After trying to line up a stock background, playing with motion blur depth of field and a few frustrating minutes looking for the node editor (I’m running 2.41 not CVS) I opted to composite my applely friend in Photoshop instead of doing it all in Blender. He’s on a hill overlooking the orchard. Ideally I’ll go out and take some bug’s-eye-view photos of an orchard into which I can place him.
Rendering a matching grass color was especially hard. I ended up making a color layer in photoshop, picking up the background grass color and painting it over the rendered grass. Being red-green color blind probably doesn’t help.
three lights: a sun with shadows, a greenish hemi-light and a behind the camera fill.
apple texture set to not accept shadows (his eyes and nose cast shadows that make him look old and tired)
Thanks. He’s the main character in a kids’ book so no animation is planned… I’ll admit the urge to try annimation is almost irresistable.
Re: textures
I looked at a bunch of posts here and tried some tutorials and the first apple I did had Pixar-like eyes, real apple texture and shadows on the skin. It came out looking creepy, not cute at all.
Because it’s for a kids’ book, I thought the simple texture looked better. I agree it could use a little something, though. I’ll experiment adding a little bump or cloud texture to him… as soon as I find a bump map tutorial <grin>. I clicked the mapping buttons I thought would do bumps and, well, they didn’t. Yikes!
<edit> I am rigging him for animation because it’s the easiest way to pose him. When I get him finished I’ll be sure to upload the blend file to the vault… or bank… repository! so others can play with it.
Anyways, I agree, this one looks like it comes out of a horror movie… I think you daughter will get frightened But nonetheless, it looks better now because it has more detail
I don’t know how easy it would be to change, but if his irises(??) (green parts of the eye) were bigger, he might also look a bit cuter.
The first one you posted, definitely looks more “cartoony” if that’s what you’re going for. You might want to try coloring his nose slightly differently than the rest of is face, and maybe big exaggerated eyebrows ?
Great to hear that you’ll upload him.
What’s the book about? Have you / are you going to create any other characters?
It’s a be-yourself, embrace diversity kind of ugly duckling story. A young, green apple, who doesn’t have any apple friends, explores and tries to find out who and what he is. There will be other fruit characters and maybe some insects, but I’m staying away from animals and humans - partly because of scale, it would be hard to have a cow and an apple interact in a single frame, and partly because they’re so much harder to make.
All of this came from something my three-year-old daughter asked me. “Dad, do you think the apples and bananas in our fruit bowl are friends?”
Does anyone know if Blender has been used to illustrate any published books yet?
For a children’s book character, this looks quite good. I would make the limbs a bit thicker though. Also, the leg on the left-hand side (from viewer’s perspective) either has inverted normals, or has been shadowed by something.
From what I’ve heard, there’s a guy called Nick Towers who has created artwork for picture books using Blender. See blendernation headlines and blender.org gallery for more info.
Granny Smith! Damn, why didn’t I think of that? <grin>
Ah, I thought the shadow on that leg was too dark. Thanks. Do the normals flip when you copy and mirror an object? The arms could probably be a little thicker. I’ll try that on the next test.
I looked up Nick Towers and remember seeing his work before. His site says he has plans to publish books which means either he hasn’t yet or hasn’t updated his site. I think the kids’ books (and shows) Miss Spider’s Sunny Patch and The Backyardigans are done on computer, but not with Blender.
I’ve added some bump to the apple body and made the nose, eyelids, and limbs a slightly different color. He’s also entirely composited in Blender now, no Photoshoping. When I tried to render a test at 50% size with the back buffer Blender crashes.
I love the idea of making an object like an apple a character, quite cool. In fact after I saw your first apple guy I wanted to model one. If anything, just to do an animation where he throws down his hands almost in the pose you have and says something like “I’m a f#$%&$!* apple”, that’d be awesome.
Keep it up, maybe work on the textures. Infact I recall a good apple texturing tutorial by one of the old blender users, can’t remember his nickname but he’s the guy who did the AirMan army guy model ages ago. T’was a nice tut on his texturing methods, might be worth checking out.
Very cool indeed. Perhaps though the teeth could be a little different. Maybe a “bar” of teeth instead of the individuals? It just seems a little spooky as is…like imagining biting an apple only to have it bite you back.
Yeah, you bite the apple and then you see that you bit it’s teeth and it yells at you and spits some teeth and blood, and then jumps out of your hand on to your neck and bites back… “The Killer Apples”. I like the one with it’s mouth closed, it looks more better in my opinion.
I hadn’t thought about bar teeth. That’s another great idea that’ll be the next test, for sure. And if keeps readers from taking YellowyGreen to a dark place, Katt and Maggot I’m looking in your direction <grin>, then so much the better.
Right now the title is “The Apple Who Thought He Was A Banana”. Once I have the main character modeled, I can make other apple characters based on him by changing shape, size, eyes, colors, and noses. I’m also starting a ladybug (easiest insect, I think) then maybe some ants or crickets. Finally, after I have renders of all of them I can submit them with the text to Harper-Collins, Penguin, Little Brown, etc. What started as a small part-time project has quickly grown. Blender-ing is very addictive. Thanks to all for your help.
But nonetheless, it looks better now because it has more detail 
