There is just one simple thing I will ask from all of you:
Since many of the channels are Patreon exclusive (all of the fun ones đ), I need you to private message me here on Patreon with your Discord username when you join.
This way, I can grant you Role access to these servers :)
Also if anyone knows a better way of doing this (eg: how to grant automatic entry into a Role via a specific link) would be great!
As I mentioned in a prior post, I'll be doing work reviews, sharing more casual day-to-day drawings, and I'll occasionally stream whatever I'm working on! This may be paintings, or animations.
I will make a post if I'm sure about a specific time for a future work stream, however some may just be off the hook. (Expect a work stream post this week)
I'm excited to get this server rolling, and I'll see you all in there!
Okay, I've got something super cool for all of you...
The next piece is special, and very different from everything I've done up to now.
I'm calling it Bear Dreams.
Still within the sub 1-minute category of my shorts, and categorized best as experimental horror; a genre that I've never worked in before.
While this piece has a long way to go, I've attached an extremely rough pass of motion capture that I took. It'll soon be mapped to a new variation of my rig that I will share.
I'll be posting a lot more very soon on it:
New rig updates, key light paintings, concept art, and the artist that I'll be collaborating with for the background matte painting!
Keep your eyes peeled for a Discord server coming soon, too ;)
I'm sharing today something really cool. I've recently begun taking a course held by the artist on Instagram, known as @papa.png
I've been a huge fan of his style, and wanted to figure out how I can push my work to be more experimental while still being globally appealing.
After a few weeks of his class, this has been my first "final" painting. It didn't take particularly long, and is quite messy, but shows a lot that I've learned so far.
You'll see that I also included a few 3D environments in the second image...
This is because he has pushed us to create out characters and environment in 3D as a way to find compositions and get an early grasp on perspective.
It's something I've done from time to time, but will surely be doing more often in the future.
I'll be sure to share the next few ones, and I hope you enjoy!
I'm making this post to see if anyone would be interested in sharing our time on a Discord server :)
While just opening up Discord alone can make me feel like a senior citizen, I think it would be worth taking the time to build a space for this community.
Here's some cool ideas for it that I've been jotting down!
Could be a place for me to just drop in what I'm working on during my day-to-day.
Not a full post, just small snippets of sketches or thumbnails
Servers for you to share drawings, works, 3D or Blender pieces, really anything that you're creating!
I'd love to have this be a 2-way mirror so I can comment and share my thoughts or critiques on your work as well.
The server would include voice channels that I can hang out in while I'm working, just to chat or answer question, share my screen, or explain processes as I go!
If anyone has experience with Discord, I would be extremely grateful for your help, and please comment below either...
If you would be interested in having this kind of thing,
Or other ideas for the server!
This would be for all of us collectively, so please share interest if you'd want this!
For Sunsets, I had mentioned awhile back that I'm collaboratingââin concept and executionââwith another artist.
This artist is George Varodi! I know some of you are familiar with his work and have even worked with him on his current animated film, but he is best known for doing layout on the works of Alberto Mielgo.
The painting you see above is done by him!
George and I met in Cannes about a year ago when I invited him as my guest to a large annual film festival, and we have become good friends since.
I met him in New York earlier this year, and we wanted to create a short piece of animation together in preparation for a larger piece that we are co-writing.
This
is how the concept behind Sunsets came to be! It was his photos from a restaurant in the country of Georgia that inspired the background.
While I am focusing entirely on the 3D side, George is working on the background painting that will be implemented into the scene.
The painting is not yet finished, but I wanted to share the WIP so far.
I'm excited to share the final piece when it's complete, and I encourage you to check out his work on Instagram at @georgevarodi !
After completing the motion capture about a month ago, I handed my animation off to Dylan de Kock (an animator at Steamroller who messaged me on Instagram to animate a piece).
He has spent the last 2-3 weeks polishing the mocap, adding face and lipsync, prop constraints, etc,
Then the last 2 days I have spent taking a pass of my own to adjust and tweak his animation.
Overall, I'd like to say it works quite well.
Things have begun moving into Blender and the new animation is re-set up. Now all that needs to happen is a small pass on the camera, finishing the background painting, and we'll be rendering this thang!
I managed to get most of the piece's character layer rendered out (on frame step of 5, so only every 5th frame) and composited it with the sound.
It's early, but it really gives you an idea for how your piece works, and you can take note of what there is to fix!
Obviously the animation is temporary, so we'll be focusing on the compositing side.
For example: After seeing this, 2 things stuck out to me
In the light, the lips are far too pink and not red enough.
Solution: Create a render layer with an alpha mask of the lips that i can independently adjust with a Hue/Saturation/Brightness node
There is too much noise in the faint yellow and green rim lights
Solution: I want some noise, but not a lot. So I'll render out those lights separately, that way I can control it more independently. Once I have the light on its own layer, I'll duplicate the layer, make one the noisy light and one denoised, then put them into a mix node and adjust the weight to be more leaned towards denoised, but not 100%. Finally, I can overlay that onto my character layer.
It's not done, but it's close. I hope to have this piece finished by the end of next week, and I'll be sure to share more before then!!
I find that every now-and-then, I need to change the background of my phone wallpaper, or get a new fashion style.
Same goes for art, I think. I can't do the same kinds of drawings forever without getting tired and needing to stretch my (metaphorical) legs.
That's why I want to start moving away from pen and trying pencil more, but it also means re-learning a new way to draw. I can't approach pencil sketching with the same mentality as pen, nor do I want to continue drawing the same subject matters.
So here's to the beginning of many more pencil drawings, and to never becoming stiff in our art.
So it's been a busy couple few days. Probably spent more time on Instagram than I should have, but it's for a good reason:
I jumped from 25k to almost 65k (Probably 70 by tomorrow)
And I won't sit here and talk about how it's all about
CONSISTENCY!!!!!
and
HARD WORK AND SACRIFICE!!!!!!!!
because like, it's not.
In fact, I haven't posted in a month or 2 until just a few days ago. Because as I learned, it doesn't seem to be about posting just to post. It's about posting with intention, using little tricks that I'm sharing in this post.
Trial. Reels.
"What are trial reels?" Ok so here's the problem with Instagram: You post a reel, and it gets 5000 views. Amazing! But unless you go viral, 85% of those viewers are your existing followers. So in this example, only about 750 of those 5000 are watching with the possibility of following you.
This is where trial reels come in handy. They show only to people that do not follow you. This means that all 5000 view of those viewers are watching with the intention of following you. It's an option to let you test a reel before sharing with your followers, but this option is essential to how I grew my audience by 40k.
These reels do not appear on your page to the public, and are only shared to viewers who do not know you. This way, if you posted more than one, they don't take up space on your page.
Time-specific Trends
Use trends that force viewers to wait to get a result. This is because Instagram prioritizes time spent watching a reel over hashtags, type of post, view count. So using text first with a payoff, like "art vs artist" or "my art as a kid vs now" are key.
For my reel that went viral, I used a trend that said, âthis reel had no tags. If it finds you, my animations are for you.â
I was recommended this by another artist who it worked for, but I would vouch for diversity in your trends over posting the same more than once.
So how did I get from 25 to 65k? 3 days ago, I posted a reel using the new trial reel feature with this type of trend using my short animations as a pay-off. It picked up, and since audiences had to wait to get a result, it continued to push and push this reel. Then since those who saw it and followed will no longer see my trial reels, I posted a second yesterday that also did well because Instagram did not repeat viewers.
I really believe that trial reels, if taken advantage of, should be your new way of posting almost every reel. Eventually you could share it to your own page, but you definitely don't have to.
I can go more in depth on general guidelines for how to post, how I chose what type of posts to make, and more "social media growth advice" if this is a topic that would interest all of you!
I knew this would be the hardest part of my new piece, titled Sunsets.
When I started on this test, I wanted it to feel completely different than my other pieces. But after almost 2 weeks of work, I wanted to share the progress and how I got to this point.
My first step was
Putting together a Pinterest board of visual references that inspired me.
These could be related or unrelated images, from media, paintings, other existing animations. Anything that (when combined together) would create your vision for the style.
After that
I created a simply lit 3D render in Blenderââmy second image.
My objective wasn't hyperrealism or trying to recreate the Pinterest reference board, but instead having a realistic lighting setup for the environment and tone.
The animation isn't complete yet so I'm working on creating a functioning single image before having this work while moving.
From here I started learning and watching videos on Blender's Compositing Editor.
Normally I would use After Effects to composite, but I think being able to share this workflow in a free software like Blender would be easier to understand if I ever made tutorials on some of the techniques that I used.
There is a lot going on node-wise and probably more simple ways to get the same effect, but it's really just iterating on iterations, reworking and trying again, to carve out a result that I like.
Very soon I will have to deal with how this works in movement, since there are some projected images that follow the camera and not the character. But, that's a problem for future-Alexander.
I'll continue to share as I go, and let me know if you'd want to see tutorials on the things that I learned while creating this result!
I'm posting this with my fingers crossed that none of you watch the video and ask,
"But, where's the motion capture footage? Are we not allowed to see you in the suit doing the performance? With what can we compare the 3D animation to?"
Unfortunately, no...I will not be sharing the footage of myself acting. I had recorded it with the intention to share, but I cannot think of any amount of money that would make me post myself in a tight suit, no socks (bare dawgs, uncensored, out on the floor) and my hair looking like a rat's nest.
I mean, I can think of an amount of money, but not one that any of you would pay...
So instead, I'm sharing this.
The motion capture, bound to the rig, with just a very rough pass to avoid some clashing of limbs in the body.
I'd like to know, do any of you plan to use motion capture? Would you be interested in a video tutorial on how to take a rig and bind your own mocapââor free mocap data from the internetââto create an animation?
Please let me know, and I would be happy to make one!
This is the new model for my piece, which i'm now calling
Sunsets
Okay not a great name, but I prefer to give something short and code-name esque to these sub 1-min animations than some full blown title.
And, the script.
So this piece is, visually, quite simple. A woman in a dark room pours herself a drink, takes off her heels, and sits back in a couch. But as we watch the piece, we listen to her monologue.
This is very different from the rest of my pieces and for good reason: we shouldn't be kept to the same descriptors of our work. We need to always be pushing boundaries, asking questions, and seeing what the next move will be for our art.
So rather than a no-dialogue piece, showing different rooms, camera moves, lighting changes, and sound fx heavy (Big Fire), i'm doing something that carries itself solely in a simple monologue of a single character.
Here is that monologue:
I have this memory of a sunset, so perfect.
I stood on the beach and watched until the sky was dark.
But I canât remember when or where this was. What ownership can you claim over a memory without context? What value does it have over a dream?
I keep looking for the rest of it. Iâve replayed my life over and over, but it sits in excess.
Do I deserve to have witnessed something so beautiful?
Or maybe by forgetting, Iâve lost the right to call it mine.
When I realized I wanted to have her speak a story in this piece, I was completely lost. But this idea came to me because I truly have a lonesome memory like this of the kind of sunset you see once in your life, and often scrape the years I've lived trying to find it's context.
It will always be more genuine and lead to less questions and confusion when art comes from your own life, so I will always recommend this approach.
I hope you're all excited to see the finished product like I am!
I'm going to create a much deeper video on this in the next few days, but I wanted to share with you a very big problem I hit in my new piece, and the (only somewhat convoluted) solution I found to get around it.
The Problem
The other artist on this piece had a folder of pictures he took that I wanted to use in this piece, however it was an assortment of random photos that I couldn't easily stitch together.
The Goal
My plan was to have an HDRI of the environment matched up to a 3D set, where I could have a camera pan through the scene and follow a character. However without a 3D scan, or more intentional photo taking, it seemed impossible.
The Solution
I was of course able to figure this out. But it wasn't without effort. I ended up creating 3 FSpy files (a free software that I featured in the Masterclass #01) and made a set that matched up to all 3 exactly; something like a middle ground.
This is kind of convoluted to write, which is why I want to create a short video showing the entire process and how I reached the end goal of having a set that is 1:1 with the photos. While the set looks very simple, the goal of it is simply to have the shadows be rendered out, and placed on the HDRI (which will be painted over).
Let me know if any other parts of this process interest you to see in the video, and I'll include them!
I'm not advocating giving up on pieces, but there is a time and a place to do this,
and I lead by example.
What do I mean by that?
Well, I've scrapped my idea for Who Am I Now.
There's 2 reasons I've done this.
When I went to NYC in hopes of polishing the idea with a very good friend and well-known animation director, the ideas just...clashed.
We couldn't agree on much at all, and it ended in a messy compromise of our ideas.
The piece was stretching to be well over a minute, 3 shots, confused, overly complicated, and just too much.
To be honest, I knew it wasn't right in the first place.
It was a couple different ideas that all felt decently strong, but didn't excite me.
And we all know that animation takes too damn long to start a piece that doesn't excite you, no matter how complex.
But i've got good news,
Moving on means picking your feet from the mud and walking on stable ground.
You don't need to piece together the same ideas any longer, and often times, this leads you to amazing, new ideas.
Which is exactly what happened.
The other director and I spent 2 days thinking this piece to death, and 10 minutes after we decided to kill the idea, we came up with something simpler, more clear, and more inspiring than we could've hoped for.
This new idea is completely unrelated, fresh, simple, and makes me want to tuck in and work on it. And at the end of the day, that's the element that gets a piece done fastest.
I'm going to be sharing tons of content and new workflows from it asap, and I hope this helps remind you that sometimes, beating an idea to death is not the solution. Try to consider other avenues, and be open to taking 1 step back, to take 2 steps forward!
I want to share something with you that I've been working on for a while.
This is my new, very limited brush set that I've been developing and using on all of my recent paintings (including the piece attached above).
I'm really happy with how it works and I've found my best paintings are done with it.
There's only a few brushes because I find this keeps the style consistent and seamless, and unburdened by textures in an era of texture-heavy digital paintings.
So what's FAAFO? Fuck Around And Find Out.
It originally came because I wanted a pack to start expressive, and then lock in colors and values after.
The Fuck Around brush is for using large and blocking out big shapes expressively.
The Find Out brush is for hitting smaller values and tones confidently.
The Find Out (darker values) brush is because, occasionally the Find Out brush doesn't look too good in dark areas. This is an alternative you can use in this situation.
And the last is a humble but extremely useful pencil! I made it because I wasn't very happy with any pencil I've found up to this point. It's not overcomplicated or grain-heavy, and intended to be used small and thin.
I'm really happy with this new brush set and plan to be using it almost exclusively for the future, so I hope you will all enjoy it to.
If I receive positive feedback on it, I'll look into developing it in Photoshop!
Here's an example of a page I did to help set the tone for the first of 3 parts in Who Am I Now.
With this, you might be able to better understand the vision hand-in-hand with the rig I posted yesterday!
As much as I rely on 3D, drawing is a great way to get ideas out quickly. It's not finished, but it's enough to get an idea onto paper.
Use lots of reference from pinterest, immediate materials like pen and colored pencil, and don't be afraid to do lots of bad drawings in search for something good!
Here are some visual updates from my new piece, Who Am I Now.
The concept of this piece is a bit complex, consisting of 3 shots with separate costumes and sets and a V.O.
The first shot takes place in the bathroom, with the model that has red lipstick on her face.
The second shot will be using the sequin jumpsuit,
And the third shot will have a large ballgown-esque costume.
To some extent i'm getting ahead of myself by putting this time into costumes before I discover my process for rendering this, but I enjoy the rig-creation step so I'll indulge myself.
The sets, as seen in my last post, are going to start as 3D scans and I'm sharing that geometry here. It's very minimal, but it works with the provided textures.
I'm excited to share more as this piece progresses!
This is my first post of my new test, "Who Am I Now".
It's also a short introduction on why I think 3D scanning is my favorite new way to block out, and something I will recommend everyone to try.
I really wanted to try a whole new workflow for this test, and that started with the set. On "Big Fire", I took weeks to model every object for the apartment. But, despite this set being much smaller and not fully existing, it works very well for layout of a single shot.
You'll see how I am able to set up a white and red light, and it very appropriately affects the existing lighting. I can turn the light up and down and it changes naturally with the existing ambiance. The model (placeholder, not my own model) also gets well affected by this light.
So now I want to pose this to you, do you want me to do a video on creating this setup in Maya (or Blender)? I'm happy to share how I setup and build the shader network for this.
In my Pt. 1 post, I spoke about finding the thematic tone for the film; your Day 1.
Today, I'm going to talk about how you turn that into a series of hooks that will lead to having the seed of your idea.
Day 2
So let's set ourselves up with a tone. In Pt. 1, I told you to chose 3 films that together describe the taste of your idea. In this example, let's say 3 fairly well known films.
The fantastical world building and magic of Howl's Moving Castle meets the old-school sci-fi of Ghost in the Shell with the real-world approach to an impossible event, as seen in Shin Godzilla (2016)
That last one is slightly lesser known but I do love this film, so maybe it'll encourage all of you to watch it, haha.
So fantastical themes, in old school sci fi, with a governmental, authoritative POV. We can work with this.
From here, I'd like to write a list of common symbols, concepts, themes, etc, that appear in all these films. They can be very simple visual images or items, or very conceptual.
Walking buildings, Clones, Guns and shooting, Objects coming to life, Monsters, Police, Terrorists, Witches and wizards, Kings and queens, and wars.
Awesome, love it.
From here, imagine as if you have one of those cork boards with the red strings that we see in the films. What connections can we draw, where the string act as conflict?
(What do I mean by this?)
- Just saying, "I want a story about police clones" is not good. Why?
A good hook--the thing we're all searching so ferociously for--comes from a good conflict.
- A good hook would be, "I want a story about a clone struggling to join the police force of real people."
- Or even better-- "I want a story about a clone that doesn't know it's a clone, struggling to join to join a police force that specifically hunts down clones."
Oops, we're treading on Blade Runner now. But you get the idea.
If you need another example of this, look at the hook of one of the best movies, ever.
- Bad hook: "Story about a rat." (No conflict) - Good hook: "Story about a rat who is stuck in a french kitchen." (Nice, fun conflict putting a rat in a kitchen, except we're seeing it from the rat's POV) - Better hook: "Story about a rat stuck in a french kitchen who just wants to cook gourmet cuisine" (This is flipping the view we have of a rat on it's head and creating emotional and visual conflict)
You get the idea.
So let's go back to our tone and find some hooks.
"Cities run by AI get omnipotence and want to eject their own citizens, but under what right?"
"Terrorists known as "witches" and "wizards" try to overthrow their government, but maybe for good reason"
"The future government is run by kings and queens, but they're all clones that keep getting reincarnated."
These are all seeds of ideas, not to mention I thought of them very quickly, but you can see how I took themes from all 3 movies to create them. This should be your next step.
In the next part, I'll take one idea and show you how to expand upon it and develop it into a proper story with depth and resolution!
In a search for a new look and new processes, I wanted to try doing very quick color keys.
This was the result. Extremely simple, but was happy with the outcome. I've been really trying to push my work even more and it's not an easy journey, but small, quick pieces like this help me see what else my work could look like.
When I began writing my newest story (which I will be sharing more about very, very soon) I knew I needed some practice in the sci-fi genre.
My work is generally quite modern, I'm not someone to do grand works of fiction. But 'sci-fi' doesn't need to mean Star Wars, or Ghost in the Shell. Trying to find a new visual approach to fiction was the goal here, and using what I know (architecture, wood, not grand glossy structures) as a base to add things beyond this world seemed to be the best approach.
So I just got back from doing some traveling, and the whole time I was constantly taking photos in black and white.
And since I began carrying a camera with me, I've found that I'm able to chose better compositions and draw values better when sketching in pencil. Here's why:
When I began drawing more with pencil about a year ago, it was because I felt like my art needed more value and tone -- something I couldn't get with pen.
I'd stop and do drawings , but pencil takes so much longer to finish a piece. I'd need to get the line work done before building up tone, and I was rarely ever able to finish a drawing.
But being able to shoot photos let me constantly be searching for compositions (as I would be if I was drawing) and I found myself looking much more at the values around me than I would have otherwise.
Drawing with pencil means looking at a environment and having to recognize the value (in BW) of colored objects. This isn't easy. Saturation, hue, reflections of other objects and colors on it all make it really tough to sketch in pencil and get your values 1:1. So using a camera lets you practice seeing an environment and immediately documenting the values, as you would in pencil. Doing this once doesn't make much of a difference, but taking photos for weeks constantly helps tremendously to better imagine the values of every day life.
See if this works for you. You don't need a fancy camera, your phone cam works just as well!
I had made a post recently on why I struggle so much with gallery art and I am finally able to share all 4 finished pieces from this series.
The final 2 were admittedly no less easy, but turned out quite nice. (So nicely, in fact, that I re-did the orange piece and the green piece to feel like they all worked well enough together.)
These will be on display June 20th until August, I hope you enjoy this sneak preview.
Also, an UPDATE!
This last week was the Annecy Animation Festival, and I am beat. I had really wanted to do a post while I was there but it was events/panels/parties 24/7.
I'll be sure to share a lot more in the following weeks, and if you have any questions about what Annecy is like, if you should go, and what to do while you're there, please let me know!
Currently I am in Madrid working with a fantastic director on some new pieces. I've begun co-writing his film, and we will be doing art on 2 of my projects (one of which is very new and has a lot of potential). I'll be sharing this all--if not while I am here, then while I am back in Montreal (and can breathe again).
Thank you all for following me on this journey. I'm so excited to share everything I know and learn along the way.
This is a big topic, and hopefully an exciting one for many of you.
I'm beginning this 2 or 3 part series because I have the exciting opportunity to begin collaborating on a short film script with an incredibly talented, influential animation director (who's name I will not be sharing). This film would be made after the completion of A Home for Swallows, so it will give us both plenty of time to sit and consider the story.
Here is the first part of my process, from day 1.
DAY 1
Decide the tone. The tone of your film is (in my opinion) one of the absolute most important parts of choosing your story.
When I wrote BARKING ORDERS (my first animated film, senior thesis, the piece that helped tremendously to begin my career), I was in a very specific point in my life and wanted to tell a specific style of story. Funny, spontaneous, nonsensical.
The tone of A Home for Swallows is, again, wildly different. It is tragic, thought provoking, and symbolic.
A lot of choosing this depends on who you are when you begin the film, and the kind of story you would like to tell. I would absolutely not make a film like BARKING ORDERS now, simply because I am not the same person that I was. However that does not mean I don't still find the film funny.
A lot of the tone also comes from your environment. BARKING ORDERS was written surrounded by my good college friends, many of which who went on to be industry animators or Nickelodeon writers. It made sense that this piece was inspired by lighthearted, modern Disney animation.
A Home for Swallows was came to be after moving to Montreal, beginning to learn French, and consuming a mass of classic French media (initially just with the intention to help me learn) that lead to becoming deeply inspired.
You're probably asking, how do I come up with a tone?
The way I am deciding on tone for this piece is by creating a list of 2-4 movies, similar or dissimilar, that together describe a tone.
I'll give you an example.
7 Samurai The Dark Crystal Forbidden Planet
...equals
Star Wars!
Okay maybe a bad example. But that's the concept. It doesn't need to be 1:1 with each film, you can take pieces from each. The "Hero's Journey" of 7 Samurai, the creature design from The Dark Crystal, the future sci fi of Forbidden Planet.
If you're familiar with all of these films, you'll understand the essense of Star Wars from just considering all the titles together.
(Think of that scene from Ratatouille where Remy's brother eats the cheese, then the strawberry, then both together. Your film's tone is that combined sensation of multiple tastes at once.)
So the next time you want to come up with some ideas, think of the films that inspire you and what kind of overlapping themes you can link together to create a new flavor!
In the next post, I'll talk about what you can do once you have your tone set.
