Blender Underground

Very nice Ronnie. Your model looks really professional.. really like Melman from Madagascar. You seem to have a lot of extra bones at each foot, I'm guessing one of the is a IK target, but can you give more info on the other ones?

All of the disjointed bones are IkPointers for the knees and 'ankles'. The Ankle Pointers are ChildOf the foot pointers so they come alone, yet allow extra control if needed.

Threw in my Sun; not sure if I like it. At the very least, I'll get rid of the flare as it doesn't really fit the toonish style of the rest of the scene.



Now I need to add Kilimanjaro into the background or something.

Mhh, maybe the sun shouldn't shine so much. It looks great, no doubt, but it doesn't fit the same style as the rest of the picture. And maybe you should consider to adjust the shadows to the sun direction. (Except this is a planet of a dual-star-system and the other sun is much brighter and therefore responsible for the main shadow).

Keep up improving the image. I can't wait to see the snow-covered mountain making up the background.

HAHAHA I had actually made a mental note to remember not to forget to change the sun (lamp)'s position when/if I added a sun. But of course I forgot. I hear the mind's the first to go.

According to reference images, the sun is more or less easily visible at that height in the sky with very little streaks and more of a glow.

In other, unrelated news. clouds have a transition site of roughly 27.5cm:

(And stars twinkle!)
(Not to mention that there is a species of yellow, honey chugging bears!)

Boogie, I appreciate your input , but I'm not going for a realistic style. Art should never be limited to the recreation of the physical world which, in my opinion, can be somewhat unartistic and uncreative sometimes.

Here's a slightly modified render. Mountain block added, hated...


Ultimately I decided to scrap the hoodoos so here's a quick paintup of the direction I'm moving in.

I know you're not going for realism but i think nature itself does a beautiful job on things.
And that's why it makes such great examples for doing 3d stills or animations.

Since no one has mentioned it, you did a great job on texturing Twigi. May I have a closer look? I want to see his short fur.
Regarding the sun, I'm with Boogie. More glow, less streaks.

Edit: I just realized your paint-over of the blue sky. Looks cool.

THE ULTIMATE SHOWDOWN!
Vote now!
Aaanywaaay, I made this snazzy little compare thingymajig on my site, let me know what you think!

http://livelightstudios.com/Blender/WIP ... mpare.html
(If you're using Firefox's NoScript, you'll need to temporarily allow the page.)

Thank you! I actually got lucky; the Voronoi Crackle pattern for the cloud procedural works great for a toon giraffe fur pattern.

Maray, thanks for your 'suggestion' of sorts. I didn't really pay attention to the potential of anything nice in my paint over because I just made it to get try out the new composition.
I tried adding some handpainted variations to the sky and I think it looks pretty nice!


Also, I feel terrible having those elephants under the influence of DOF (illegal in Canada, look away Goliath ) but I think they really add to the picture.
Dave rocks!

The hand painted variations in the sky looks really nice, subtle too, but not too subtle, goes very well with the scene.

I went to your site and looked at the image comparison and I definitely vote for the no-streaks sun. It just fits better to the overall style of your image.

So, your Twigi texture is procedural.. easy but effective.
I think I would try making the foot tips (no clue what's the correct english term for it) of Twigi black or dark brown.

Oh, and +1 to your new ground. But your mountain still needs some work.