Old Laputan Robot (Laputa: castle in the sky)

[colekindred]

Andy H thats really nice work. It's cartoony and you've still managed to capture the anatomy of the characters. Furthermore the background is stunning. However while stunning I'm pretty sure I can see the layers of the background. For example the folliage in front of the building looks like a 2d layer pasted on the image. While this isn't a big problem as it works with the cartoon style of the piece I think Making the follage have more depth would be a huge improvement. The forground layer is a bit too obviously composited as well. I think the forground sticks out because it has the flowers in it that are nice but not seen in such a gathering elswere in other layers. Dispite the flaws I really like the feel of the piece. Keep it up.


By the way. Are you the same Andy H that used to post in the clickteam forums?

[colekindred]

I just looked at your WIP thread. In a previous render it looks like the trees in the background are 3d! I think you need to work on your fog effect. You may be intending to "flaten" the image but I think you went too far for my taste judging by the rest of the piece. Also in a previous render some tree branches were in front of some pillers. This added so much and I don't see any of this overlap in your newer renders. The right side of the forgound looks compositied even in earlier renders though so that may be a diffrent problem all together. Looking good.

[AndyH]

Thanks a lot for the comments colekindred!
They helped a lot. I definately agree with the flat looking BG trees - its tricky trying to light the paint fx trees so that it looks as if it has depth, and yes, the haze does flatten it a bit.
Ill try and do that what you mentioned - growing some of the trees past the pillars would give a better sense of depth. Its kinda tricky getting the trees to grow exactly where you want tho.
I dont know what you meant from the compositing comment, but its all fully 3d - no compositing. The only photoshop tweak was on a very slight contrast/ saturation alteration. I intend to create a small animation in the end, so i dont wanna get bogged down with photoshop/ after fx work.
By the way, im not that same andy.

Thanks for the comments.

[SecretAgent]

Oh wow, nice job Andy! I absolutely love Laputa, its my second favorite Miyazaki film next to Totoro and always loved that ancient robot, there was always something so sad and peacful about him, very moving.

Anyways, the only thing I think you could fix is the background - you did good by desaturating the color in, that helps push it back and pop the characters more in the foreground but, the detail in the leaves in the bg is too strong. I think if you could fix that by dropping the contrast on the leaves or slightly blurring them that would help out a lot.

Dynamic piece though from an excellent film, thanks for sharing.

[AndyH]

OK.... Im at the end of my tether with this one.

Ive been tweaking and tweaking for so long, I dont even know if it looks any good anymore!
I could really do with some feedback off you folks. Its about 95% complete, and I wanna get it out of the way and looking good before I post it in the finished forum.

http://www.btinternet.com/~chunglist2/CGTALK/robot-scene6.jpg

[AndyH]

Ok. Just to let anyone following this post know - Ive finished it!

You can find it in the finished 3d gallery here:

http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=125612

Let me know what you think if you have time.....

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