The Scene Progresses

A composite of all the static layers for a cloud city background.I don't want to give everything away, but I thought I'd share some sneak peaks at my progress so far. I'm done building the background artwork in Photoshop, and starting to build the characters. Warning: the following text is pretty process-heavy, so if you don't really care, don't read it.

I'll be bringing the background art into After Effects and creating 2.5D setpieces... which essentially means I'll be working with flat objects in a 3D space. It's like a paper diorama, but I love the way things look with a little depth of field and some dynamic lighting.

Once the character artwork is done, I'll import it into Flash to add certain movement to the characters. I prefer to do certain things (mostly mouth and some limb movement, as well as certain special movements) in Flash as opposed to After Effects, but I think that's just a personal preference. Lots of people do all their animation in After Effects, but it's all about whatever works best for you.

The Fett's gotta jet...One limiting factor with Flash is that animations currently can't exceed 2880 x 2880, so sometimes I have to be really creative about closeups and etc. I don't mind though, since it kind of forces me to make some decisions as I go... which means I have to plan ahead and think about what the final product is going to look like. That really helps with something like this where I'm not doing storyboards (since they pretty much already exist in the form of a finished film).

Once I get the Flash animation finished up, I import the SWF movies straight into After Effects and turn them into a 2.5D layer in the appropriate set... and then it's just a matter of adjusting things and creating some camera moves. That's always the fun part, but it's followed by the not fun part — rendering.

Because my sets generally consist of a number of really high-resolution textures, and numerous SWF layers, as well as camera moves and lights, the rendering process can be a drag. When pushing the software to its limit, crashes while rendering are pretty common, so I often sit and watch my renders pretty closely. Of course, with a 15 second piece that won't be terribly painful, but with longer pieces I've worked on, it can take hours and hours to churn out a couple minutes of footage... in case you were wondering.

So anyway, it's back to work for now. I'll share more soon.

Winter Texture Blowout

To celebrate the fact that winter approaches (at least it's supposed to be approaching, but those of us in St. Louis might not know it), I'm giving away some of my favorite textures. These are super easy to make yourself, just a fast shutter and a flash in a snowstorm and you're in business... but what's interesting to me is to experiment with the colors and textures going on around the snow. Enjoy these in high resolution... and try to keep warm... unless you're in St. Louis, in which case you might want to keep your shorts out of storage a little bit longer.

Hi-Res Book Texture Stuff

I love textures... I can admit that. These, however, are a little off the beaten path. They're pages from some old books, and I think they're super cool. Not everyone will have a ton of uses for these, but I'm always finding excuses to toss them into a project somewhere. If nothing else, they're fun to look at... but if you are interested in using them, have at it.

A Smattering Of Hi-Res Watercolor Textures

Who knows if five textures really qualifies as a "smattering", but here they are regardless. These are some that I created a good while ago, and I've been using them ever since... so I thought I would share my favorites. Paint textures are always fun, but what's especially cool about the watercolor stuff is that you get both the effect of the brush strokes along with the texture of the paper. Two textures in one is more fun. WAY more fun.

 

Hi-Res Plaster Stain Texture Extravaganza

Well, "extravaganza" might be an exaggeration since there are just 5 images here... but I absolutely love unique textures, so I thought it might be nice to toss a couple of them up here for everyone. These textures are water-stained plaster walls and ceilings that I photographed and they are absolutely awesome when you need a texture with some grit and subtlety. Download 'em and enjoy. If you want to give me a shout out, that's cool... but the textures are yours to take and run with either way. Use them for good... or evil.