I have look into a few animations on how their 2D environment is done. Most notably Makoto Shinkai’s amazing work. According to “The Making of 5 Centimeters Per Second” booklet from the DVD, Makoto Shinkai’s team actually went around to take photo and paint on top of it with color scheme pick by Makoto Shinkai himself.

I had done a few test using similar method to see how the background art will look like. Some look good, some look bad.

The first test I did is not that bad. I also added a subtle outline on the street light to give it a more anime feel. The street light and sky were also separate in different layers, so it can be animate easily later.

I went a bit adventurous on the second painting by changing the color scheme. It didn’t end up that great as it seem too monotone and weird.

For the third test, I just color pick the original colors from the photo and paint over it. Then, replaced the dark sky from the photo with a nice sunset color. In my view, this definitely look better than if I would pick my own color.

Overall, I think my painting is still lack of some details. And I need to find a way to blend the 3D characters into the 2D environment later. I had done more paintings and composite them into a video. Enjoy.

Introduction

This project was meant to be a TV series animation proposal, so there will be some unpolish area as we were rushing this out. A brief intro about this animation can be read at Aidi’s blog.

The story follows the adventures of a boy and a space whale as they visit the many amusing planets of another galaxy.

Concept Art

Below are some of the early concept art I quickly done. Another piece of concept art can be view at my deviantart page, Whale Galaxy.

3D Model and Animation

My contribution on 3D modeling and animation was minimal in this project. I only model the flower robot, Tulip and some random items using Blender which later to be import and rig in 3DSMax using CATMotion.

Compositing

My main task on this project was compositing. Below are some of the before and after comparison shots.

Probably a video of before and after will show better what I really did.

The Animation

Below is the youtube link for the animation. Hope you enjoy it. Comments are always welcome.

Finally, the finalist for IPCC 2010 was announced earlier today. Sadly, our animation was not shortlisted. But this is still an interesting project for me because it is the first 3D animation that I had worked on.

Introduction

As I am not a good with words and story telling, I will just copy the brief description about Mesinaut written by Aidi in his blog post.

Mesinaut is a story about two very different robots who became unlikely friends during their journey to escape their besieged planet and in the course of their travels they discover the truth behind the attacks. The duo encounters a scenario that they must solve in order to resume their journey across the desert planet. The small robot acts as the thinker while the big robot acts as the muscle.

Concept Art

The character designs for this animation were done by 3 different person. Aidi, Daim and me. Below are the concept arts colored by me.

This is the big robot design by me. Originally it was a clean and simple robot but was change later on to have a more construction feel on it. I would like to redesign this if we win the IPCC 2010. But since we didn’t even manage to get shortlisted, so it will remain like this for now.

This smaller robot was design by Daim (Aidi’s cousin who is currently working in an animation studio at Japan). As you can see in his sketch, the “brain” part is removable and there is a CD spinning in the head when the robot start to think

This is the evil robot design by Aidi. Green color was chosen by Aidi to give it a more “military” feel.

What I did?

As I was always sidetrack to do some other projects, my contribution on this animation is actually quite limited. Things that I did were:

• 3DSMax CATMotion Rigging.
• Model a simple cargo container with Blender.
• Animate the starting scene when Resbot(White Robot) runaway from Tripod(Big Bad Green Robot). (First 13 seconds)
• Post-editing work. effects, sky, camera wiggle, sound and music (content pack purchase online).

Top image is a render from 3DSMax. Below is the final render after editing in AfterEffects. Due to lack of time, we didn’t texture the robot properly.

The Animation

Below is a youtube link for the animation. Hope you enjoy it. Comments are always welcome.

Vue Render

Company purchase a copy of Vue recently for an upcoming project. So, I play around with it with the Conbot model. I must say if I got my hand on Vue earlier, the terrain in the animation will look a lot better.