3D Anime Backgrounds

I have been working on creating more stylized background renders from LightWave 3D using some techniques of my own design. The goal is to create backgrounds that fit better into traditional Japanese-style animation shows (anime).

I have made good progress but I still have a lot of work to perfect the new techniques. My current goal is to create a reasonable likeness of a background from the show FLCL (one of my favorite anime shows of all time, although it’s a bit surreal and probably nonsensical if you aren’t already interested in the genre). Here is the background I am trying to duplicate in LightWave:

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Week in Review – Oct 20

It’s the end of my second week tracking my goals and I am happy with the results so far.  I did not check every box on my list, but I did just as well as my first week.  I worked out twice, used Lightwave for more than four sessions, wrote in my log book each day, and meditated five times (my goal is to meditate every day; this is the only target I missed).

I finished some basic lighting setups for different times of the day, but I still need to put together the final renders into a post, which I’ll take care of soon.  You can get a sneak-peak of the scene and objects by taking a look at my clay render tutorial.  This week I want to try to focus on some cartoon/anime style textures and rendering techniques for backgrounds.

I also made some small tweaks to the site this week, like improving some style sheet settings and making the site a little wider to better display content.

Goals

I mentioned a while back that I was working on creating long-term goals for myself. I still haven’t decided on any specific LightWave projects or concepts, but that doesn’t mean that I should procrastinate working on improving my artistic skills. To help stoke my creativity, I have created goals that provide simple structure to my day/week.

Write in a Logbook (every day)

I got this idea from a book I recently read (more on that in a future post). Basically, I plan on adding a new entry every day to log what I did. It doesn’t have to be long or detailed, it’s strictly a log book. I can write as much or as little as I want, as long as I at least cover the main points of what I did that day. This is a quick and easy way to reflect on the day, hopefully to revel in the positives or, if necessary, to help work out any negatives.

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