Ok, So What Is Fashion Photography?
Well you see, fashion photography is different from most other forms of photography because in it's most basic form, it's a genre of photography where the main focus is on the clothes that the model is wearing rather than the model themselves.
This type of photography is mainly used by advertising agencies and fashion companies in order to promote whatever clothes are "in season" at the moment, be it shoes, socks, dresses, t-shirts, pants or even random bits of jewellery. While advertising on things such as billboards and walls in or around shops such as ASDA or Next, it can also be found in other places such as fashion magazines (like Vogue and InStyle), and even advertisements on television and/or the internet.
The reason this type of photography is used in advertising is because of how it perfectly encapsulates what these clothes might look like on someone (albeit in an often highly exaggerated manner since they're still trying to sell the clothes at the end of the day), thus allowing the audience to more easily imagine themselves wearing the clothes displayed and looking good (since it's not just a random isolated image of whatever clothes are being advertised), which in turn makes it more likely that someone would want to buy the clothes presented in the advert.
So What Audiences Do Fashion Magazines/Fashion Photography Usually Go For?
The average audience for a fashion magazine will usually depend on the type of fashion your magazine exists to showcase. For example:
A magazine like the one pictured above (which is literally called "FASHION Magazine", which is a generic name but it gets the point across) would likely appeal more to women than it would men, at least from what I could gather from the fact there's a woman on the front cover and even the mention of "modern motherhood tales" on the cover where they also promise other sections about things such as "ordinary to extraordinary" and "mystical body treatments" (not what I would call super interesting, but I'm sure some middle aged women somewhere were goggling over this stuff when this issue was released back in 2018):
Likewise, this "Little Style" magazine would likely to appeal to parents (because I severely doubt that most children would really be interested in the latest fashion trends) who are looking to buy stylish clothes for their son(s) and/or daughter(s), this can be seen due to the fact that the model on the Little Style cover is much younger than the one on the cover for FASHION Magazine.
This catering towards target audiences can also be seen in the types of content that both magazines feature, where as FASHION would feature pages that look more like this:
Where as a typical page on "Little Style" often doesn't have a lot of text because the focus is more on the visuals rather than the text inside (which I assume is gossip related nonsense anyway with a little bit of advice and advertisement thrown in there every now and then):
Another thing to note is that with the FASHION Magazine (or at least all the images I could find of the various covers and insides), they have a lot more studio shots, which can facilitate the editors of the magazine putting in more text for whatever the related article is supposed to be and even adding in more than one image per page without it being obvious they were taken in different locations (due to the photos all being taken under the same studio lighting as each other), although they do sometimes have on location shots too (albeit not as common as the studio shots, and even then they're usually thrown into the negative space so that the words can be written around them) because this FASHION magazine is meant to be a general fashion magazine with the latest fashion news and trends (at the time of the latest publication), where as the "Little Styles" magazine uses more on location shots due to how it's aimed more at parents who are likely to take their children out more, thus meaning the on location shots would represent mostly practical scenarios in which the clothes would be used in. (although I should emphasise that these representations are exaggerated)
The two magazines I found happen to target a very similar audience (that being women around the age of around 30 to 50), but one of my tutors actually managed to bring up two very good examples of magazines that cater more towards men, those being "GQ" and "Thrasher" (examples I probably wouldn't have included because I don't actively think about fashion magazines very much):
Here, we can see that while this particular magazine's front cover is structured very similarly to that of the FASHION Magazine from earlier, there are very noticeable differences between the two. The main difference is that instead of using a specialised model like they did with Doutzen Kroes on FASHION, here they decided to get Tom Holland on the cover in order to attract males who might recognise the man from various flims and TV shows. (in this case, Tom Holland plays the role of Spider-Man in the Marvel Cinematic Universe) We can also see that this cover has a lot more text on it than the FASHION magazine cover which allows the potential reader to extrapolate most of the contents of the magazine before they make the decision to buy the actual magazine, even making a Spider-Man reference to refer to Tom as a "Friendly neighbourhood movie star", thus further appealing to people who like Spider-Man (and Marvel in general to a lesser extent) and making them more likely to want to purchase this magazine (or at the very least read it online) because it might potentially serve as a source of news on the new Spider-Man Film. (which at the time of this issue's release is "Spider-Man: Far From Home") This particular sentence may not make sense given how this is supposed to be a fashion magazine rather than a movie magazine but a typical men's fashion magazine will often feature news and information about the wider world of popular culture and celebrities sometimes women's fashion magazines will feature articles on celebrities too, but they'll usually talk more about the fashion side of things when it comes to their celebrities (so I think anyway, I've been struggling to find good magazine scans)
The biggest similarity I could find in the front cover is that both covers were taken from photo shoots done in a studio setting (given how the two backgrounds are both blank), although the one on the FASHION Magazine cover is black and white, which in fairness is probably a one off thing because I was able to find other FASHION covers that are in full colour, but for some reason on GQ's cover, Tom Holland looks like he hasn't finished getting ready yet, probably because they wanted to capture him actually suiting up for the sake of fulfilling the "Tom Holland suits up" quote but I just don't think it works very well because I get the impression they didn't have much time during this shoot because of how busy and expensive Tom Holland is to get these days.
Let's move on to the average GQ page and see how that fares when compared to FASHION Magazine:
as you can see, the page I found this time around is more of an article about the death of men's magazines (a bit ironic considering it's being published inside a men's magazine), we can see that there are only one or two images on the actual article page (not counting the advert for a Swatch brand watch on the other page, we'll get to that one in a bit), one big on top of the page with white underlined text to represent the title as well as a convenient list of all the products in the photo (including who made the products, where the products were bought and even how much they all cost individually) so that the people reading are pointed in the right direction if they ever wanted to "steal the look" as I'm sure the kids say these days still say. This is a particularly subtle form of advertising that could make someone want to purchase the various products without realising that they're being advertised to, since it's so small and non-assuming. (not to mention difficult to read too, they also do the same thing below the second image, which is just a smaller version of the cover) This is especially true, since the next page over contains a much more obvious advert for a watch from some company called "Swatch" (real creative naming process behind that one I'm sure), the reason this page contains an advert for this watch is likely because Swatch paid to have that advert placed there. (with either money or free goods, but sometimes they'll do both) Speaking of subtle advertising, this brings us smoothly over to our next magazine cover:
Here, we can see that there's a funky skater dude is on the front cover, the main difference between this one and the others is that instead of a static studio shot where the model is just standing around not doing very much, we can see that he's actually skating because this is a skating magazine after all and it needs to appeal to skater dudes this cover even does the trope where part of the picture actually goes over the text (something that would be considered sacrilege in any other medium but not here for some reason), but that's not why I'm looking at this one, the reason I'm looking at this is actually because of a subtle form of advertising that takes place here, can you see it?
For those of you that are observant, you may have noticed that the skater's shoes are made by Nike because their logo actually features quite prominently on the cover because Nike likely paid Thrasher magazine to feature their shoes heavily on the cover, thus making the skater dude demographic look at said shoes and go "duuuuuude, we've gotta like, get those gnarly shoes man, we'll look super sick in them."
As much as I'd love to look further into this magazine and add in an example with a cartoon character on it, unfortunately I don't have as much time to spend on the research as I used to, since the whole course was restructured quite recently in order to emphasize the more practical side, which I do think is a good thing although it does put a big hamper on my style of research plus we've already done a bit of practical experimentation today because the internet went out and a bunch of the laptops needed updating and I really need to get on to talking about that as soon as possible, especially because I want to experiment with a couple of the pictures by adding in my cartoon characters.
Practical Experimentation
So this morning, the internet was playing up across the college and a bunch of our laptops needed updating, so we ended up using the morning session to split off into small groups and experiment with the various camera lenses in the garden area of the college instead, me and my group took turns to take various images using the really shallow lens and the standard lens, the reason we switched lenses after a while was to illustrate how the different lenses can be used in different situations. For example, the shallow lens is very useful for when you need to take close up shots of really small objects or plants where as the standard lens is useful for when you want to take a more standard photograph as you can see with the small sample from what we took (because I don't want to have to split this into two parts like I did with certain projects from last year):
It was a lot of fun being able to just take a good truckload of pictures (including photos of each other) because we would look around for an area where we could take pictures and one of my friends ended up finding this quaint little area around the back of the college with these two benches and a stone plaque that said "1862" on it, we all ended up having a lot of fun because we were able to take a wide variety of pictures as a group without worrying much about the theming, plus it was refreshing to not have to do the work entirely on my own for a change because we were all able to help one another out (and we even ended up discovering a part of the college we otherwise would never have taken note of), but now that this little bit's been taken care of, it's time for the real experiment to begin.
The "Real" Experiment?
yup, for you see, I figured that if I could find a way to force my cartoon characters into the work, then this unit would at least make a lick more sense for a guy like me, plus it means I'd be able to play dress up with a bunch of my existing characters and even pull a "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" (it's not as good as making an entirely new IP, but it'll do for now), plus in my research I haven't seen a lot of actual fashion magazines with cartoon characters on the front cover (outside of Japan at least since they had that one with Luffy from One Piece on the cover), so if I can make the effect work, it'll allow me to stand out from literally every other fashion magazine in the country, so without further ado, let's begin:
You're probably wondering why I decided to have two additional layers instead of just one, well you see, the reason I chose to do this was to use the second layer as a buffer between the background layer and the layer where I'll be drawing the 2D version of Super Sheep, that way it'll be easier for me to see the outline when I'm drawing it in particularly dark areas.
The first thing I always do when drawing cartoon characters is draw the character's head, the reason I do this is because I find it easier to draw the body in later, sometimes this can take several attempts to get right because I end up making mistakes (I.E: Here I realised I drew the head in the same layer as the white buffer)
Afterwards I'll work on getting the character's facial details drawn in (I.E: their eyes, nose, mouth, ext), this is done within the confines of the head I drew earlier because I figured it would be easier to do this way (in fairness, it is easier when you've got a frame of reference), this can also take a number of attempts depending on what part of the face I'm doing (this is especially the case with Super Sheep's ears)
While I was drawing Super Sheep's eyes, I couldn't quite get them right because his irises made it look like he was looking down slightly, so I figured I could flip the head in the hopes it would end up looking better
After I've drawn the whole face, I like to do the body next, the fact I did the head first means I can use it as a point of reference for the character's proportions (which refers to the size of a character's body parts in reference to each other)
Next comes the legs, this part and the arms are usually interchangeable in terms of which ones I do first since they're both part of the body, but I'm doing the legs first because I simply feel like it, regardless as to which I decide to draw first, these can take quite a few attempts to get right
Originally, I wanted to also do Super Sheep's reflection in the window, but I've decided against it because this picture is supposed to be an experiment and I don't want this to take up too much time (besides, I still have to worry about shading the character, which I don't normally do since most of my drawings are just of the characters on their own, but since this Super Sheep is supposed to look like he was actually in the photograph, I'll have to add in a little bit of shading at least)
Anyway, next thing I do is draw the hands, in earlier works I'd draw the arms first and then have the hands protruding from the ends (which I do still do sometimes), but these days, I also like to draw the hands first, I first started doing this with the character of "Skulldrix" from my old Colypsia website (which was the first website I ever made with Wix), the reason this method is helpful is because hands are quite hard to get right, as such this method means I'm not undoing the arms as much
Once the arms are finished, it's time for me to move on to the clean up phase, where I erase any unneeded lines in order to clean up the art work and make it look better (since in 2D you only draw what's currently visible)
here, I've actually copied the drawing into a separate image so that I can colour that image in first, and then I'll be able to add in the shade lines to the other one later on and colour it in using the original colours as a base, plus it means I get a separate shade-less version to save for later. (this is something new I'm trying by the way, just figured it could be useful to have the base colours decided before diving into the shading process)
here, I'm making a second copy of the drawing in order to act as a basic shadow (this'll help me save time drawing a new drawing for the outline
The shadow ended up taking way longer than I thought it would to make due to all the erasing (but at least I didn't have to draw it again from scratch)
Now that that's all done and dusted, I can begin work on the shading lines (which exist in order to allow me to fill in certain areas with either lighter or darker colours, depending on what the lighting calls for)
Now comes the fun part, actually filling in the colours, this is where the shading lines come in, as now they're the points of reference as to where I should put my various shades, I.E: brighter colours would face towards the light source (in this case, the sun) the darker colours would apply if certain parts were facing away from the light source
Once the filling process is done, the shade lines are no longer needed, so I simply draw over them with one of the shade colours in order to more seamlessly blend the shaded parts with the non shaded parts (because in real life, you don't see clearly defined lines that divide the bright and dark parts of the world), doing this can get a bid gruelling, especially if there are a lot of shade lines, but it'll all be worth it in the end
Right now, I'm trying out the "curves" tool, where I'm trying to adjust the colour balancing so that it better matches the live action environment
And now I'm adding in a bevel effect to round out the whole thing and then I'll be done here for now.
You might notice that the framing in this image is weirdly imbalanced as of right now. Well the reason for this is because everything I've done is only part 1 of this experiment, as the second part (which I'll do tomorrow since it's one of my days off) will involve bringing in the 3D Super Sheep I made in Dreams PS4/5 into the mix in order to see how that version would look in real life, because I'm thinking about including that version in the moving image part of this fashion task via chroma key effects to make the animation process easier. (although if I do plan on moving the camera at all it'll be really tricky to sync the camera movements in the animated world with those of the live action world)
Practical Experimentation Part 2: The Bit That Involves Video Games
That's right, it hasn't even been a full week and already I'm turning to the power of video games for help:
So for this part of the experiment, I'm using Dreams for the PS4/5 in order to pose the 3D Super Sheep in a pink screen environment, since Super Sheep doesn't have any pink in his colour scheme, I figured this would be the best choice for the background. For this one, I basically remixed the experiment I already did for the cancelled Super Sheep in Hex-o's Exos since I already had everything in place for what I wanted to do here, I had the pink screen and Super Sheep's model ready to roll, but it was just a matter of adding in a pink floor via the paint tools so that I could also have Super Sheep's shadow on the ground, that way when I remove the pink and purple area later, I'll still have Super Sheep's shadow intact.
Posing Super Sheep was a real breeze thanks to the keyframe gadget, it was simply getting the lighting just right that took a little bit of time, but I did have the original image I took as a frame of reference, so the process was a little bit easier.
Speaking of the original image, I tried to match every aspect of this particular screen shot with that of the original photo I took, including setting the camera gadget's field of view to be as close to the original photo as possible. The reason I did this was because over the summer, I'd seen this Tom Scott video on the topic of why we're able to notice bad green screen effects and one piece of advice that stuck out to me is that if you want the two images to blend with each other in a consistent manner, then you have to basically film both parts using the same equipment with the same settings in order to make the effects as seamless as possible, hence why I messed with the field of view so that it would match the same lens I used to take the original photo.
I've not got much to say about actually doing this part, so let's move on to actually super imposing Super Sheep into the photo with... himself.
Here, I'm actually getting rid of all the pink by using the magic wand tool, but unfortunately, Super Sheep himself seems to be tinted pink slightly, which means I'll have to do a bit of colour correction in order to remove the pink tint.
Unfortunately, my shadow preservation idea didn't quite pan out, so I had to remove the shadow entirely. (and when I was going through, I ended up having to remove part of his eyebrow too) Guess this means I'll have to make a new one instead
Of course, since using the fill tool on 3D entities is hard, I've decided to simply up the contrast and lower the brightness all the way in order to make the shadow version that'll appear on the ground, since doing this is so much easier and a lot less time consuming
I'll admit, this one did end up taking a lot more time than I thought it would given the sub-par results in the end I mean, the 2D Super Sheep looks ok but the 3D one looks like he was clipped from a magazine due to how he's tinted blue (unlike the 2D one who was just drawn into the environment right there and then), but at least his angle matches that of the ground for the most part. Next time I do this (preferably when I'm not in a rush to do this quickly), I would actually try and do things like add in the reflections in the window like I did with one of my earlier attempts I did pre-college:
I would also try and take a little bit more time trying to adjust the lighting and colour balancing in Dreams PS4/5 in order to make better use of both the "sun and sky" gadget and the "grade and effects" gadget in order for the 3D Super Sheep to fit in better with his intended surroundings, and I'd take more time to get rid of all the little pink bits that he has, which you can see if you look really close. (well, I say that, but it so obvious you don't even have to look at the image that much closer than a casual viewer would normally)
One of the main things I like in this image is how I was actually able to get the 3D Super Sheep's field of view to match that of the actual photo's field of view because it means that if I just keep better tabs on the exact F.O.V I use in each photo or video I make, I can replicate that in Dreams and produce theoretically convincing visual effects in the future (as long as the F.O.V isn't above around 90 or below about 5-10 because at that point things might get a bit more challenging), plus this experiment has given me a bit more of a grasp into how I could make my 3D characters fit in to real life settings, so now I'll know what to do when the time comes to make that fashion video (alongside all those pictures, but for those I think it'll be easier for me to draw in 2D because they're only still images)
So What Sort Of Outfits Do I Want To Put The Characters In?
Ok, so I do have a couple of ideas for potential themes I could go with, so I'll try listing them off and seeing which one I like best.
Idea 1: Themed Sports Wear (Inspired by the Tune Squad from Space Jam)
For this idea, I could try dressing all the characters in sportswear in a similar vain to that of the Tune Squad from the Space Jam movies:
Here, we can see that I could take this in two directions, of course I'd have to change the team name into something original because I don't want Warner Bros' legal team to come knocking on my doorstep with a lawsuit.
Looking at the jerseys themselves, we can see that while the two look drastically different (likely because 25 years between the two Space Jam movies) given how much more colourful Lebron James' jersey (pictured screen left) is when compared to Michael Jordon's (pictured screen right), but we can see that they both feature the team name, in this case it's the fictional Tune Squad (mostly made up of Looney Tunes characters) on the front while the person's name and number is right on the back of both jerseys (which does end up meaning one of my other characters has a slight inaccuracy I'll need to fix):
Two years ago, I actually did create a basketballer named Billy Billson for a unit where I had to design a logo for a fake brand (which is how Slamination Studios actually came to be):
But What About Other Team Jerseys That Aren't The Tune Squad?
Well since I like the sound of doing a basketball theme for this unit (with other potential ideas being a Super Hero themed brand or even 40's/50's fashion), the first example of an actual basketball team I want to look at is The Los Angeles Lakers:
Here, we can see that while the clothes themselves are very similar on a fundamental level (being a basketball vest and a pair of shorts), we can see that the colours are very different from that of both versions of the Tune Squad's jersey, as here we actually have more of a yellow and purple colour scheme going on, in this image we can see that the jersey scheme is yellow with purple accents, they actually do have another kit where the colours are reversed. Regardless of which colour scheme they're using, we can see that they both match that of the team logo for the sake of that extra bit of branding:
Speaking of branding, we can see that the jerseys actually have the Nike logo featured on the right side (from the perspective of the players), which I assume is where the primary sponsor for this team because we can also see the same logo on the team's shorts too, where as on the left side (again, from the perspective of the players, the fact the players are facing the camera flips where the logos are) features what I assume is the secondary sponsor of the team in the form of Wish.com (because I guess the space was available on that side of the jersey), the reason both of these sponsors have been plastered onto the jerseys like this is because these companies and brands pay the teams (or sometimes even the venue hosting the match) a lot of money to promote their image while the players are out there shooting hoops, that way when people watch them on TV and see the different logos for these companies, they'll be more likely to want to buy their products when the next time they decide to go clothes shopping. (thus bringing in more money for the parties involved)
Before I leave the Lakers and move on to someone else, I'd just like to quickly talk about what I found on the front that I wasn't fully expecting because it's been a couple of years since I properly looked at a real basketball outfit. On the front, they don't just have the team name and the companies sponsoring that specific team, but they also seem to have the player number just below it, unlike the both versions of the Tune Squad outfit where the player number is only on the back with the player name. (So I just need to come up with a team name and a couple of fake sponsorships and/or brands to put on Billy's jersey and I'll be good to go)
My next example of a team jersey is the Chicago Bulls, but in order to keep things interesting (and to avoid repeating what I already said about The Lakers), I'll be talking about one of their jerseys from the 90s and comparing it to the modern jerseys of today (that way I'll be able to compare and contrast how jerseys have changed over the past 20-30 years):
Once again, we can see that the jersey's colour match that of the team's branding (only instead of yellow and purple it's black and red):
One of the main differences between the Chicago Bulls' jersey from the 90s and the modern Lakers jersey is that the 90s jersey doesn't have any extra sponsorships printed on it (this isn't necessarily indicative to basketball teams needing sponsorships or anything, I just thought I pointed it out), besides the NBA logo of course. I should note however that on the bottom label you can actually find the Champion logo, not sure if it means that the company made the jerseys back then or if they simply sponsored the whole team.
We can also see that both jerseys also feature different fonts on them that also happen to correspond with their team logos, that way people will be able to tell who's on what team even if they don't have a TV with colour, or the more likely scenario, the TV 's colour stopped working.
Experiment 2: Super Sheep In Real Life But Now There's Movement
Today, I decided to try and see if I could use Share-Factory to super impose Super Sheep into the real world using green screen effects and imported images. (mainly because I wanted to see if "track 2" would go over the image I want to overlay over the random gameplay footage so that I'm not fumbling around later) This experiment ended up being just a bit more involved than I thought it would be, how so? Well let's start from the very beginning, shall we?
The first thing I did was take the image I wanted to use as the background. This particular image was taken through the window in my living room (which is why you can see a little bit of white to the left of the image) because I didn't feel like stepping outside, so I figured doing it through the window would suffice. The reason I took the background image first is because it allows me to have a point of reference for the lighting once it comes time to do the green screen effects (whether they be animated or not), that way they'll theoretically be more convincing once I put the two layers together eventually (that if it it I get them right), afterwards comes the first stream, where I animated Super Sheep dancing:
I decided to make this a remix of the original experiment, which in and of itself is a remix of an experiment I did for my Super Sheep cartoon that never came out (so now it's a double remix), because like with the first time around, it meant I didn't have to worry about setting up the green (or in this case pink) screen and Super Sheep all over again because they'd already been taken care of the first time. I tried make the lighting match what was on my phone, which in this case was actually quite neutral with hardly any shadows or highlights visible, so I just had to turn off the sun and make the sky a bit darker with the sun and sky gadget and wash Super Sheep's colours out via the grade and effects gadget, afterwards I decided to have Super Sheep do an idle dance similar to what's found in the hit game "Friday Night Funkin" (a rhythm game in a similar vain to the Parappa The Rapper series) by Ninjamuffin99, after that I also got the idea to put in a sample from the game's soundtrack into the animation so that Super Sheep didn't look like he was dancing for no reason, so I went into the Dreamiverse because I knew that a user named "Dreams-audio" had already imported a high quality version into the game already, thus saving me from doing it myself. The song I went with was composed by Kawai Sprite (although I did end up misspelling their as Kawaii Sprite in the credits of the final video) and is known as "Fresh". (it's one of the early levels in the game) Of course, I decided to put the music in after I'd already finished the animation, so I just had to speed up Super Sheep's dancing animation so that his sway would better match the beat of the song. After that it was simply a matter of recording the whole thing and then going into Share-Factory Studio so that I could put the whole thing together... Except before I did that, I had to use the computer in order to export the background image from my phone and onto my USB flash drive (which I call "Penfold", after Danger Mouse's sidekick, who's also named Penfold):
After I did that however, I could finally go ahead and import the background image into Share Fa...
Oh yeah, I forgot about the limits of the supported resolution. Well luckily, there was one thing I could do in order to fix this particular situation:
Yup, I had to go ahead and use Pixlr's crop tool in order to crop the image down into a 720p image file (since I know Share-Factory Studio supports that particular resolution) instead of the original resolution (which was 5152x2896 as I found out from looking at the original image in Wix):
Cropping the image was the second easiest part of this whole process because all I was doing was taking the original image and cropping it down so that I could put it into Share-Factory Studio and super impose Super Sheep into the real world at last:
After dealing with all the unexpected device gymnastics involved, I was finally able to put Super Sheep in the real world. Doing this was a bit of a slow process since I had to go and fetch some random gameplay I recorded for the second version of my "PS5 but it's PS2" video before I could add in the actual image since once again, imported images are treated as stickers to be over-layed on top of the gameplay footage and looking back, I now realise that I forgot to mute the Sackboy: A Big Adventure footage, so now it plays alongside "Fresh" from Friday Night Funkin', although the sounds do happen to line up with the beat, so I think I'll let it slide this time.
After I put Super Sheep into the real world and created the credits, I decided to experiment with the various filters and layouts that were available to me and I have to say, some of these are quite dreadful for doing green screen effects (for example, the blur effect which re-adds the pink outline) but others are quite interesting (mainly the various screen effects such as the scan-lines and the vertical bands which splits the screen into several pieces), I would have played around with these features a bit more, but my dad wanted to watch TV so I had to hastily get the video onto Pen-fold as quickly as possible (so things such as the comic frame ended up not getting removed in the end), so without further ado, here's the final outcome:
You might have noticed that due to the angle and how thin Super Sheep's eye brows were, parts of them ended up disappearing into the ether, but other than that, the green screen effects look pretty clean if I do say so myself. One thing I would improve however is that I would try and have Super Sheep's standing angle better match that of the floor, but other than that I quite like how this experiment turned out, and now I know that Share-Factory Studio is more than capable of letting me super impose 3D characters into the real world. Next time I should try and have a video as random background footage to see if I can green screen Super Sheep into something that isn't another PlayStation 4/PlayStation 5 game.
Research Evaluation
Ok, so seeing how I've only got a week left to complete this research and I know I want to try and get as much detail as I can in here, I may as well just get started now.
So How Was The Research Phase?
I'll admit, I wouldn't really call this my best of research piece. The reason I feel this is because I wasn't able to get as detailed as I would have liked, because with other bits of research I was able to get in things such as practitioners and even proper analysis of their work, here I only ended up looking at a couple of magazines and did a quick bit of research into what basketball jerseys look like for the sake of developing my idea, which as of current is themed around my cartoon characters being inserted into the real world in order to play basketball and promote a false sports brand.
I think that at least part of the reason for this scatterbrain approach is in part due to how the course ended up getting restructured quite a bit over the course of the summer while I was blogging about my Super Sheep cartoon that never came to be. (although I am beginning to give the cartoon a big revamp in order to improve the story so that when the year ends I can jump right into the animation process) A part of this restructuring involved us having less time to do all the research so that more emphasis would be placed on the practical side of things (like how things were before COVID apparently) since two of our tutors ended up leaving to go find different jobs so now we've only got one main tutor running the entirety of the Creative Media (both level 2 and level 3) and photography courses, but on the plus side, this does mean more time for me to create the various projects than ever before (although I couldn't find anything about that drama that we were told about last year so I'm not sure if that's still happening), but enough venting about how things are suddenly different, it's time to discuss what I enjoyed about this part.
So What Was Your Favourite Part Of The Research?
I'd say doing the experiments was actually my favourite part because it allowed me to test the waters when it comes to inserting cartoon characters into the real world again (both 2D and 3D), and it allowed me to see if I could effectively green screen the 3D characters into the real world via Dreams PS4/5 and Share Factory Studio (that way I don't have to worry about it once the time comes when I do it for real), and when it comes to these experiments, I'm usually quite consistent when it comes to the level of reflection and evidence I present.
For the first experiment where me and a group of friends were taking pictures of each other and our surroundings, I think my favourite part was the variety of shots we were able to get, from portrait shots of each other to close ups of the flowers and insects and even the empty shots, one of which ended up being the basis for my next experiment because I wanted to see if I could add in Super Sheep via Pixlr.
Speaking of the second experiment, that one was actually my favourite experiment of the bunch because of how I was able to incorporate multiple pieces of software and hardware to create a single image, thus leveraging the advantages of all the software used, I.E: Dreams PS4/5's simplicity and ability to produce CG characters and Pixlr's photo editing capabilities and my developing artistic skills. In this case, I used my PlayStation and my copy of Dreams PS4/5 in order to do the 3D version of Super Sheep and his pink screen (where I also tried to match the camera lens settings in Dreams to the camera lens settings that were used on the camera I used to take the original background image) as well as the computer at home and the browser based "Pixlr" (no that is not a misspelling, that's how the name is spelt) Software in order to draw in the 2D Super Sheep and super impose the 3D version afterwards, and even though the 3D Super Sheep's lighting didn't quite match the lighting of the environment, I still had a lot of fun putting the overall Image together (even if I didn't bother with reflections like I did in previous attempts I did before college)
Last but not least is my final experiment where I did a simple animation of Super Sheep dancing and then green screened him into a picture of the real world I took on my phone. (I know it wasn't a professional camera but it was the best I had at the time) I liked this experiment because it allowed me to test the waters with Share Factory Studio and learn more about how track 2 (which is the only video track capable of doing green screen effects) works when it comes to over-layed images.
This Particular experiment did end up taking a little bit more time than I originally thought because the background image's original resolution wasn't supported by Share Factory Studio, so I had to use Pixlr to crop it down into a 720p image instead (I know this means I lose a lot of pixels from the original but I did this out of necessity more than anything)
Camera Shots! We've Got Camera Shots!
Ok, so while I was evaluating all the research I did up to this point, one of our other tutors (who replaced the original tutor I had last year) had us all do a camera exercise in small groups in order to give us a refresher of all the different shot types used in the media landscape (your medium shots, your close ups and what have you) because it's been a year since we learned about that kind of thing, it was quite a fun exercise because me and my group got to bounce ideas off of each other while taking the pictures, but without further ado, it's time to discuss the various camera shots, starting with...
Extreme Wide Shot
An extreme wide shot is where you can see the entire person but they're really far away from the camera so they appear really small when compared to their environment (sometimes to the point where they could easily get lost depending on the environment), this is typically used in order to establish the scale of the environment, mainly in crowd scenes.
Wide Shot
A Wide Shot is where you can see the entire person's body at once, but the frame they're big enough to where you can see them, this shot type is mainly used for when we need to see a character's broad movements while not getting too specific with certain details (for example, a character could be walking towards the camera)
Medium Shot
Medium Shots (or simply Mid Shots for short) are where we can only see half of the character's body at once (it could be either the top or bottom half, it doesn't really matter), these are typically used for portrait shots or if you want the audience to feel on the same level as the character
Close Up
A close up is when you bring the camera reasonably close to a character, prop or environmental element while still being able to parse out a part of the background, this is mainly used to give emphasis on a character's emotions, an environmental detail or even a specific prop (or set of props depending on the scene)
Extreme Close Up
An extreme close up in media terms is when the camera is shooting extremely close to a particular object or person. (in terms of the face, with an extreme close up you'd only be able to see the person or character's eyes where as with a regular close up you'd be able to see the entire face) This is used when you want to really emphasise a certain object, your character's emotions or to create a claustrophobic feeling for the audience.
High Angle
A high angle shot is achieved when you take the camera up high and point it down at the floor, this is most commonly used to make your characters seem small and weak, especially when combined with the extreme wide shot
Low Angle
Unlike a high angle which involves pointing your camera at the floor, a low angle shot involves pointing the camera at the ceiling/sky, in contrast to the high angle shot which makes your characters seem small and weak, a low angle shot is meant to make your character appear large and powerful.
Dutch Angle
A Dutch angle is where you take the camera and rotate it to such a degree as to where the frame is no longer straight, this is usually used when a character is drunk given how Dutch angles aren't what most people would see when they're sober (also it's that angle Battleship Earth uses a lot)
We Now Return To Our Regularly Scheduled Evaluation: How Has Researching The Fashion Industry Impacted My Understanding Of The Fashion Industry?
Let me be the first to say that the fashion industry is not really my favourite subject when it comes to creative media and to be honest, I didn't even realise it even fell under this category before now (considering how fashion as a whole is its own industry and there are separate courses on it in college), but over the course of the past few weeks, I've learned a little bit more about the fashion magazine industry and the various ways they use advertisements to promote certain brands to certain demographics, I.E: The Nike shoes on the cover of the Thrasher Magazine for skater dudes, the Swatch branded Watch in the "GQ" magazine or even the "Ice Iceberg" branded clothing in the "Little Styles" magazine for the children/their parents.
This has helped me to understand that, in terms of advertising at least, doing fashion photography to promote a certain brand is no different to adding in product placement into a movie, TV show or game on a fundamental level, not to mention that since this is a genre of photography, framing and image composition is still very important even though I didn't really get to delve into it in context like I wanted to (part of it's on the sudden restructuring of the course giving me less time to do this but most of it's on me for being too slow in the first place)
So What Elements Of Your Research Will You Try And Implement In The Actual Production?
Well, I really do like the idea of doing a little bit of basketball photography but with the twist that most of the models are cartoon characters instead of real people, think like the two Space Jam films but with my original characters instead of the Looney Tunes, I say "most" because I've been getting mixed messages about whether or not I'll even require an actual person for this project so I might put myself in some of the pictures just in case because you don't have to sign any model release forms if you yourself are going to be your own human model, plus the college has a perfectly good sports hall I can use to get some nice clean shots where the characters are practising their basketball skills, but I'm getting off track.
The reason I want to implement my cartoon characters into this project is mainly so that I can use it to improve my animation and drawing skills, that way I can not only wrangle some form of relevancy to what I enjoy out of this work but I can also use it to expand on some of my characters personalities via the articles these shoots are meant for (specifically characters like Billy Billson because I've been meaning to expand on him for a while now), but since I haven't seen any official fashion magazines that prominently feature cartoon characters besides the ones with animated characters photo-shopped on top of the original human models but most of those aren't official. With this factoid in mind, my fashion magazine will likely end up sticking out from the crowd in this regard because as far as I'm aware, no other fashion magazine has done this on the scale I'm going for.
How Well Do You Think You You Understand The Brief Right Now?
Ok, so for a good chunk of this research phase I decided to keep the brief on one side of the screen so that I could instantly refer to it if I end up getting stuck, so most of the time my screen looked like this:
With that being said however, it didn't quite help in terms of how quickly I was able to do the research, not to mention some of the sudden experimentation, which while it helped in the practical sense, which to be fair is the main emphasis of this new (or should I say pre-COVID structure since apparently this is how things worked before COVID happened) course structure, it did end up cutting into my time doing research, which is being slightly de-emphasized this time around anyway since now We only get two weeks maximum to do research per unit, meaning I've got a lot to get used to doing this part in quicker bursts.
In terms of the practical side of the brief, I think I may finally have a firm grasp on what I'm doing, as I'm supposed to be taking 12 shots (2 front covers and 5 images for each one) and a single promotional video to go along with them all at the same time luckily I have at least some idea as to how I could potentially pull this all off. For the moving image I could CG in Super Sheep and friends using Dreams Ps4/5 and the (somewhat limited) green screen capabilities of Share Factory Studio where as for the photos I could simply draw them in, the reason I'm not just picking one or the other is because the last time I tried to do a 2D animation for college I had to scale everything way back just to meet the deadline due to how over ambitious I was originally, and I'm not about to make the same mistake twice. (although I should still try and keep my ambition in check in case things start going overboard again, especially with the 2D shots)
So How Was That Brief Stint Of Basketball Jersey Research?
Despite certain complications (mainly when I tried to compare a 90's basketball jersey with one from modern times), I'd say I did just about ok on that front, plus it served as an excuse to mention Space Jam and it even helped me figure out what context I wanted to put my cartoon characters into when adding them into the real world, I just have to get to work designing everyone's jerseys and come up with the fake brand they'll be advertising and then I'll be good to go. I just want to say that although I've designed clothes while doing animated characters before, I haven't specifically gone out of my way to design the clothes on their own before, so this'll be an interesting experience to say the least.
In Conclusion
Overall, while the research phase may not have gone quite as well as I wanted it to, I think now that I have more of an idea about this new course structure, I can take steps in order to adapt to it in the future. Of course, one of those steps will involve re-doing the same head start strategy I tried to pull last year, only this time all the briefs are available from the get-go, meaning it'll be easier to pull this off than it was last time. (Remember that time I had to re-boot the research for the music video? Classic), Now that that's all out of the way, it's time to move on to...
The Pre-Production Stage!
This is the people behind a given work start to do all the planning, script-writing, storyboarding, location scouting, model release forms, test shots, asset lists, shot lists, hiring of staff ext. This stage is important because this is where you decide what you want to do for your project (be it photography, a movie, a video game, an internet video or what have you), and if you don't do a proper job at this stage, your project will end up falling apart at the seams like so many projects have done before and likely after I've finished this project, examples of poor planning include the likes of Sonic 06 (which is what we Sonic fans call the Sonic game that released in 2006 because it shares the exact same name as the first game) and even my first attempt at Captain Cartridge's cartoon. (heck, there even exist shows like "Whu Happun?" on YouTube that are dedicated to talking about this kind of thing) Luckily for me, I actually got to do a little bit of scouting by taking test pictures of the location while starting the evaluation process (I took these images on my phone, so I'll need to keep that in mind for the time being):
From what I found on my little scouting adventure, it seems the sports hall's floor becomes more reflective the closer to the corner it is, at least from what I saw when I looked down and couldn't see my own reflection when I was nearer the middle. This means I'll need to take the distance between the camera and my characters into consideration because if my characters are far enough away I'll need to add in part of their reflection:
This sort of shot could also be useful for demonstrating the characters practising their basketball skills in case they decide to enter some kind of cartoon basketball competition in the future, since their cartoonish antics and a few of their abilities would break the rules of conventional basketball in general, let alone the NBA.
We Interrupt This Program To Bring You The Project Proposal
This is my project proposal for the fashion photography project, this has given me the opportunity to further develop the basketball idea and even come up with the title, which is now "Introducing: The Slam-Jammers!" (so that's the team name sorted for the most part, now I just need to design that jersey and I can begin planning this project out):
We Now Return You To Your Regularly Scheduled Program
Originally, for the picture above (the one with the basketball hoop) I did want to figure out how I could get the camera to the same level as the court, but after doing a little bit of thinking, I think I might be able to use the low angle to my advantage because it'll then make whichever character I decide to let do a slam dunk seem more powerful, thus allowing the audience to better feel the power of the shot.
Perhaps I could use this as some sort of hall that leads to the Slam-Jammer's locker room or something, but for now I'll put a pin in this discussion. Now that I've shown a small sample of my 10 scout pictures, it's time for me to reintroduce an old friend of mine.
The Project Management Chart!
the reason I'm using this project management chart instead of the one provided on Teams is because I've been using this since the later projects in creative media level 2, and every single one of those projects ended up being a relative success (or at the very least they got made), and if I'm lucky, I might end up doing so well I end up getting ahead of myself like I've done for several projects in the past. (the main example being Super Sheep in Convention F-3)
To explain how this chart works (specifically for those that are new here), every week I'll be updating this chart and discussing whether or not I think I'm still on track to complete the project. This style has been quite helpful so I'll be trying to keep that part the same as it's always been because it'll help me in terms of consistency.
On To The Fashion Design!
That's right, we're moving on to designing the jerseys that all the characters will be wearing:
Right now, I'm designing a rough version of what I want the team logo to look like so that I can eventually place the sponsorships around it and the player number.
The reason I'm doing this is because back when Pixlr was flash based, it used to have both Comic Sans and Ravie as options for fonts in the text tool, but ever since the big update they made where they re-did the whole thing so that it would no longer use Flash (since Flash is now dead), it now features a completely different line up of fonts entirely. As for the reason I'm picking both Ravie and Comic Sans, it's because I want the logo for my fake basketball team to have similar branding to the Slamination Studios logo (although this does mean I'll have to save the text as an image):
The reason for this is because the team is going to be made up of a bunch of my existing characters I created ages ago:
The only real problem I'll have is how I'm going to get Ruff Bup's jersey to fit his style while still making it clear he's on the same team as everyone else because it'll look real jarring for a character who was made in black and white to suddenly start wearing a colourful jersey, but at the same time it'll look weird if Ruff Bup's jersey was black and white while everyone else is wearing more colourful attire (because then people might think he's on a different team entirely):
In order to fit the words on the jersey, I did end up having to use the "Marquee Select" tool in order to separate the words, but it was worth it just to be able to fit them all on at once
As for the sponsor slots, I decided to draw basic shapes as a place-holder until I design the actual brand logos I want to slap on these characters' jerseys, meaning once I do get actual designs for these brands, I'll be able to place them on the jerseys afterwards
I decided to make the colour scheme the inverse to what I had Billy wear back in 2019 because of the fact that Space Jam: A New Legacy decided to also feature blue and orange as the main colours of it's new "Tune Squad" jerseys' design because when I made Billy back in 2019, Space Jam 2 had wrapped up the filming and principal photography phase, meaning that they would have likely had to finalise their Tune Squad jersey design before filming even began, which means I could probably get in trouble if I keep using that particular design with this in mind, I'll have to invert Billy's regular colour-scheme too so that Warner Bros can't sue me.
And after all this, I finally got my design finished:
Designing this jersey was actually a lot easier than I expected, as I could draw upon my years of experience with designing characters like Guyzo and Captain Cartridge since those characters (as well as others) happen to wear clothes that for the most part correspond with their profession and/or look distinct from my other characters, although I do wish that Pixlr would bring back their old line up of fonts alongside the new fonts they have now so that I don't end up having to go into external software just to go and get text that happens to use the old fonts, although saying this, on the plus side, the fact I did have to save it as an image first meant I could edit the text like I would an image I got from the internet, so there's that to consider at the very least.
With that being said however, It's only natural that the next step is to get started on coming up with a pair of fake brands I could use, then afterwards I could see how my characters would look in the new jerseys by doing some test art, that way I can spend time solving any problems that may end up arising rather than having to do so at the last minute.
Fake Brands
Now that the characters' jerseys have all been designed, it's time for me to start designing the logos for the fake brands they'll be sponsoring (that way I don't end up getting in trouble with Nike's legal team):
I'm not really sure why my mind immediately jumped to a sabretooth of all things but I think that the sharpness of said sabretooth could end up helping this fake logo stand out from other real logos such as the Nike logo, although saying this, this sabretooth does look kind of like the Nike swoosh turned on it's side, so I might not use this design after all.
I think this fake logo is shaping up to be a decent logo for a potential company that makes glasses and other eyewear, of course I'll have to be careful not to make the whole thing too complex, as I want to be able to draw it at a really small scale when I stick it onto the characters' jersey
In this image, they're purple because the jerseys themselves are going to be orange, thus meaning the logo will stick out and complement the background colour while not being the same colour as the words and number on the jersey, as you're about to see in the next screenshot:
Now I just need to come up with a name for this fake company and I'll be golden.
One potential name I've got on the cards is "Throwin' Shades", which derives from the phrase "throwing shade." The reason I'm considering this name is because I tried to have the image emit a sort of cool and collected yet casual vibe and I think this particular name also emanates the same vibe as the picture.
Another name is "Full Shaders", this name takes a little bit of inspiration from the term "Shaders" which is commonly used in the video game and animation industry to describe the way the lighting looks (whether it be cel shading or even the various shaders found in Minecraft), this name could serve as a neat reference to the shader tools available to animator and game designers (which is relevant because I want to become an animator in the future)
I decided to go with the name Throwin' Shades because I figured it would better with the fact that I'm making a fake glasses brand, but now that I've done the name, I now need to pick a font that'll fit with the picture I drew earlier.
Now I just need to colour in the logo by merging the text with an empty layer (because this font is just an outline and I can't directly change the fill colour without converting it into a regular layer via merging)
Doing this started off quite difficult seeing how it took me a while to eventually land on the glasses concept (because I didn't actually look up any reference images beforehand), but once I found the groove it was a relative breeze because I only had to worry about drawing a small piece of a character rather than the whole thing
I also quite like how well the purple contrasts with the orange on the main part of the jersey because now it sticks out like your average sponsor is supposed to because then the advertising is more likely to be effective. (you can't have an effective sponsorship if the audience can't clearly see the sponsor's logo)
For the second brand, I do actually have two options, I could theoretically use C-GULL, which is my existing fake brand I made for when I was first doing Captain Cartridge (if you can't tell, C-GULL is a fake version of SEGA because that whole I.P was created as a tribute to the SEGA Mega Drive and the old console wars) and save myself a ton of hassle, or I could attempt to make up a completely new fake brand that I'll be able to re-use later on in some of my other I.P's (Intellectual properties) later down the line.
Here, I've decided to use the line tool in order to help make my lines much more consistent, which is important because this new logo I'm designing is for a housing brand that will also have a purple logo in order to maintain colour consistency with the sponsor colour scheme:
All I need to do now is come up with a funny house related name for this new brand and I'll be golden.
One potential name I've got bouncing around is "Ray and Harry's Housing Inc." This name is a neat little reference to Ray Harryhausen, a famous visual effects artist who pioneered the technique of using stop motion to bring various monsters to life, he did the visual effects for films such as 1963's Jason and the Argonauts and 1958's The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (and those are his more famous works), the name also serves as a reference to the restaurant from Monsters Inc which itself is called Harryhausen's (so I'm getting two references for the price of one)
Another potential name I've got rattling around is Richter Von Housing. This name is a play on names such as Milhouse Van Houten from "The Simpsons" and Victor Von Dom from "The Fantastic 4" except I replaced Victor with Richter (because making references to the Castlevania series is fun) and Houten with Housing, there isn't as many layers to this name as there is with the first one though, so I might stick with that instead.
Much like the previous logo, this did take a little bit of time but once I nailed down what I wanted it to be, I was able to hit the ground running once more, and I was able to make a cool reference to an influential VFX artist in the process.
After all this time, I can officially declare the part where I design the jerseys completed, it was a bit of a doozy at points (mainly with trying to get the text on the main jersey and even getting started while designing both brands) but I managed to pull through in the end, now I just need to get an idea of how some of the characters will actually look in the new jerseys and solve the Ruff Bup colour conundrum and I'll be all set to do some planning.
Testing The Jerseys
in this section, I'll be doing some test art to see if my characters look any good dressed in their new attire, because it's one thing for a jersey to look good on it's own, but it's a completely different story as to whether it'll look good on the characters. I'll be starting off these tests with Super Sheep and then I'll do a couple of the other characters afterwards (mainly Billy, Cartridge and Ruff Bup)
We Interrupt This Program To Bring You Another Project Management Update
Ok, so now I can move on to planning everything out and doing all the test art, things seem to be going according to plan so far (at least until the inevitable next shake up happens), but before we go, I just want to say that I'm really starting to like this snipping tool, as now I only have to worry about taking a small portion of the screen rather than the entire display, which is good for making sure I don't end up reaching those pesky memory limits as quickly as I did before (except on mac where it doesn't seem to exist)
We Now Return You To Your Regularly Scheduled Program
After all that, I think Super Sheep looks pretty snazzy in his new sportswear if I do say so myself. I'll admit, I did have my doubts about designing a set of clothes without a character to go with it, but I do quite like the way Super Sheep looks here (not bad for my first attempt at fashion design on it's own), but now it's time to move on to the most challenging test of the bunch, that being Ruff Bup. The reason I'm labelling him as challenging is because of the fact that he's black and white, thus meaning no matter which option I choose he's going to look somewhat out of place (if I have him wear the orange and blue jersey like the rest of the team, it'll look weird on him because he's a black and white character, but on that same token, it'll also look weird if he's the only person wearing black and white because it'll look like he's on a different team entirely), so if I can find a way to make it work now while we're still in pre-production, I won't have to worry about this part later:
Here, I'm going to duplicate the image before I start colouring it in, that way I can do a version where he's in black and white and another version where he's wearing the more colourful ensemble, that way I'll be able to pick which one I think looks the best (perhaps I could even put it to a vote and gather a bit of feedback on it)
I did it, both Ruff Bups are finished, now I just need to asses which one is better by doing a pair of pro and con lists for each of them. (because then I'll be able to decide which one to use in the full project)
Pros (Colourised)
The Jersey, shorts and sponsors stick out way more than it does on the black and white version (due to the way I made his body and the jersey the same colour in the black and white version)
Ruff Bup looks more like he's actually part of the team here
The black "R" plays surprisingly well with the bright orange shorts here
Cons (Colourised)
The bright colours clash heavily with the Ruff Bup's design and aesthetics (thus making him seem rather out of place in them)
Pros (Black & White)
It fits better with Ruff Bup's design and aesthetics because it too is monochromatic
Cons (Black & White)
The Jersey, shorts and sponsors blend in with Ruff Bup's body way too much (although this could easily be fixed with a bit of colour inversion)
Ruff Bup ends up looking even more out of place than he would if the outfit was colourised
I don't think Ruff Bup's "R" looks right when it's white but again, this is easily fixed with a bit of colour inversion like I just did while writing this list:
Maybe I can get the black and white version to work after all, because his jersey does bare the same team name as all the other characters, and it's not like Ruff Bup looking out of place ever stopped me from sticking him in the same image as Super Sheep before, so I may as well stick with this. (it also reminds me a lot of the white jerseys the Tune Squad wore in the first Space Jam, so there's also that)
Now that Ruff Bup's been sorted out, it's time to get to work on Billy, doing him will also be a good excuse to design the back.
Doing Billy was a little bit more challenging because It's been a while since I last drew the character due to how he has a slightly different shape from most of the other characters, his head and body shape were inspired by a computer mouse where as everyone else just has circular heads, which means his head and body take more effort to get right than all the other characters I've done thus far.
Now that I've done a little bit of test art, it's time to actually plan out the two shoots.
Actually Planning The Two Shoots
alright, now that I've done a little bit of test art, it's time for me to actually plan out the two shoots, since I've only given myself this week to get on with the planning phase, starting with the location scout check lists:
This first scouting checklist did take me most of the day to complete because I had to remember some of the details I found while doing my scouting pictures, but once I got going, things were smooth sailing. (probably because I didn't add in a whole lot of detail this time around) Saying this, it was quite boring to do because all I was doing was writing down a bunch of information into a document. (although this is important because then I'll have an actual plan instead of winging everything)
This second sheet (which is for the photo studio this time around) was actually much easier for me to make (not to mention it was much quicker to make too) because now I've got a bit more of an idea on the structure of the various questions they ask, since both sheets were made using the same document out tutor put into Teams earlier.
Storyboards
Just because I'm doing a photo shoot doesn't mean I should leave out the storyboarding process. This part is important because then I get to plan out how I want my images to be composed. (and since I'm going to be adding cartoon characters into the mix, this part will be even more important because then I'll be able to spend more time getting the lighting and the visual effects right)
The storyboarding process is where you plan out what you want to have in your shot before you go out and take the final images, this process is done all the time in the film, TV and Gaming industries (the gaming one refers more to the cutscene side of things) in order to plan out their entire productions because then they'll be able to save time and money on the day(s) they'll be filming and/or animating, so without further ado, let's get started:
The template I'll be using to do these storyboards is made by StudioBinder, I've used this template plenty of times before on everything from Super Sheep in Convention F-3 to The Grand Lamppost Heist and it's been a real help in terms of getting things done, but since this photography unit requires a minimum of 12 shots (ten for the main pages and two for the front covers) and this template has 6 slots per batch, so theoretically it should only take me about two batches to complete, maybe 3 or 4 if we count the moving image storyboards (either way, it'll likely be the least storyboarding I've done on a given project), so enough wasting time, let's get to work!:
Usually once I add the title, I can simply merge the text into the background layer, but since these batches will now relate to the different locations, I'll have to actually keep the text layer separate this time around for easy editing down the line
Since these images are meant to be done quickly (and also because I'm running on borrowed time at the moment), the images here will simply use a less clean version of my regular art style to save time (of course, once the time comes to do this for real, I'll use my usual art-style with a bit of added shading too)
For this shot, I've decided to have Billy and Captain Cartridge recreate a particularly famous basketball photo where Lebron James is doing a slam dunk while a man named Dwayne Wade does a cool pose for the camera this shot would later serve as a basis for a shot in Space Jam: A New Legacy where Lebron James is getting another dunk while Lola Bunny does the same pose Wade did:
Now that I've done the main shots for this edition of the magazine, I can use the sixth panel to plan out what I want the front cover to look like (the two lines I drew are meant to act as a border for the average height of a magazine cover
That's right, since I know how many shots are required and I'm trying to make the videos quite short, I can reasonably estimate how many batches it'll take to complete the whole thing, so we can consider this 1/4 batches complete. (and with this shoot requiring an entire basketball team, Sello-Man gets to come back)
I predict that this'll be an easier batch to do because by the studio's very nature, I'll only need to worry about doing one character at a time and most of the shots will be quite similar anyway (which is why a good amount of variety is important for the on location shoots)
The reason I'm calling this shot wide "by Super Sheep standards" is because I decided to make characters like Super Sheep and Ruff Bup smaller than your average person (unlike people such as Billy and Cartridge who are closer to standard human height)
For this shot of Billy, I figured I could have him hold a basketball that says "Ray and Harry's Housing Inc." on it so that both sponsors would be fully visible at once. (since the angle at which I drew him partially obscured the "Ray and Harry's Housing Inc." logo) Speaking of Billy, this process is really helping me find a good personality for the guy where for the most part he's quite laid back and relaxed, but when it comes to his job (which is to play professional basketball), he take it very seriously.
For this shot, I decided it would be a good idea to have a close up of the back of one of the characters in order to show off the back of their jersey (in this case I picked Captain Cartridge) as well as put in a ball that sneakily advertises the "Throwin' Shades" company in a similar vain to what I did with Billy and "Ray and Harry's Housing Inc." (because advertising is fun)
Here, I decided to change Elfrix's number from 16 to 07. The reason I decided to do this is because once this fashion project is over, I'm thinking of expanding upon the idea of all my characters being part of this hypothetical basketball team by bringing in everyone's friends, I.E. for Super Sheep this would be characters like The Night Pig and Hugo and for Cartridge it would be people like Bitris 16 (who would be a better pick for the number 16 because the number's a part of his name) and Voltrix.
If I keep this rate up, this'll be the quickest storyboarding process I've ever done. (it'll be a new personal record baby!) Now that the stills portion has been planned out, it's time to move on to storyboarding the video part of this unit (since we're doing both parts at the same time)
For example, this motion arrow is here to represent Super Sheep's path across the screen (in this case, he shows up from screen left), the reason these exist is because it's very difficult to depict movement in still form (especially if the art's not good), so in order to communicate that the character is supposed to be moving, the storyboard artists just add in these motion arrows to make it obvious to even the most half-witted person in the room
Here, I'm doing something I rarely ever do when it comes to storyboarding. I'm adding in text that's meant to be part of the actual storyboard panel as a pose to the explainer text. The reason I'm doing this is because in this video, I'm planning on having the names of the various characters show up on screen.
If you want people to know that the action on screen is a repeating action, you simply add two arrows at the end of your line in order to let the folks in charge know that the action is to go back and forth, and if you really want to make it obvious as to what the action even is (likely because the art stinks), you'll have to label the arrows.
One nifty trick I've been doing to make the edit and/or camera movements obvious in the storyboards is that I'll often have an arrow that points from one end of the previous box to the other end of the next box, and from there I'll add in a note that says whatever edit and/or camera movement I want to take place (whether it be a cut, pan or what have you), oh, and if the next panel happens to be downwards, I simply have the arrow wrap around the screen like Pac-Man because it saves me a lot of space, since I'm not drawing one long squiggly line that goes all over the place.
Here, I'm going to copy and paste the "Slam-Jammers" logo I made earlier in order to include it in the storyboard so that I don't have to re-write the words again.
Ladies and gentlemen, we're almost finished here. Doing this particular batch was quite difficult at first because I didn't know which direction I wanted to take it (other than it being short and snappy, no longer than about 5-6 seconds in length), so in order to procrastinate, I decided to jump the gun and take the studio shots earlier today:
The point is, once that was finished, I was able to figure out a direction to take this storyboard in by taking a little bit of inspiration from the opening of the Sonic Boom TV show (yes the one about the blue armed Sonic, what else would I be referring to?):
The final batch should be relatively simple since it's just a video that takes place on a white background, and arguably, I could even re-use the white void I made for that animation I did where I humorously announce the cancellation of Super Sheep in Hex-o's Exos. (just delete all the assets I used originally in one fell swoop and put the new cartridge model in)
Here, you can see that I added in a box with lines coming out of it and arrows pointing towards the border of the panel, the reason I did this was to communicate that I want the camera to zoom out of the "Ray and Harry's Housing" logo. The box itself in this case represents the starting position of the camera while the arrows represent the outward zoom (if this were a zoom in, the arrows would be pointed towards the black box rather than away from it and the box itself would become the camera's end point)
Well what do you know, this was the easiest batch to do out of the whole lot, since all this video will likely be is an out fit showcase, I just had to draw what I want on screen in each panel and I was pretty much good to go. This also means that by extension, the entire storyboarding process is over and done with!
So How Was Doing The Storyboarding?
I'll admit, this time around it wasn't really as much of a chore as it was with my other projects as of late (looking at you "Hex-o's Exos"), probably due to a combination of a relatively low batch count and the fact I was able to get it done quite quickly thanks to the rushed artwork, not to mention that at one point I even got to copy and paste a logo I made into the boards so I wouldn't have to re-draw it all over again which I haven't really done before as far as storyboarding is concerned. (while that wasn't the most exciting bit, it was certainly quite novel at the very least)
Another contributing factor to this particular round of storyboarding being quick and easy is that one half of the batches were for images that would be completely still while the half that actually was for the video side of things basically boiled down to drawing poses that wouldn't be on screen for very long, since the videos are meant to be quite snappy for the social media of today. (even though my target audience are in their mid to late 30s due to the Space Jam influences)
These storyboards will be quite helpful because now I've managed to come up with a visual plan so that when it comes to integrating the cartoon characters into the real world, I won't have to worry about having to just wing it and hoping for the best. But now that the storyboarding is over and the studio shots have already been captured, it's just a matter of playing the waiting game. (since I won't be able to get the on-location shots until next Monday when I'm back in college) In the meantime, please enjoy this behind the scenes video I recorded:
For this video, I simply found a place to rest my phone in the studio and hit record while I went ahead and did my shoot. (the reason it's empty is because I'm going to add in the cartoon characters later on after I do my on location shoot) At first I wanted to see if I could turn on the lighting equipment, but after fumbling around for a bit I decided it would be best to just stick with the default lighting instead since doing so would be easier.
Since I was in the photo studio, there wasn't a lot of variety in terms of what I could snap so I decided that I might be able to get away with just taking two or three images and then re-using them multiple times, although the initial picture of the stool ended up coming out slightly blurrier than I was expecting, so I ended up having to re-shoot it multiple times until I was happy (while also keeping in mind the rule of thirds for the sake of getting the composition to look right for later), afterwards I left in order to get the photos onto the laptop I was using at the time. (although this ended up taking some time as there was some unexpected technical difficulties so I had to switch to a Mac in order to do this instead):
Now that I've done a little bit of early photography and since this is now the weekend, it's time to return to the world of Dreams PS4/5 and see what I did today.
Back To The Dreamiverse
Today, I decided to get started on making the 3D models for the Slam-Jammers versions of all the characters I want to use in the videos, although in the case of Super Sheep, Captain Cartridge, Ruff Bup and Elfrix, I really shouldn't use the word "make" since that implies I did the new models from scratch. Instead what I did was that I basically remixed my existing models of those characters and retextured them so that they would all wear their basketball jerseys. Doing this was quite easy, as unlike most 3D software where I would have to hope and pray that a texture I already drew would wrap around the models correctly, instead I got to paint the textures on using the spray-paint tool along with the "surface snap" guide (where the sculpt shape and/or paint strokes would be created along the surface of an object, perfect for adding detail on a character's shirt or something) within Dreams' sculpt mode, thus guaranteeing that the characters would be textured correctly. (unless I really screw things up, but even then I can simply undo the screw up or even texture over it) The only thing I would say here is that for the sponsors, I did end up doing that thing where really small text is represented by a set of lines because I figured it would be too small to look good.
Ok, if you really want to get technical, I did have to add a pair of orange cones to Super Sheep and Cartridge in order to complete the shorts but doing this was quite simplistic (probably not even worth mentioning even), the reason I didn't do this for Ruff Bup or Elfrix is because both characters already wear shorts in the first place so in Elfrix's case it was just a matter of recolouring them so that they were orange. (Ruff Bup's shorts didn't even need recolouring since I already decided that his entire jersey is black and white)
Now that the easy part was out of the way, I figured I could at least get started on doing something I'd been meaning to for a long long time. (something that was originally meant to be tomorrow's job but after the first football match was over I decided to leap at the opportunity to get started today instead):
Now, you were probably wondering why I stopped the first stream after doing Elfrix and not Billy Billson. Well you see, the reason for this is because the original model I made for Billy Billson is actually quite atrocious looking in my opinion, it's mainly in the head and body where I decided to go for a more cuboid shape thinking it would help me replicate the mouse shaped head I gave the character in the 2D drawings:
The funny thing is that I didn't even originally want Billy to be in the videos because of this rather sub-par model (not quite the word I wanted to use to describe the model, but I'm not sure whether the folks in charge would let the "cr" word slide), although while I was storyboarding the sports hall video, I figured I should at least acknowledge the character somewhere so I decided to slot him in, although due to how quickly I managed to get that task done in combination to that I have a four day weekend, I figured "well since I now have the time on my hands, this unit will be a good excuse to re-model Billy and make him better than before", so that's how this ended up coming to be in the first place.
So after getting out the default "deluxe puppet" as well as whipping out the original model so that I can copy the same brown skin as well as the hands I used the first time around (hey, the original model might be hot garbage but there are still a few elements worth using. Also, like all my characters, the hands were made by someone else), the first thing I set out on doing was making sure I got the head shape to better match what's in the 2D drawing, so I had that original drawing open to use as a reference on my phone. (this is standard practice whenever I'm modelling any character I've previously drawn in 2D because it helps me make the model more accurate to the design I made earlier) As such, I decided to experiment with using a pair of spheres that I would cut into with a cuboid (which I used soft blending for in order to round off the cut at the very least because it would look weird if I didn't), This did take a couple of tries to get right because of when I turned on the mirror guide to do the eye holes the first time the mirror wasn't where I needed it to be but after getting the general face shape, I already think it looks miles better than the original because now his face doesn't look as blocky as it did before (not to mention how the extra space between the facial features and the bottom of his head is now gone), even though I simply stole the original eyeballs from my earlier model since I didn't want those to go to waste (same thing goes for the hands by the way), afterwards I painted the parts of billy's body where his skin is showing and then I modelled the headband as a separate model, that way I can turn it on and off if I so choose. (this feature isn't necessarily for this project admittedly, it's more so a form of future proofing in case I ever want to use the character again later on)
From there, I decided to add in Billy's hair by painting the top and some of the back of his head darker and then adding in a bunch of surface snapped spheres on top. I'll admit that jumping from bit to bit like this does make me seem like I took a scatterbrains approach (much like how this entire unit's been going for me now that I think about it), that's because that's exactly what happened thus far.
Moving on from that, I added in Billy's ears, made his feet a bit bigger and then added in his eyes. The eyes did take the most attempts to get right but it was all still really easy since I've done it many times before. The part where I ended up having to stop was actually doing Billy's mouth because of a second football match that was happening at around 17:30PM so that's something I'll have to continue tomorrow, but even at this early stage, the new Billy Billon model is looking miles better than the original in my humble opinion because of the more accurate and better looking head.
Re-Modelling Billy Billson Part 2: Electric Boogaloo
So before we begin, I should address the weird way I spell "Boogaloo" (spelt "Boo ga lou"), the reason the title is spelt like that is because when I typed in "Boogaloo" into the stream's title, the PS5 actually stipulated that this was considered a swear word for some reason, but after a quick google search I did while writing this, I found out that no, boogaloo is not a swear word but instead is a type of dance:
Eventually, after enough insistence on making that reference I would eventually land on the strategy of simply taking the word and spelling it slightly differently (thus spurring the "creation" of "Boo ga lou"), now that that's out of the way I can actually begin reflecting on what I did today.
So today, I actually managed to finish the remodelling process for Billy by completing all of Billy's mouth poses, although I did have to turn to the other Billy model to remember what the L pose is supposed to look like because I couldn't remember how I did it the first time around (good thing the other model was there as a handy reference point), but other than that drawing the mouths was quite easy because of how much experience I've gained since first doing Super Sheep's mouth back when I was making his model for that Super Sheep game that never came to be. (and the best part is that I got to give Billy the side mouth like all my other characters have)
For the body, I originally wanted to copy the head and use it as the basis for the body, but I decided that doing this would be too much work, so instead I simply used the sculpt mode to modify the default body pieces so that they would be more of a computer mouse type of shape (much like with Billy's head) and then thinned out the back to complete the shape, and then while I was adding on the textures, I would also thin out the bottom of his body to give the whole body that upside down mouse look like what I did in the 2D drawing (except it's a bit more rounded this time because it would look weird in 3D otherwise)
After finishing off most of the body modifications, it was time for me to start texturing (which admittedly took up most of my time because I had to get all the sponsors on there and everything), which was a relative cinch since I was giving him similar texturing to what I was doing with the others, so of course, I would get better at doing these as I went along. With that said however, the fact I did all the textures one by one has likely raised the logical question, "hey, if all these textures you're doing are so similar in nature, why not just copy the same texture and edit it slightly?" Well you see, in Dreams PS4/5, copying and pasting textures from one model to another isn't really a thing you can do (at least not right now) because of the fact that all the textures are painted directly onto the model so in other words, it's a trade off where texturing itself is really easy but you can't copy and paste the exact textures you used on one model to another (but I usually tend to make new textures for each model anyway so that's not something I'm too worried about at the moment)
After the texturing was done, it was simply a matter of key framing everything up and I was good to go. The reason I use keyframes for this job is because it's easy for me to quickly turn them off and on again while animating (whether by powering them on myself and with other keyframes or even with trigger zones in the case of getting the mouth to jump from one side of the face to the other), so with all this, I'd say Billy Billson is ready to roll at last, as the model actually looks quite good in my professional opinion. This by extension means that all the 3D prep work is finally finished, so now all I have to worry about is taking the location shots of the sports hall, draw the characters into the photos, get the characters animated and green screened into the videos and then hopefully I've have done enough sanding to fit the square pegs that are my cartoon characters into the round hole that is fashion photography.
We Interrupt This Program To Bring You Another Project Management Update
So now I just need to get the sports hall photos and a little bit of video footage and then I'll finally be able to begin adding in the cartoon characters. (this may involve playing the waiting game though, mainly because I don't know the time table for the sports department)
You may also have noticed that I decided to make a few changes in order to get in a bit of time to do some articling (since the images are for magazine articles), the reason I did this is because I want to make is so that there's some sore of interview with the basketball team (mainly Super Sheep and Billy Billson because I don't want to over do it and this is also supposed to help me expand on Billy's personality)
We Now Return You To Your Regularly Scheduled Program: The Sports Hall Shoot
So remember when I said about playing the waiting game two paragraphs ago?:
That's right, I went ahead and checked if the sports hall was free and by some divine miracle I was able to get the clearance necessary to use it things were admittedly a little bit touch and go briefly but it all worked out in the end (this was on the condition that if the sports department needed to use it for a lesson I would have to high tail it out of there but luckily no-one else needed it so I was able to do everything I needed), so as soon as I found out I rushed on over to where the cameras are kept and asked for both a video camera and a photo camera and then got right to work.
I decided to take the pictures first because I figured I could get them out of the way (plus if I DID have to leave prematurely, I could still green screen the 3D characters into the images instead but luckily I was able to get the video too), I did end up having to retake a couple of the photos because they were blurry the first time around but I was eventually able to complete this particular task (after fumbling around with the camera and making sure all the pictures looked good)
Afterwards I switched cameras, the reason I didn't just keep hold of the video camera while taking the pictures is because it would have been a very awkward grip and I would have risked dropping the video camera (which is an expensive piece of equipment) but I'm going off on a bit of a tangent. Recording the videos proved to be a bit of a challenge at first because I didn't fully know if I'd actually started recording when I hit the record button (because there was no dot next to the "rec" that was on top of the screen) and I had a bit of trouble getting to the menu but once I figured out it was a touch screen (and that I had indeed been recording) I was able to get the hang of it. The clips themselves are nothing to write home about because all they're nothing but a bunch of empty wide shots (with some being lower down in order to better fit the shorter stature of Super Sheep, Ruff Bup and Elfrix) because the plan is that I'll later fit Super Sheep and the gang in later via green screen effects. (not sure how convincing they'll be because as much as I tried to keep the camera still there was still a bit of shakiness in the footage) I ended up having to do re-shoots on all the video footage because for some of it I ended up needing to do things like shooting at a lower distance from the floor on some of them (again, this was to fit the smaller stature of Super Sheep, Ruff Bup and Elfrix) but I managed to get this done quite quickly too.
One of my big worries was that I wasn't going to be able to get these video files into Share Factory due to them being of a higher resolution than the software will allow for and it isn't as easy to just lower the resolution of a video (mainly because I don't know any software that'll let me do it easily) but I was able to find out that the videos are in fact 1920 by 1080 pixels (which is supported by share factory as far as I'm aware):
Importing the pictures onto the college mac was quite easy but getting the videos on there was a little bit more of a pain due to how I'd have to save the videos one at a time instead of being able to just do them all at once:
But now that I've done both of my shoots, it's time for the real fun to begin (that's right, I finally get to add in my cartoon characters into the mix)
The Real Fun Begins
So in Pixlr, when an image is particularly large, there'll be a warning before you open it that says "Hey, this image is quite big, we suggest resizing it so that it'll lave on memory", I'm bringing this up because I usually tend to just pick the lower resolution option whenever I encounter this and that's what I'll be doing this time (because again, minimizing lag), now that that's out of the way, let's get it started in here
The reason I like doing this is because it makes the outlines easier to see when I'm drawing them, especially in darker areas where the black outlines can be much more difficult to see. Once all the characters outlines are coloured in, I'll then get rid of the buffer layer because it won't be needed at that point.
For Super Sheep specifically, the ears are a bit of a challenge to get right because they often take me several attempts to get right (and they're usually the main thing that I can't seem to draw at a consistent size)
ah yes, I was going to talk about how I usually like to draw the body after I did the head (since I find doing it this way much easier than doing the other way around)
But ever since creative media level 2 (specifically the old wix website where I made Elfrix and friends), I've change to simply drawing the hands first since I find it much more convenient to do them before I draw the characters arms (afterwards I can then erase a piece of the hands)
it might not look like it from this snipped screen cap, but this "Throwin' Shades" logo is actually quite small, but it still looks legible (except the words, they'll just be a pair of purple lines)
When it comes to the character's legs, I actually have two different approaches depending on what angle the foot will end up in. One approach is where I just draw the legs first and then do the foot in the same stroke (for when the leg is facing to the side), where as the other approach involves drawing the foot first and then doing the legs after the fact (for when the foot faces towards the camera), I find both of these approaches to be quite useful because they both allow me to draw the legs quite quickly.
After I've finished drawing everything I need to for the current character, I like to go in and clean up the image, this "cleaning" mainly consists of rubbing out certain lines that intersect with other parts of the drawing
Instead of drawing the body as one big shape, I do a cylinder shape followed by a second circle that connects to the bottom of the cylinder in order to get that dumbbell design like Mickey Mouse used to have (well I say "used to", but in some incarnations he still uses that particular design)
Another key difference between Ruff Bup and all my other characters is the way I draw his hands when their open, this is to help keep his aesthetic true to the cartoons of the 1920s (likewise, I would also do his rival Rick P. Rison like this too because they're both part of the same I.P.), this also extends to his gloves where I draw the "glove hole" as an oval that's connected to the main hand
The gist of this particular glitch is that random parts of the drawing will start disappearing as I zoom in and out (this hasn't happened with Super Sheep thus far), luckily I was able to get my friends to help me fix it by suggesting I refresh the page (and it worked)
a lot of these characters will more or less use the same methods so don't expect as many screen caps going forward (unless I end up coming across a lot of note worthy things during my time doing this)
It took me several attempts to do this guy due to technical glitches that involved me having to refresh the page and draw Elfrix all over again (several times), but I was finally able to overcome these obstacles and get the elf boy finished.
I'm going to draw them both in the same layer because then it'll be easier for the two of them to overlap each other
The only major difference between Billy and Ruff Bup is that Billy's body and his head were both inspired by the shape of a random computer mouse, so doing those parts can take multiple attempts to get right (much like Super Sheep's ears)
The reason they have their hands around each others shoulders is because they're supposed to be best friends, I've been toying around with the idea for a while and figured now is the perfect time to put that idea into action (it's also the reason I had them high fiving in the storyboards)
This will technically mark the first time that Guyzo has ever actually been used in a project before so I'm going to give a little back story on how he came to be.
Back in the year 2018, my high school had an optional media class, which is the same class where the dreaded Super Mario: Before The Odyssey advert I made with some of my friends ended up materialising. But before that we were doing a little bit of group work where we had to come up with the concept for a game. I ended up coming up with an idea where a mechanic hops around the multiverse in order to get rid of micro-transactions that were being put there by a guy named Jim Star-Force (an evil businessman who wants to make lots of money off the back of this), you can probably guess that the hero of this story would be none other than Guyzo the mechanic, so that's he came from if any of you were wondering who that crazy mechanic that tripped captain cartridge up was. But enough about that, it's time to move on.
I've actually decided here to make a quick change to Guyzo's design, that being the addition of a neck, the reason I'm doing this is to bring him (and Griswold) in line with some of the other human characters like Billy and Cartridge, also while I'm here I just wanted to amend a mistake I made where I said Elfrix originally had the number 16 when he in fact actually had the number 34 the whole time:
Now that I'm looking at it, I'm not sure how my mind came to confuse 34 for 16 but this does render the change to the number 07 a little bit redundant since I only made that change in relation to a character that won't even be in this project (but also happens to be related to one of the characters in this project on the virtue that they were in the same cartoon together), just thought I'd clear that one up.
For the hand he's using to scratch his head at the sight of Ruff Bup, I'm taking a slightly different approach than what I usually would, as here I'm drawing the whole thumb first and then draw his fingers around it (unlike what I would usually do which is draw the outline for the hand first), I'm doing this because I think it'll make his index finger look much better in the long term.
The reason I'm taking this challenge on is because way I want to pose him (squatting slightly so that he can take notes on Captain Cartridge) necessitates the audience being able to see the entire hole in the bottom of his shorts leg, this challenge is surprisingly simple because I think the way I made it look is pretty good for now
And with that, I think I might leave Sello-Man out of this picture, since I think the image looks quite decent without him in it and I don't want to ruin the compositional weight distribution of the visual elements (basically, "compositional weight" refers to how many visual elements are on one side of the image, a image with balanced compositional weight distribution will have the same amount of visual elements on both sides of the frame where as an imbalanced image contains more elements on one side than it does on the other:
Now that everyone's been drawn, I can finally move on to colouring the characters and adding shading (it's about time), but first I think I'll try and do some stuff on the video side of this since Wednesday is one of my days off, plus I want to take a nice break before coming back to this image because doing all this in a single day was a bit of a pain to be honest (but it'll all be worth it in the end)
Doing The Video Side Of Things
Today, I took a little bit of time to get to work on the first fashion video (which is the "studio" video where Captain Cartridge models the team jersey) and even made preparations for when I do the second video later this week (which is where I'll include the main five players that'll start the hypothetical basketball game) by playing a game I call "match those lighting conditions", where I tried to match the lighting conditions:
But enough wasting time, let's get into the journey of how I pulled this off:
The first thing I did to make this video was actually take that "Super Sheep Gets Cancelled" video and do a remix of it, that way I could get rid of everything in the original scene and just keep the same lighting (since the studio video simply takes place in a white void), afterwards I just put the Slam-Jammers version of Captain Cartridge and placed him in the middle of the scene with the help of the "floor" guide. (which is that strange transparent floor you sometimes see when I'm using Dreams to do certain things) After I did that, it was simply a matter of adding in cameras and animating them using key frames. The whole thing was relatively simple because of the pre-used lighting (which I did have to alter slightly in order to justify adding in a few spotlights), my ability to manipulate the timeline so that the video would last exactly ten seconds (since these videos are meant for a fake social media account and most social media users don't have the biggest attention span) and the fact that Cartridge himself doesn't move an inch. Speaking of Captain Cartridge, I decided at the last minute to quickly re-pose him so that he wouldn't just be doing his default pose, (which would have looked awkward) and by "re-pose", I mean I just moved his arms so that one of them was on his hip, thus making the model look less awkward.
The hardest part by comparison was actually composing the music because much like a lot of my other pieces, I had to essentially come up with the music on the fly, but it wasn't as big of a hassle as I thought it would be since I was able to compose the music around the video rather than composing the music beforehand and then putting it into the video, which is what I normally do since I'm usually making these pieces for cartoons and not fashion videos. Speaking of the music, the instruments I used this time around were SEGA Mega Drive instruments that were imported by one G4mma_M71 rather than Voodu_xyz, these new instruments allowed me to take the SEGA Mega Drive sound I was going for with Captain Cartridge and make it sound more authentic since G4mma imported a bunch of instruments that Voodu never did. With this in mind, I think that combining both G4mma and Voodu's instruments will really take things to the next level. (more on that later)
After I did the Studio Video, I decided to make a few preparations for when I do the sports hall video later this week, mainly by working on getting the lighting and colour grading to match that of the sports hall as close as I can using both Billy and a picture I took of the sports hall as points of reference. Doing this did take some time and I might take a little bit more time to perfect it by taking advantage of an update that released after I finished streaming (Media Molecule made a bunch of quality of life improvements to the dream-shaping experience but the main feature for the purposes of this unit is that they changed the sun and sky gadget so now the sun brightness can be a maximum of 1000% instead of just 200%), but for now I'm quite happy with my lighting.
Next, I got to work composing the main theme of the Slam-Jammers as a team (or if you want to use their new full name, The Slamination Slam-Jammers), for this one I decided to take the small germ of a melody I had with the Studio Video and expand on it by adding an extra layer to it and changing the genre from a Mega Drive sound to a more rock-n-roll vibe instead for the most part. I also added in 5 text displayers that would last for two seconds (each one bearing the name of one of the characters which I did have to reference the storyboard in order to get the correct order), which ended up working out to ten seconds because 5 times two equals ten. (for those of you that are learning your two times tables in primary school) After that, I decided to make a change that I'm sure is frowned upon in the world of music making but hopefully it'll all make sense once I explain everything. So you remember two sentences ago when I said I changed the instruments to be of a "a more rock-n-roll vibe for the most part?" Well you see, for Captain Cartridge's section of the song, I decided to duplicate the instruments so that I could revert that specific part back to a more SEGA Mega Drive sound using both G4mma and Voodu's SEGA Mega Drive instruments (thus combining the best of both sides in the end), and then for Ruff Bup I tried to replicate the sound his cartoon had (which was inspired by cartoons and films from the silent era), the reason I did this for both characters was because I wanted to have it so that you could tell those characters apart from everyone else, even without visuals.
After I did everything in Dreams, it was time to put the studio video into Share Factory Studio for the editing process:
I think we need to call staples in here because this was the easiest editing process I've ever done since all I was doing was trimming a raw video clip down, it was barely even worth streaming the whole thing to be honest.
Now that that first video's been taken care of, I can come back to college tomorrow and finish what I started with that first image (which is only one out of 12 I have to do, but I doubt the rest will be as painful as what I'm currently doing)
Going Back To The Image Side Of Things
Ok, so as it turns out, I forgot to send the most recent version of my first picture, so now I'll have start a new image for the time being:
The main difficulty I anticipate with this image is getting the characters to look good at this angle but hopefully I'll be able to pull this off.
For the hands in this image, I'm doing yet another new approach to drawing hands where I draw all the fingers first and then do the thumb last, the reason I've chosen to take this approach is because I simply feel it's the best way to make cartoon hands look good from such a low angle.
I don't usually draw the characters this big but since Cartridge is going to be quite close to the camera I'll have to give this challenge a whirl.
Now I'm ready to start shading this image too (since the most recent version of my other image is at my house)
Doing this image wasn't nearly as painful as doing the other one because I only had to worry about drawing two characters rather than seven of them all at once, although when I showed the image to some of my friends, one of them did point out that Billy didn't have a shadow that was supposed projected onto the wall (so I might include that in later), but for now I'm quite happy with the image because of the surprisingly decent results I managed to get out of the low angle (usually these things don't go as well), now where was I on that other image?:
Now that I've shown the whole process, don't expect as many screen shots going forward because at this point, they'd just be repeating everything I said originally
I think I'll leave things off here for the time being, I can come back and do the adult humans tomorrow or even after I've finished the second fashion video.
Basically what happened was that while I was trying to colour in Guyzo using the base colours, I noted that the number 1 had also changed colour with the rest of his jersey. Having no idea why this was happening, I decided to make Ruff Bup invisible, only to find that a big chunk of the number 1 seemed to have been cleared out. So what I think may have happened is that while the image was loading, Pixlr was looking for ways to save on memory so it decided to take out a part of the 1 in order to save itself from crashing, mainly because the part that disappeared happened to be the part Ruff Bup's hand is covering at the moment. Just thought I'd bring this up for later.
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