Hi! I started this project a year ago. I didn’t know how to use Blender, so I made extensive use of the large amount of excellent tutorials that populate the web, and decided to go for a cartoonish-looking style, avoiding photorrealism as goal, as I had learnt from previous experience how time-consuming it can be! I gave Freestyle, Blender’s NPR plug-in, a shot, and didn’t come disappointed. It works really good, and it’s being upgraded with new functions almost every month.
I do visuals, audio, music, and everything in between! It’s a lot of work, but I think it’s worth it. There’ll be a new episode every month, and it can be a sketch or a music video, depending on what I’ve come out with. Hope you like it!
Thank you, XeroShadow. I’m glad that you like it. Gorillaz inspired me a lot visually, and The Beatles musically. Let’s hope that my band gets at least a fraction of these bands’ success and attention. I’ll settle for that!!
You should harden out the shadows to about .05 to make that comic-ish book shading more abundant. That and you should not actually make the cel shading lines black. Make it blue and as close to black as possible so there is a differentiation between The shadow and the outline (either that or get rid of the line rendering all together). Overall I thought it was real good though.
Thank you for those tips, AfroSnackey! NPR rendering isn’t always predictable, and there are also post-filters like halos and chromatic aberrations that I’ve put because they add some “atmosphere” to the renders, but they “mud up” the result and make it less controllable. Anyway, I’ll try to be more specific with light and shadow areas, so the image reads better, and I’ll definitely try that bluish outline color change while making the next video.
Hey, first of all: great job!!!
I wont discuss technical aspects of your work, I will only say that it is amazing that you alone did all that job: modelling, texturing, rigging, animation and not to mention making all the sounds/music.
I wonder … what music instruments have u used to record the sound?? do u have a music studio at home?
Thank you Thedral! Yes, I found myself into a lot of trouble while doing this, but at least technology these days allow us to do it! I spent about two months researching and figuring out which tools could help me out better. Fortunately, I found Blender and Freestyle, the latter being possibly the best outline renderer out there right now! Then it was time to learn, 'cause I had never used Blender. Without almost noticing it, a year has past… (Also, I guess having worked for 15 years as a 3D visualization artist has helped a great deal, too!)
As for music, I have an audio interface, which is an ASIO external sound card with low latency. It allows me to plug mics and analog instruments. I’ve used a condenser mic, an acoustic guitar and a Fender Telecaster electric guitar (analog instruments), and a USB MIDI keyboard to play synths, including drums and all kinds of different VST instruments (digital sample instruments triggered by the keyboard at various pitches). The place where I record is a regular apartment room, nothing fancy, but I have newly installed windows and my neighbourhood is very quiet, which helps with recording!:eyebrowlift:
well, I think that the legs look right, they look quite cartoonish/anime. The only thing I notice a bit weird about the legs is when the character squats on top of the little planet. That part of the animation looksa bit odd to me
You’re probably right. I might have relaxed myself, trusting that the camera was too far away for the viewer to notice any defect. I’ll have to sharpen my knife for new upcoming videos. BlenderArtists are tough and alert!!:eek:
I like it! The visuals are really good, and coming from someone who has just recently started Blender, it’s encouraging to see how far you came in one year WHILE doing the music for it!
Thank you, Link01000! I actually started off with the music, and then I thought of the cartoon band as a means to promote it. I found this idea was the perfect excuse to learn Blender, and found out that version 2.5 had been released. UI and interface were top-notch, and Freestyle is probably the best software to render outlines! Also, Blender community is very active, and you can learn everything about the program, because there are video tutorials everywhere…
