Hello there !
It's (again) been a while since I didn't post things about redemption, and as I've said in my previous post the production of it slightly decrease and I'm more committed to other projects (you should hear from it soon, it's not as big as Redemption, but it's something I make with at least as much love)
There's been a few things about the project though, in order to showcase a software that needs more exposure/use I'm also working on, I've made a couple videos which illustrates how cool it is to animate with it. You've probably heard about it if you're following me : Akeytsu
So here are how I did two animations of Mevenn (I've reworked a few animations of her since Thomas is quite busy since nearly one year, I guess I'm shifting on animation too now. I especially like animating her face btw =))
I want to say here, again, that Akeytsu definitely is a strong, powerful, wonderful, brilliant software for rigging and animation. Yes. Even rigging, even if it doesn't have plenty of constraints or scripting tools, it's a software where tools are here for you to animate with, not to bother you or fix a little issue at one specific point. This results in a simpler user interface, a better user experience, well...a more efficient workflow that does the coffee, what else ? ;)
If you use the tool wisely, you can tackle complex rigs and bring things at your advantage. You can animate more than just bipedal characters. Each one of the Star Wars - Redemption assets I/Thomas have animated in Akeytsu, has been rigged in Akeytsu. This means yeah : Mevenn, Battledroids B1, Droidekas, Starfighters of any kind, doors, weapons, jetpacks, clone trooper helmets...AnyTHING.
And the best part of this software is that you can learn how to animate for the industry with it, no matter what's your skill level actually is.
I've made a masterclass at Emile Cohl last year to students who, about animation, only knew about traditional 2D pipeline. Half a day and they were already kicking-off pretty good stuff with complex characters like e-LysE (https://www.artstation.com/artwork/rRNGoE). Even my own parents who are definitely not into the game industry but medical field, learnt how to use it in one hour (basics of course, not the whole software, but enough for making animations and enjoy the process ;)).
So I MORE than encourage you to bring your characters/props into akeytsu, and enjoy animating again. Really.
Akeytsu offers a free 30 days trial, you can get it here : https://www.nukeygara.com/get-license/try-akeytsu
Now that's said, lets get back to Redemption project. Since November of the last year through the end of January this year, I've been working pretty hard on...this :
(Sorry about the image quality, I've only a quite bad phone for that ^^"). So yeah. An artbook. I've only printed a few of these for friends, family, and collaborators. This piece is about 96 pages only (so not a super big artbook but hey, I'm almost alone making this project and was completely alone on this part ^^). I made this to have kind of a final piece for this project, since it may never reach what I wanted it to be, at least this book tells the whole story behind Redemption, about its artistic development, about Mevenn's background, and about me at some point cause this project is finally a really important part of me, and I'll be quite sad to left it behind of course...
Here are a few artworks I made for this :
Ow and last but not least : if you want to read it, you can get a PDF version of the whole artbook here : https://www.dropbox.com/s/1n8ipnxn11ms3ic/TheArtOf_StarWars-Redemption.zip?dl=0 (language is French only). Of course, please refrain from sharing the file once you have it. Share the link of this page instead (and please credit me). Thanks =)
And pour finir : Des Bisous !