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| Charles Santoso's WoodWork art recreated in Blender. |
I am always a big fan of traditional hand drawn works. There is some kind of innocence with hand drawn that cannot be replicated with any digital medium.
As someone who were originally dying to work as an animator at Disney (or Ghibli Studio), I believe that hand drawn illustration that is drawn with pen and paper then later digitized (scanned) actually has more special quality than the works that is solely created digitally. All the great works have natural kind of quality.
In fact, recent CG 3D movies and games started to incorporate more traditional principle of 2D (animation):
- Tangled
- Hotel Transylvania
- Monster in Paris
In Game Production, stylistic CG is also almost always more enchanting than the 3D hyper-realistic looking game. For me anyway:
- Street Fighter
- Final Fantasy
- Monster Hunter
- Shadow of the Collosus
Anyways, we are talking about 3D, why worry so much about 2D stuff? I think there are some kind of greatness when those 2D and 3D artworks can be combined or another word, I want to say that good 2D artist think in 3D (form, light) and 3D artist should also be able to think in 2D (good silhouette, stylization, simplification).
In CG, there is also something called NPR (Non Photo-Realistic) render, which you may already know. Blender also supports NPR, together alongside with Blender Cycles (for photorealistic render). Although NPR is more like secondary branch.
Anyways, my point is 2D Illustrator can take advantage of Blender, that is for sure. And 3D Artist can also learn from 2D Illustrations.
I am probably just re-stating the obvious. Because in the end, what matter is how the final artwork appeals and work for the audiences. But for the artist, probably the most efficient and most fun way to recreate it.
RECREATING THE ART OF CHARLES SANTOSO IN BLENDER
In this post, I am studying the work of Charles Santoso. I don't know this illustrator personally, but he happened to be born in the same city I was originally from (Bandung, West Java, Indonesia) before I moved to Australia. I first heard about him from a friend.
Apparently Charles is also working as concept artist/illustrator at Animal Logic, Sydney. It's a big job, so I salute him to be at such position.
Anyways, I went to one of Charles' exhibition at a Kinokuniya Japanese Bookstore titled "WoodWork", in which he is doing pencil drawing of 3D looking wooden sculpture. I was inspired by his works. Lots of details and care were put into it. They are all hand drawn and I bet it took him some hundred of hours to create all the works.
I was thinking, I wonder if all of these 2D artworks recreated in Blender using Skin Modifier?
BLENDER SUSHI LOVES SKIN MODIFIER
Nicholas Bishop's Skin Modifier feature in Blender, is probably one feature I really like from Blender. Whenever I am to do FREE-FORM 3D modeling of a character, I always think of Skin Modifier.For me, 3D modeling using Skin Modifier is as close as it is to do hand drawing using pencil. It is really that natural. Perhaps I have not pushed my modeling and sculpting works, but I am starting to get itchy to get into real sculpting and I will be using Blender all the way. I am also currently looking into the Dynamic Topology and also will practice sculpting.
So today, I spent about 30-60 minutes to re-create one of Charles Santoso's WoodWork, I think it is the Mr. Fox. Just because I think it has certain simplicity that works as 2D and 3D.
The process is really fast, actually with Skin Modifier, I simply model it in straight-ahead fashion. I work firstly in Front Camera orthographic, but soon enough I start to work in 3D from many angles.
So Mr. Fox can be recreated solely using Skin Modifier! Well, 80-90% accurate. I just need to add details now, and that is probably will take few extra more hours.
For 3D Doodles, though, I think, Skin Modifier is simply a perfect tool for it, it makes one to think both in 2D and 3D while creating the work.
For shader and render, I use Cycles, but I use the Procedural OSL Shader below.
Blender Cycles OSL Wood Shader
http://blenderthings.blogspot.com.au/http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?276843-An-OSL-Wood-Shader-for-Blender-Cycles
When I have more time, I should probably continue and refine the work further. I would love to 3D print out some works created this way!
I guess I should do more 3D doodles using Skin Modifier.
TRIVIA: PUNI INU
Puni Inu by Teresa Chiba
I remember a really old CG work from years ago, which was also my 3D creation based on 2D character illustration. Of course this is rather simple, but I thought it was cute to see a 3D of a 2D character when it is done right.
If Blender already available back then, I would definitely be using Blender! Below artwork was done in Maya, but certainly something super easy to do in Blender. In fact, not long ago, I was teaching 8 year old how to model Angry Bird character in Blender.
OTHER INSPIRATIONAL 3D ARTIST WITH 2D STYLE WORKS
McLeLun from Malaysia (also a Blender artist and awesome illustrator)
SKIN MODIFIER AND DYNAMIC TOPOLOGY
Lots of inspirations from thread like this:
http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?264568-Dyntopo-tests/BLENDER INTERNAL CARTOON LOOK
http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?291333-Need-Help-With-Blender-Internal-NPR
UPDATE 20130115
SHINTARO OHATA WOODWORKS 2D/3Dhttp://www.toxel.com/inspiration/2013/01/13/3d-paintings-by-shintaro-ohata/
Simple, yet tells so much. That is kind of work I like.
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