Day 35 - Part 1, Building Done
I am really happy with how this looks
Granted, it still needs ground/trees/background, but those are all very weak areas for me. I’m going to try and do that in pure 2D because I need practice and 2D vegetation always looks better.I did quite a bit of post-processing using the multilayer EXR format and Affinity Photo (I’m sorry, @Charles_Weaver , I will get around to darktable eventually, I just know my way around Affinity so I default to that). This is what it looked like before Affinity:
What did I learn?
SO much about procedural texturing- this is without a doubt the best procedural texturing I’ve ever done, and the closest to the painted look I was going for. I really need to thank @sozap here- it’s essential to use their layering approach for this effect. Every material has at least three layers. Each layer has at least two sublayers- one for converting light to a black-and-white range, and one for adding randomized color to that light. If anyone wants to learn more, let me know, and I’ll see if I can pare it down and share it
Music
Estuans interius ira vehementi Sephiroth!
As promised, I finished the FFVIIR OST - and immediately started it again because I love it. I’m going to go on a brief tangent about One-Winged Angel- every time I listen to it, I’m fascinated by the cultural impact it’s had. FFVII came out originally in 1997, and every video game since has drawn inspiration for its “big bad” theme from One-Winged Angel. Seriously, listen to One-Winged Angel and you’ll be able to think of dozens of clearly inspired songs from video games. It’s the video game score equivalent of Hans Zimmer’s The Dark Knight score. (Every action/adventure movie since 2008 has wanted to sound like The Dark Knight, and you know I’m right.)
What especially makes this interesting to me is the inspirations for One-Winged Angel- Nobuo Uematsu has said in interviews that the three main inspirations were the theme from Jaws, the famous violin motif from Psycho, and The Imperial March from Star Wars. Three of the most popular and culturally relevant movies of all time, in other words. Thus, three things that had a huge impact on society influenced something that had a huge impact on society 
Personal News
I think I got a head start on my cold, I’m feeling probably 50% better and I can tell I’ll be fine by tonight or tomorrow. Time to update my BA status (I’m seriously delighted by this, now all we need is GIF signatures for all our posts and we’ll really have mastered the art of the forum 
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