Quick recap of my latest lineart and render style:
For this project I want to take all the animation techniques I've learnt so far and add to them, to make something that more resembles an actual animated music video. I know that I'm going to be focusing on the sci-fi genre, likely with a retro visual style or design, so I looked to old anime and cartoon shows for some early inspiration.
Fist of the North Star (1984)
I've never seen this show before, but when I mentioned to a friend what my plan was for this project, he recommended I give it a look. The anime ran from 1984 through 1988 and is still a popular franchise to this day.
I like the visual style for how it looks nowadays; it now has a retro feel that is mimicked by some modern projects. For me, it's more specifically the character designs that hold the most appeal: characters are larger than life and you can feel the strength in them instantly, which makes for interesting battles later in the show. The exaggerated realism and realistic colours are also something I'd like to implement in my own work.
The shots used are typically anime: fast and rapid close-ups of violence make for high-impact scenes, with effects adding to the style. I'll be looking at this in more depth later.
Some screen-grabs from the clip:
Silverhawks (1986)
The clip I've shared here is a mash-up of shots from the Silverhawks cartoon, edited to run alongside a track by Lazerhawk. The clip still gives the idea of what the show was all about though, and the visual style of it is clear enough.
Silverhawks was an american cartoon and the visual reflect this. Compared to Fist of the North Star, I'm not as interested in this style but it does show a lot of similar effects and shots, so at some point it might serve as good reference when it comes to learning techniques and methods, to add variety to my own work.
Super Metroid (Dave Rapoza)
This animation was created by Dave Rapoza and published in 2013. It's a homage to the Super Nintendo game of the same name, released worldwide in 1994.
Dave is a well-known artist who specialises in digital art and illustration. This project was an experiment of his to see if animation might be something he could add to his interests and skills. He uses a visual style that is directly influenced by old anime shows such as Fist of the North Star (1984) and Akira (1988), which adds to his retro re-imagining of the classic video game he portrays here.
I first saw this clip back when it was released (this was as far as he ever took it, opting to leave it as a teaser rather than make it into a full-length feature) and loved it, particularly for its reference to one of my favourite games. When I watch it now, I appreciate it even more that I can recognise the amount of skill and time that's been put into it. This clip alone could teach me a ton of exrta tricks to use in my next piece of work.
His visual style for this is influenced by the anime shows I mentioned earlier: he uses custom brushes within Photoshop to get the hand drawn lineart looking just right, and he keeps the animation quite loose - again to mimic the style. His colour palettes also pay homage to the 80's anime style. This clip has retro written all over it.
The more I watch it now, the more I consider using this style in my own work... rather than keeping the clean lineart and tight grad-render style I've been developing lately, maybe I should adopt Dave's techniques and go full-retro. Would that benefit my animation? I'll have to give it some more thought.
Here are some screen-grabs from the Metroid clip:
Summary
This post should give an idea of what thoughts I'm having at this stage, and what options I have to consider before deciding on visual style and execution. On the one hand I could use my current art style to produce a much cleaner, refined and polished result (although this method might be quite time-consuming, especially considering the track I'm working with is 7 mins 30 secs long) and on the other, I could choose the same path as Dave and work with the looser, quicker retro art style. It's a lot to thin about right now, but it'll be at the back of my mind for a while, so I'll do a few tests before coming to any decisions.
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