What I tell myself everyday.

To all the people watching, I can never ever thank you enough for the kindness to me, I'll think about it for the rest of my life. All I ask is one thing, and this is.. I'm asking this particularily of young people that watch: Please do not be cynical. I hate cynicism - for the record it's my least favorite quality, it doesn't lead anywhere. Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard and you're kind, amazing things will happen. I'm telling you, amazing things will happen." - Conan 'O'Brien

November 18, 2007

Ridiculously Good CG modellers



Peter Syomka
http://syomka.cgsociety.org/gallery/




Lee JinWoo
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=43&t=307349&page=1&pp=15

October 26, 2007

Finished sunset.



This is the finished Sunset.

Final is 7k 180 degree panoramic.

Great learning excerise.

October 18, 2007

Photoshop sunset Painting tips

This is the final image.


This is a newer wip...



Below is a simple compilation of steps basically for reminding myself (getting old) the steps I did. I always just fudge along until sometime works and den totally forget it the next day. And its getting tedious. Anyone seeing this, if u got some tips, pls comment.

- Breakdown into background, midGround and foreground.

- Use different flat colors and layers to differenciate them for a start.

- Using different colors and gradient tool, adjust saturation and opacity to give the image some subtle color changes.

- Use Soft brush with Shape Dynamics. Use broad Strokes to lighten section of sky. Again just to introduce some difference in density in the sky.

- Add far clouds on new layer.

- USe custom brush that is soft and cloud-like..... Pay attention to where the light source is. Also paint contrastingly to light the clouds from background. E.g light on dark, orange on blue. Use Low opacity(like 20% and below) on brush and build up gradually.

-Remember to maintain the illusion of volume of the clouds.

- Use color dodge to get the strong rays of light hitting the clouds

- If you fail to paint manually or is a lazy git, photo manipulation with cut and paste saves you a lot of time. But the rules above the apply in terms of colors and how light works

- Reference, reference and more reference.

- IMPORTANT! Be careful of the range of colors used. As intense as a sunset is, the colors are fairly consistent. Eg. The strong highlights should all be the same hue. But as the sunlight travels further into more atmostphere. The color gets redder and less intense.

Below is an earlier attempt that was quite simply fugly. For your amusement on how not to paint a sunset.

Painting Clouds Tutorial.

http://www.geocities.com/~jlhagan/lessons/arialpersp4.htm
Great tutorial about how to paint the shapes of clouds.


http://painting.about.com/cs/paintingknowhow/ht/Howto_Clouds.htm
this one is about the different types of clouds


http://www.steeldolphin-forums.com/htmltuts/cloud_tut.html


http://www.androidblues.com/cloudtut.html


http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=260976

and these are just different techniques

Sunset painting theory science.

1st some simple science lessons that I really should have research before I started out.

- The atmosphere of Earth is made up of particles that filters white light.

- When the sun is overhead, the sky appears blue because the light is filtered, allowing the short wavelengths in the color specturm to be visible.

- When the sun is setting or raising, the light have to travel a further distance. Therefore it is the thickest amount of atmosphere the light have to pass through than at any other time during the day.

- This causes the short wavelengths to become scattered and deflected as the rays pass across the curved surface of earth.

- The sky is then slowly illuminated with longer light waves; yellow, orange and red. Sunrise are usually less intense because the air particles settle during the night.

- Under certain conditions, like after heavy rain, the sunsets can be bluer whereas in polluted cities or low lying cloud, they often become redder. It all depends on the density of air particles and distance the light have to travel.

- The thicker the atmosphere the deeper the red. Thinner atmostphere will produce orange, then even thinner, golds and finally yellows.

- The red light sometimes strikes the underside of the clouds directly overhead and turns them red, yellow and orange depending on the wave lengths of light that have managed to penetrate the earth's atmosphere.

-Before the sun completely sets, the light travels up the atmosphere, there is less particles there. Which is why, you can still see some blues.

Above is just simple color gradient demostrating the different type of atmostphere.

U can read more about the theory below.

http://www.geocities.com/~jlhagan/lessons/arialpersp2.htm

real transformers





sweet......

October 12, 2007

Kazuo Oga Art Collection Gallery in french



Another french site (yes.. they do like their japanese stuff.) with quite a extensive galleries from Kazuo Oga Art Collection artbook.
Kazuo Oga is a art director and primary Background Artist for many Studio Ghibli films. His quality of work is quite amazing.... The color palette of his paintings reflects perfectly the mood of the movies.

If anyone else have good reference of his artWork, please let me know. There is a remarkable lack of good japanese anime background painting.

French Website about Japanese Super Robots

Came across this really cool french website with quite a bit of in depth article and pictures of about the evolution of the Japanese Super Robots.

The translated version is http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=fr&u=http://artslivres.com/ShowArticle.php%3FId%3D443%26Title%3DCESSE%2BPhilippe%2B-%2BRobots%2Bet%2Binconscient%2Bcollectif%2BI&sa=X&oi=translate&resnum=1&ct=result&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dhttp://artslivres.com/ShowArticle.php%253FId%253D443%2526Title%253DCESSE%252BPhilippe%252B-%252BRobots%252Bet%252Binconscient%252Bcollectif%252BI%26hl%3Den%26safe%3Doff%26sa%3DG

The translation is quite readable.


They have loads more pages about Super Robots as well as on the Tokusatsu genre.
Below are some of the translated links

October 11, 2007

Iso Mitsuo's work on End of Evangelion.

I just realised from Mr Vong's website that the director of Denno Coil - Iso Mitsuo also did the battle sequence between Asuka and the MPEs in End of Evangelion. That whole sequence really left a huge impression on me. I am glad I finally can have a name to the sequence.

http://halcyonrealms.com/anime/denno-coil/

I think he kinda of introduced a realistic type of animation into the anime but at the same time using only keyposes.
Check out the video below. (Warning - its 9mins long)



here is a compliation of his older works together




I found a anipages Overview of him at http://www.pelleas.net/aniTOP/index.php?title=mitsuo_iso


Really cool stuff.


Two 50-Year Careers. Two Different Stories

http://animationguildblog.blogspot.com/2007/07/two-50-year-careers-two-different.html

Great write up at TAG Blog about 2 different career in the animation industry.

excerpts

"The animation business -- like most of the entertainment biz -- is cold, uncaring, and often brutal. One year it showers you with money and tells you what a fabulous talent you are; the next year it doesn't return phone calls. And you're on unemployment wondering what the hell happened.

I know it's not like this for everybody. Sometimes God smiles down while you're still in the womb and gifts you with monster talent. And sometimes the career ball bounces just right and you are standing in the proper doorway in front of the key supervisor at the correct time. And sometimes you work your tail off 24/7 and expand your career universe that way.
If you've got huge amounts of talent or luck, maybe you don't need a frenetic work ethic. Conversely, a big passion for work could mean you don't need as much of the other two things.
But face it. Most human beings don't end up precisely where they expected. Or wanted. Excrement, as the wise man says, occurs. Which is why it's crucial to save and participate in pension plans, mandatory to push your learning curve upward at every point of your career, and crucial to run your professional life like you're in the regional finals of a popularity contest."

"Not everybody gets the breaks, not everyone has a skill set that's continually marketable (with a personality to match), not everyone makes the right choice when there's a crucial fork in life's road. Yet I kind of believe the champion golfer Sam Snead, who once remarked after a major tournament win: "Yeah, I had some luck out there today. But I've found out that the harder I work, the luckier I get."

I think that last quote really nails it on the head.

October 5, 2007

TAG Blog: Cashing Out

TAG Blog: Cashing Out

Really good read.

This article got me thinking......

Sustaining in this industry can be really quite challenging and stressful. Especially locally. For those in their 30s and thinking of retirement, its well worth a read.

Even if you are just starting work in the industry and not so great pay. It could be time to plan a bit ahead.

an excerpt

"Now I've been in and around the 'toon business long enough to know that it ebbs and flows, that the $150,000 you make one year can drop to $50,000 (or less) the next, and there's often not a hell of a lot you can do about it. Your contacts dry up. The studio you've been counting on suddenly has half its normal quota of shows, and all of a sudden a secretary you don't know asks you to take a storyboard test.
It's at times like these that artists mutter: "Screw it. There's got to be something better."
"

Ok...... May not don't get that kind of money locally.. But then here standard of living not so high.

September 25, 2007

The finished painting

So after farting around for many hours.... this is wat I got....


I had great difficulties with painting the feel of volume of the clouds. So I cheated with images of real clouds layered on top. Hiaz....will keep experimenting.

Things I realised (painfully)

- Take note the direction of the light

- There is keylight and also Fill/bounce light!

- Organise and Paint in Layers. e.g background clouds, midground, foreground.

- Colors of the clouds have to be consistent. I had too much contrast and color variation.

- Paint Loose.... I was too tight in my strokes..

- Know what you want! I could not decide the feel of the painting. I could not decide whether to paint realistic or painterly and the detail as well was a problem...

7.) Its all about lighting and shadows....

Until next time.