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Using Carrara for second episode (my support thread)

BC RiceBC Rice Posts: 591
edited June 2017 in Carrara Discussion

After using Carrara sparsely in the first episode of my series Dead at the End, I took some time to arrive at a place where I could use Carrara for the entirety of the series moving forward. It was always my intention to move onto using Carrara, but in the interest of getting the first episode made, I just, ya know, did it. 

Since I'm a one person operation, I've had to keep things really bare bones. Perhaps if I was a Maya or Blender expert I could apply some digital line art, but there's simply no combination (even bringing in 3rd party products and software) that gives me an appealing digital line while the character is in motion. And since I don't want to rotoscope until my eyes bleed (which would completely nullify the reason for using CGI/3D), I've come to accept and perhaps even appreciate the very simple approach to the enviornment and character designs. They look great in motion, and so long as I keep the lighting on their faces framed well enough, the final image will be, I think, attractive enough to suffice. 

Speaking of motion -- I'll be animating quiet scenes at 12fps and action scenes at 24fps. I tried to spend the past three months listening to a lot of folks critique CGI anime, what works and what doesn't. Obviously in the end there's a utilitarian aspect to it all where I'll need to do whatever looks good but is also reasonably achievable, but I feel pretty good and confident going into this episode. (Thought I'm sure I'll need a support group...hence the thread haha)

Carrara has meant a lot to me over the last 10-odd years. I feel weirdly good about being able to make something with it besides just little random shots and tests -- like to really go at it and be able to say, like, yeah, made in Carrara. :D

I'll be working on animating the first scene in the second episode while putting together the main cast. That way I won't get too bogged down just being in pre-production limbo. I've got my two vigilantes, I've got my big golden gal antagonist. Good enough to get going. 

So these here are the final two test renders of the main characters and a background (that I probably won't use in this episode but wanted something managable to test shaders on). Because it's such an intimdating endeavor, and because these two characters will be seeing 100% of the action in this episode, I cheated a bit and gave them matching mohawks and steered clear of flowing things. I'll cross those bridges in the future, but for this inagural episode, I didn't want to bury myself any deeper.  

And here's a little movement test I did using dialog from the first episode. I've put together a short little animation "bible", and one of the things I'm going to really try to adhere to besides 12fps is the 3/4 traditional character positioning for quiet scenes. Simpsons, Family Guy, Archer, etc, most animated shows use 3/4 and front positions only, so I'm going in trying to really stay within that limitation. This is fairly close to what the actual animation will look like. 

Girl move

This is an enviornment test, just to make sure that all the shaders were behaving 

Enviornment move

So that's it for now. Here's the first episode if you want to check it out, there's a few quick Carrara bits in there. :)



Thanks 

Post edited by BC Rice on

Comments

  • HeadwaxHeadwax Posts: 9,983

    well, you got talent! (and a wicked sense of humour) thanks for sharing this , glad you are doing more in Carrara

  • BC RiceBC Rice Posts: 591
    head wax said:

    well, you got talent! (and a wicked sense of humour) thanks for sharing this , glad you are doing more in Carrara

    Woop woop! Thanks :D

  • MistaraMistara Posts: 38,675

    'dead at the end' is catchy!!  i would like to watch it

  • BC RiceBC Rice Posts: 591
    Mistara said:

    'dead at the end' is catchy!!  i would like to watch it

    Nice. Thanks :) Yeah, the first episode is up there in the original post. 

     

  • DiomedeDiomede Posts: 15,158

    I really enjoyed your vids.  Wish I had the expertise to offer constructive feedback.  About all I contribute is enthusiastic support.  Well done.

  • BC RiceBC Rice Posts: 591
    Diomede said:

    I really enjoyed your vids.  Wish I had the expertise to offer constructive feedback.  About all I contribute is enthusiastic support.  Well done.

    Hey -- that's what a moral support thread is for, right? haha Thanks :D

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