RE:RE:Yoli's Project Update

Hi Yoli,

I like your new reference. It all has a very soft feel to it. Textures are subtle, and look more like a bump than a colour texture. The models also have a chunky textural feel to them. The highlights are soft and seem to glow and the colours overall are saturated. You are not getting this across in your painted over examples, so I would keep working towards that goal.

I made quite a few suggestions to do with the colours and the focus in the last post, I can only re-iterate what I wrote before. The green you have chosen for the faces recedes into the background. I feel that this is your biggest problem, and the route to solving it involves changing both the background and the character colours. Different hues have different temperatures. Hot colours jump forward over cold colours. If your set on using green for the faces, try different greens to see what will help to make your character noticeable. This led me to Pixar’s short ‘Lifted’ because the main characters are also green. Also notice how the textures on the character are not distracting, but add interest. You are using a noise type texture, which looks messy and it adds nothing to your character. I recommend you re-think this texture, remove it or if you have time, paint something more interesting. I painted over your example again, to show you how the green can jump out at you when you use colours to help it along.

There is little you can do in lighting until you are at a point where you are happy with your characters shading. Look into using sub-surface scattering (SSS) for the characters skin. Skin is translucent, (ever tried putting a torch against your cheek or hands?), and some light is absorbed, scattered and re-emitted. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsurface_scattering This will give you that believable skin glow look you are after, especially on those thin areas like the ears. Then use rim light to make him stand out, and match your reference better. For a more tactile look, use bump maps or displacement shaders to catch the light.

You need to consider what mood you want in your animation. I would be surprised if you haven’t seen this animation from 1999 by Victor Navone. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=duOoqDu2H70

Not only is the animation great, he has used lighting really well to show off the mood of the song. At the beginning the song speaks of fear of being alone, and the lighting reflects that with a single blue spotlight, a simple but brilliant way of showing overwhelming sadness in a dramatic way. Then as the song moves into the chorus the lighting changes to liven the mood, even with the flashing lights, using a black background means that it is not distracting from the animation. It is no wonder this guy got a job at Pixar. Having a basic understanding of all different areas in computer animation and being able to use those skills to enhance your own projects really gets you noticed in the industry.

Back to your render. On the last image you said that the purple is working well with the orange. Personally I can’t see any orange or purple, and I don’t really see how it is working together at all. I can see mauve, a dirty yellow, a dark yellowy green and a dark red. Pastel colours have less contrast than vibrant ones, and look better surrounded by more pastel colours. Try using the colour picker and taking colours from one of your reference images to use when painting over your render, see the comparisons I have made.

Even though there are six different versions, they all look very similar to me, washed out and unfocused. Remember it is not just the colours you use but how you juxtaposition them that creates or removes contrast. Your images have the wrong kind of contrast, as you have not taken into consideration my comments on shot focus. It is worth spending time getting this right, as I have mentioned in the Deli project posts, your animation will work better if you have lighting and shading that complements it.

Hope this helps you get back on track. Let me know how you get on.

Tessa