Carassaurat wrote:Much appreciated! To be honest, I'm quite familiar with Blender, so I caught some parts of the earlier videos, but only fully watched the last two. Even there, it's sometimes a bit slow in explaining things (I think most people will know what a Photoshop mask does). But I learned quite a few techniques and am anxious to try them myself, so thanks!
One thing that I was rather surprised at was that you were working without any sort of reference to sprites or UI. Aside from getting the saturation and brightness to match up, my first thought was that that's a really nice 3D printer you made there, but there's a good chance some sprite is going to park her ass in front of it and it might end up not just being a waste of effort, but the cause of weird visual tangents. Is that just the usual practice for a background commission?
Thanks for the feedback and sorry for the late reply!
I agree I'm a bit slow in explaining some parts due to it not being scripted. I didn't write any notes beforehand either otherwise I'd have had to watch the video twice which I didn't have time for. To learn a specific thing, whatever that thing is, it'd definitely be better to go with a tutorial. In my experience, however, I don't have trouble finding tutorials most of the time. What I have trouble finding is videos that weave the disparate parts together. Another thing I love about videos of people doing stuff and talking without a super specific aim is that they're speaking off the cuff and you get to hear useful asides that, if you don't know to look for them, you'd never know about.
(To be clear: I'm not getting defensive about the scatter-shot approach I take, just elaborating a little on why I went with it. I agree that I went over the mask thing way too much. Not sure why either because it's obvious in hindsight that character artists will already be familiar with them.)
With regards to the sprites and UI, when I started the my first BG there were already existing BGs as I was only a temporary artist for HRP. So I had to go with what was already there. Also, at the time there was no decided upon text box. I'm not saying that's how I'd design a VN by choice, but I wasn't the art lead. On top of that, this video series starts after I've already begun the BG, so there's some stuff missing, like how I position the camera (the height of which will affect sprite placement etc.) I did provide some consulting about good sprite placement (so that they look like they're in perspective) when I started the BGs, but yeah there's not much you can do when there's already an existing body of BGs and no UI. And once you do your first BG you're sort of locked into that horizon line & camera height, unless you go back and redo them. Which isn't as bad in 3D, but still work.
Oh, and about the place of things in the BG... I originally had a different composition (very early on) which placed the printer on the left table. It's not usual for me to place stuff dead in the center, but I don't think it's a big deal. There's no reason a clever director couldn't use it--I'd just offset the sprite to the right a little. In terms of composition that'd look nice. A bigger problem might be it being obscured by the textbox, but again that's something a director could take care of--if the printer needs to be seen, show it, then layer the textbox over later. I shared a few of my WIPs with the team before finalising it, so I assume they're okay with it. But yeah, it's not a common thing in my BGs to put something important dead in the center where sprites are commonly placed.
