why did I share all of this? I shared it because I know a lot of young, aspiring artists out there are uncertain about their future. I know you might feel like you can’t do it because you don’t know everything or you don’t have all the right credentials or you might screw things up if you try. I want you to listen to your heart and pursue what you want anyway. If I can make it, you can too. And take pride in the story of your journey. If you succeed, even given your circumstances, your story will be valuable in a way that mine couldn’t possibly be. I know a lot of my success has to deal with inordinate luck and I will forever be grateful for that, but I will always be just as grateful that I had the fortitude for when times were at their toughest. Go out there. Make what you want to make. Do whatever you can to learn the basics even if you can’t go to college. Ask for help. Get as involved with a community as you can. Whatever you start, stick with it. Be patient. Embrace challenge. Take those leaps of faith. Finally . . . forgive yourself for the times that you fail.
To finish off this post, here is a montage representing my animation journey from 2014-2020. Best of luck, all you artists out there
https://www.facebook.com/tom.vankampen/posts/10221173577866185
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jwofles-sims · 7 years
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Retopologizing MD Meshes (old)
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EDIT-
tutorial is deprecated, update to the newest MD version and use the remesh function, or just put your mesh straight into zbrush, do zremesh and then re-do the UV in blender.
Hey! Here’s a long tutorial on how to get great low-poly topology on meshes from Marvelous Designer WHILE keeping the original UV (the UV you get if you just use the mesh straight from MD).
For this workflow, you’ll need:
Marvelous Designer (paid)
ZBrush (paid)
Maya 2016 Extension 2 or newer (student version is free!)
Blender (free)
Before I get started with the steps, I want to make sure I give full credit to this tutorial here by Alex Mann, which is where I found the workflow. You can watch that if you prefer a video tutorial and if you’re also more proficient with Maya.
Also, this guide assumes you know how to use blender. Knowledge in Maya+ZBrush isn’t really needed, but you need to have them installed and maybe be able to use basic functions in the programs. In this tutorial, I’ve cut down on the steps in Maya, just because I find it easier to use Blender for things (personal preference).
STEP ONE
First, export your normal Marvelous Designer mesh, and name it ‘drapedMesh’. When exporting, Unified UV coordinates should be checked, and scale ‘m’ should be used. Make sure you export as tris (the default setting), exporting as quads won’t give as good as results (I think).
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Then reset 2d arrangement of your clothing, so it’s flat. You can also move it to the right so it’s not in the way of the avatar but this may cause issues (or it may work). Then, export in the same way (export selected), and name it ‘flatMeshOriginal’.
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STEP TWO
Next, open up Maya- I use Maya 2016. And after, import the draped and flat meshes you just exported from MD. The camera controls if you don’t know them, you have to hold alt and then use the buttons on your mouse.
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With the two imported, select the ‘draped’ mesh and then the flat mesh, go to ‘Deform’ at the top, and click ‘Blend Shape’. This will pop up in the attribute editor to the right.
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STEP THREE
It’s time to retopologize! Open ZBrush, and import your flat mesh, and then drag your mouse in the 3d window to place the model into view (only drag it out once). Immediately after, click edit mode (or press T), and then click the ‘scale’ button to zoom in on the mesh.
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Turn polygon view on, then go to the geometry tab on the right, and click ‘ZRemesher’. Then, change the ‘Target Polygon Count’, the default is on 5, which is too high, so we need to change it.
This number is in THOUSANDS, so 1 = 1 thousand. It’s suggested to change it to 0.75, which works most of the time for tops, but sometimes you may need to set it higher (1, 1.25, 1.5 etc) for full body outfits or more detailed clothing. 
This value affects how many polygons in thousands it will have, 0.75 is 750 polygons (which will be roughly the final polygon count for the top). Anyway, once you’ve picked a value, hit the ZRemesher button.
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As you can see, ZRemesher produces a really nice topology on the meshes. Finally, you want to export it and name it as ‘flatMeshRetopo’. Now, you’re done with ZBrush!
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STEP FOUR (conditional/optional)
If there’s a problem in topology, you’ll have to fix it before you carry on. This may happen on more complex meshes. I don’t have any examples of this, but just keep it in mind. You might also want to clean up any tris if there are still some left over.
STEP FIVE
We have to get our new low-poly mesh set up in Maya. Import your retopo’d flat mesh, and ignore any error if one pops up. Then, go to ‘Windows’ on the top bar, and open the ‘Outliner’ window. To hide this, you can just minimise and then later open it back up/maximise it from the bottom of the screen.
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Then, in the outliner, select all the meshes that were imported from ZBrush, for me there were only 3 as there are only 3 pattern pieces in my MD mesh. If you have 8 pieces, there’ll be 8 meshes. With these selected, hit the merge button at the top.
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STEP SIX
Next, we have to get that clean UV layout. Select your combined mesh, then go to ‘UV’ at the top and then SHIFT-click the ‘Planar’ option. Make sure you have ‘Project from:’ on ‘Camera’ and that you have ‘Keep image width/height ratio’ checked. Next, hit apply. 
Also, when you do this step, try to have your camera looking at the mesh straight-on, as I believe this part just captures the mesh from the camera’s perspective and makes that the UV.
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STEP SEVEN
Now, we will make our low poly mesh fit around the draped mesh. Select your low-poly ZBrush flat mesh, and then the high-poly MD flat mesh, go to deform and then wrap.
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To make it wrap around now, go to ‘Windows’ at the top, ‘Animation Editors’ and then open the ‘Shape Editor’. Afterwards, set the Mesh Weight to ‘1’ (or move the 2nd slider all the way to the right). This will make your lowpoly (and high poly) mesh wrap around the draped mesh.
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Lastly, select your low-poly ZBrush mesh that is now wrapped around, and export selection to a .obj- and save that on your desktop or somewhere (ready to be imported into blender!!). Once you’ve done this, you are done with Maya (woo!).
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STEP EIGHT (conditional/optional)
If you import your new mesh into blender (which you’ve just exported), and it shows up as flat and one weird solid changing colour, you may need to put the mesh back into maya, select it and go to ‘Mesh Display’ at the top, then try unlocking the normals (‘Unlock Normals’) and then importing to blender again. If that doesn’t work, try locking the normal and importing into blender.
I’m only saying this because it’s happened to me once (not sure how), so it could happen to someone else.
STEP NINE
Lastly, you have to do the final touches. Import your new low-poly mesh into blender, and merge the vertices where the patterns meet up. Select two vertices and press alt+m to merge. 
Sometimes, you may need to merge 2 vertices on one side to one vertex on the other, this will create a tri but that’s okay.
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If there is a part you need to join that obviously doesn’t have enough verticies (such as this neck strap for my top), you may need to add edge loops. You can do this by pressing ctrl+R, and then clicking in the middle of the quads. This will add another edge (and increase polys) so that you can move without losing as much detail.
Also, you may want to go to the ‘tools’ tab on the left, and change the shading to smooth, to get a better idea of what your mesh will look like ingame.
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STEP TEN
Now it’s up to you to finish your clothing!
FOR SIMS 4 -
I recommend @owl-plumbob​​’s tutorial for instructions on weight transferring, UV1 transferring and vertex painting (getting your mesh ready for ingame).
And I also recommend any of @theslyd​​‘s tutorials if you want to make your cc more high quality.
EXTRA
Feel free to contact me on tumblr, or go to my ask page if you have a problem. I’m welcome to help anybody with any issues (if I know how to fix them ;p).
If you need a video tutorial of this, because you prefer that, then as I linked earlier, use this video. This is where I got the original steps from but I changed them slightly so I suggest if you follow the video, to have this tutorial opened as well.
An alternative way to this method is this. I literally found this today and I haven’t tried it, but it looks like it might be quicker, however it still requires Maya. Just keep in mind, in the video they retopologize it by hand in Maya where you may want to retopo it in ZBrush (I would). Anyway, I’m thinking of trying this and if it’s good, I may make another tutorial on that.
If you don’t like this method/it’s not working for you, you can try -
This free alternative using a program called ‘Instant Meshes’ linked by @theslyd​
This ZBrush-only workflow (however the UV maps produced aren’t perfect).
Also this thread talks about both these other methods in some more detail.
Just do anything other than exporting from MD in quads (as this is super high poly and the topology isn’t even perfect) or decimating the mesh a lot (this RUINS the topology).
Anyway, that’s the tutorial. Sorry it’s so long, I’m sure you could compress it into 100 words but I get carried away easily, and I wanted to make it totally noob-proof, for people who have no clue how to use maya or zbrush- I wanted to make the tutorial I wanted a couple months ago ;)
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