Your style really is great, good choice of colours and everything. Mind some suggestions?
I think you overdid it with the 3D in the last example (I liked the linear zoom-in of the first version). You basically have a 2D world, so don't stretch that illusion too much. But then, I don't know which story you want to tell with all those little world slices.
The initial zoom-in has too much details in it for my taste. This is a quite difficult task in any case. I'd try to space the levels further apart so that in movement the moments of big elements in the foreground are fast and short, so there's more time for the spectator to recognize the details of the next level. Ideally there would always be only one level really visible and pulling the focus of attention to it. This can be done by larger spacing, where the front layer's details get too big to recognize at all (and just frame the picture) while the following level's details are still too small to distract.
Maybe you should add a universal backgound layer far away in the distance, so that the screen space outside the two circles in the middle isn't empty ... but again, this depends on your storyline.
The clouds are attached to the ground slices, I think they should be independent, further away, and definitely fewer (don't clutter the sky). Some perspective in the sky would be nice, like having a row of very small clouds near the horizon, and every row on top has bigger ones. They should move very slowly, in contrast to the ground levels. This will add more feeling of depth.
Sorry for my mingling in, but your stuff is much too good and it's so much fun to discuss quality material.
My little intro testing thing
Moderators: Víctor Paredes, Belgarath, slowtiger
Thanks! Very valuble info. I'm gonna do all those things, sounds good in my mind.
It's the intro. Linear zoom through the hills to arrive here:
then the title.
With the clouds, do you mean lines of clouds on the same layer, or lines of clouds, getting bigger, on separate layers in different depths?
Thanks again. You rock
It's the intro. Linear zoom through the hills to arrive here:
then the title.
With the clouds, do you mean lines of clouds on the same layer, or lines of clouds, getting bigger, on separate layers in different depths?
Thanks again. You rock
Clouds are typically that far away that you don't detect any of it as nearer as another. I'd try a group of 3 cloud levels (so they can pan sideways with different speed easily) far away behind the farthest ground level. (It would be so much easier to sketch this on paper ...)
It' important to always put some contrast into animation. Think of light against dark, detailed against plain, big against small, fast movements against slow ones, symmetrical shapes against non-symmetrical. You don't need each of these in every shot, but I think at least one of it.
I just like your hills. I used something similar long ago with cutouts from magazines, and exaggerated hills like that were common in the illustrations from Heinz Edelmann and others around 1970. I wonder if you experimented with just a bit of shading? I would put some darker tone into the grass of each hill at the bottom - it's a common trick in illustration to create more depth between elements. (The gradient for this isn't vertical but slanted, from top left to bottom right.)
Hope you don't mind that I meddled a bit with your image here:
I noticed the pencil sketch in the back of the image - that's the best way to do this, I think.
It' important to always put some contrast into animation. Think of light against dark, detailed against plain, big against small, fast movements against slow ones, symmetrical shapes against non-symmetrical. You don't need each of these in every shot, but I think at least one of it.
I just like your hills. I used something similar long ago with cutouts from magazines, and exaggerated hills like that were common in the illustrations from Heinz Edelmann and others around 1970. I wonder if you experimented with just a bit of shading? I would put some darker tone into the grass of each hill at the bottom - it's a common trick in illustration to create more depth between elements. (The gradient for this isn't vertical but slanted, from top left to bottom right.)
Hope you don't mind that I meddled a bit with your image here:
I noticed the pencil sketch in the back of the image - that's the best way to do this, I think.
