This 1-minute short served multiple purposes, but I thought I'd have fun making it while learning and refining both our tools and the new modern workstation that was recently funded entirely by our loyal fans! Mainly, the short was made to:
- Crash-test the new character rigs in order to pinpoint any potential needed improvements. I don't feel just moving the character in place is enough to really know whether character animation concepts in 3d actually work in a production. Sometimes a character rig may seem nice at a glance... but it falls apart when trying to finish a project with it. Too much automation can actually hold character animation back!
- Try out some new character modeling methods... visuals have always been a weak point in Delura's overall production and I hope the new workstation will help us to bring things up to par in that department... if only to find ways to soften lighting, get cleaner texture maps, and improve the poly flow of character models.
- See how quickly an animated short could be produced using modern hardware. This short required about 3 days to animate, 1 day of lighting/FX, 1 day audio. This is actually slower than I'd like things to be; my previous character rigs allowed for 60 seconds of character animation in a day but they had to be re-constructed due to the transition from a 32-bit to a 64-bit operating system.
Anyhow, that's it for now. Expect some more Tanadrine Studios goodness on Newgrounds over the coming months! Ever since NG added the ability to upload video, I've absolutely loved it here... I mean my god the users actually give useful feedback (good and bad!) :)
th1rt3en
Now that you've got better tools and technology, I think you should really start focusing on the visual aspect of the series. Things like blocking and color theory; your color choices don't really blend well together and much of the time don't tell me anything visually. Ideally, every visual element you use should be some sort of motif, or symbolism, or at least there for a specific reason.
Remember that one 'behind the scenes' short you did where your character winced at the mention of social media, and everything turned dark, and red, and crooked? That directly set the mood through visuals alone. Do more of that all around and you'll be able to convey many more things a lot more clearly.
Good job on your improvements so far and keep up the hard work!
Tanadrine-Studios (Updated )
Thanks! I totally agree with the colors and will try and gradually get things up to par in that area. I do still need to replace my video editor as my current one has zero support for masking and color adjustment, but in the meantime I'll do my best to utilize a combination of Blender's compositing tools (robust, but slow as hell) and trying to get it right in 3d space.
On the upside, I can actually view lights in opengl now... it does help a lot! There's also a lot of tools I have access to now that my old computer couldn't even handle, so there is a bit of unexplored territory here.