Hello !
Here is a new project made to practice various things …
The original idea was to focus on the hurricane, but it turns out I side tracked a lot on many other aspects. Also since we learn a lot from mistakes I made sure I did a bunch of them during the project so I was sure to fulfill my goal …
A few Stills
The creative tribulations
I started with a blocking of the scene to figure out the composition :
I though it would be fun to try some grease pencil to create rough shapes, and while the scene might look simple I spend a bunch of hours there tweaking those simple elements.
Then I worked on the main elements and did a few experimentation like automating branches animation and adding leaves on those GP objects. I decided to work in black and white to delay tackling light and colors since I would probably end up with something monochromatic and desaturated anyway. I also did that with animation, and retrospectively, I think I should have set a plan from the start even to stay B&W and static at this stage. That said that was less stuff to think about so it was still valuable.
Once I had the main elements I started refining them and added some details. On the overall I tweaked a lot the foreground vegetation to make it readable and avoiding too much visual noise.
On the tree leaves the goal was to have a flat shaded simple shape but introduce volume and details when lightning strikes. It was a bit of a struggle to set the values for all those elements but on the overall it went smooth.
Then I started to look into lighting, and I basically got back to block out stage to figure out stuff with as little elements as possible.
I also took advantage of my well established values and just use light to color elements at first. Then started to introduce local value and hue variations to push things further.
Needless to say I learned a lot about colors and watching a bunch of painting tutorials finally paid off, even if I feel only at the beginning of something. Anyway, I then brought back each element one by one and made sure they have the right color. I’m quite curious about how NPR/stylized artists manage between light and material colors, since I got the impression that it’s not the same approach compared to realistic stuff… If you have any leads ?
At some point I got there and liked the result quite a lot, but it felt to me that the background and foreground where from two different universe with their own visual language and lighting without any connection between both.
I think part of the reason was that in B&W with little lighting it kinda worked even if that was already there… But now I wasn’t sure if that would hold up in the end…
To fix this I decided to tweak the tornado and go with a back lighting. Here it’s completely faked by adding some gradients to make the sun, one spot on the tornado and one spot on the fence to have those 3 elements visually connected by a warm light.
Again I liked the direction this was taking but it looked a bit too joyful for the subject matter.
Therefore I tweaked the light a bit again, changed the overall hues with a mix of light , albedos and compositing … and I got something that addressed all the previous issues.
Anyway, next time I would definitely try to nail that down in the beginning to be on the right track from the start. I also tried to make a paint over with little success but I may have insisted even with my limited skills…
I’m not completely sure of the final colors and I think this is because I postponed too much the question so I made a lot of changes when I was already too deep into it so it was hard to take a step back.
And for animation, that was basically the same thing, when I work professionally I tend to nail that down first and I’ve been recalled why 
. It’s not that I don’t like the result, but I had to do big changes when it was more time for finishing stuff. IDK how much that shows in the end result, feel free to give thoughts especially since the goal here is to learn and improve. With those things clearly defined from the start I could have iterated more instead of trying to do last minute salvage stuff …
Technical Explorations
I think the video already covers most technical aspects :
It was fun working with grease pencil even though the way I use it, there is some overlap with curves, and they both have their pro and cons…
Also I found a way to boolean merge strokes and to average normals like if they where fused together.
To realize I forget to activate it on the render after uploaded the video
But it’s definitely something I’d like to explore more eventually …
Exploring vegetation was also quite fun on the overall. Even poorly painted plants did the trick ! And mixing shader and billboard animation was interesting !
I also went way over the board with those rain effects but since it’s for practice they served their purpose and that’s probably going to be reused in a few projects as well !
Conclusion
If you took the time to read through I’m super curious to get your feedback and if you have any tips or resources about how you handle stylized/npr lighting when there is a strong emphasis on lighting like here. I definitely lack some methodology and loose myself a bit between lights, albedo and compositing which are 3 different place to work that. Which is great but it’s a lot of jumping around to get things right and they can contradict themselves also…
Finally I’m having the feeling there is still some room for refinement in many areas, but the experiment served it’s purpose and I’ll try to digest and apply what I learned on a new subject eventually !!
Thanks for reading and happy to discuss that further !
I think it looks fantastic. Love the stylization and I always appreciate the breakdowns. 
