Another Gobelins effort. I like the shading, especially the active line within the objects defining light and shadow on the form. The clouds & FX are cool. The backgrounds are handled very well, but in the darker moments the characters get lost against them- something typically avoided when one employs an emotional palette as opposed to a literal one. The stark shadows work well. I think the animation, while good at points, could have benefitted from being dialed back into limited frame rates and not full on 1's the whole way through. It's that same bugaboo that has plagued NPR CG for the last decade. Looks like a nice painting until it moves. It's that visual harmony/cohesion thing again.
3 comments:
Hey Keith,
The smooth motion definitely takes a bit away from this otherwise nicely designed piece. In fact, I'd say it feels even more "swimmy" because of the shading style.
I don't completely agree about the hard shadow/light line, at least on the girl's face. It did bug me a little bit; although it may have been because her head turned SO smoothly. Or because her face blended into the BG at times, and so the hard line made it slightly more difficult to "read".
Another thing I noticed was that the flat, painterly shading calls for extra care with the shot composition. Staging that lacks strong, clean silhouettes fails harder with NPR shading. There's a shot at about 51 secs into this short that illustrates this point.
Did you watch Un tour de manège? It's a Gobelins student short with painterly CG, but it works much better than this one - even though it still has the smooth movement on "ones". It'd probably look better rendered on 2s, but it's a great example of harmony between story and visuals. At one point, it transitions from painterly CG to painterly 2D and back, and it happens with nice fluidity.
I'd love to hear your thoughts on that piece.
Reminds me of Zelda Windwaker...
lb
Richard Williams says that things always work better on ones when they are planned with ones in mind.
Do you disagree Keith?
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