Hello!
This week went by quickly! The goblin cave is getting closer step by step :-)
The first scene is animated. Scenes from such a tilted perspective are always quite tricky to animate, since there’s movement both sideways and toward the viewer. Depending on the motion, the characters have to appear larger as they move.Especially the “butt wobble” — with a bit of an “impact” — wasn’t easy to get right. What do you think of the animation?The other drawings have been completed and still need to be animated. Those should be finished much faster.
Wait a moment — that doesn’t really look good, does it?
This phenomenon happens quite often: drawings that look amazing as sketches (see last report) somehow end up looking… dull once they’re colored. In our opinion, the issue here is the ‘empty area’ on Ariana’s cheeks. Something is just missing!
So for the final version, we added a bit of saliva, some tears, and more color. It gives the drawing more emotion and fills that ‘empty space.’
The exact same issue occurred with this drawing as well, although it’s less noticeable. So we went ahead and did the same thing again right away..
We also updated the scene with the farmer’s wife. You may have noticed that the background wasn’t quite complete :-)
In the old version, you could only see the bed and the floorboards. Now, the house is almost complete. We also added a white glow to the scene, since it takes place during a full moon night.
The background still isn’t perfect, though. As you can see, the shelves are quite empty, which looks a bit unrealistic. However, while working on this background, we realized that at some point you just have to call it done — the workload simply becomes too big.Here is another version that we rejected because of the messed perspective.
t’s important to recognize that a background is much more complex than characters. The perspective has to be accurate (which many artists struggle with), and in theory, you can place an unlimited number of objects — each of which can be arbitrarily detailed. Those objects also need surface textures. Just think about the wood grain of furniture — and that grain also has to match the perspective… PHEW!
We spent quite a long time working on this background and eventually had to manage our resources wisely.
We’re considering whether we should start creating backgrounds with AI assistance. With a blur effect, the typical “AI look” wouldn’t be as distracting anymore. However, AI usually struggles with perspective as well.
What do you think? :-)