Production Update 144: Scene Wrapped Up Again

Posted on August 31, 2015 by Chris Biewer

I wrapped up the shot I was working on this week! Here is a piece of production art below!

Really been hitting a groove lately on these scenes, I feel like I have a solid process going. Recently I have been doing test background renders and creating an animatic for the scene. After that I set up beauty renders for the backgrounds. Followed by adding in the crowds and completing the final animation and compositing. I really do need to start doing behind-the-scenes videos on these. I really will try to do this!

Anyways, this scene will get sent along for audio production this week. Outside of finishing up this scene, I worked on a bit of freelance work again and also wrapped up my first week back in school.

So whats on the agenda for this week? Well, I would like to get to recording some behind the scenes content and get it put in Youtube. I think the first batch of content will be a series of videos on how a shot takes form from concept to final. Just give me a little time get things situated with the new laptop and recording.

I will also be working on the next scene! The next scene has 4 shots in it. The following scene after that is just a single shot so I will probably lump the 2 together and work to get everything prepped this week so I can work on animation next week.

Anime Review: Ping Pong

Posted on August 27, 2015 by Chris Biewer

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfdGc3Ry1P8&w=560&h=315]

Admittedly, this is the first sports anime I have checked out even though I am actually a sports fan. I recall watching anime in college and wondering if they ever made sports anime only to get replies on message boards that sports and anime don’t really mix. So the somewhat recent boom in sports anime has been a bit surprising.

Around the time Ping Pong came out, there was a behind the scenes clip online of how they got some of the animation to look the way it did. Check it out below.

The Interface/program they are using is Flash, the same program I used in college for traditional animation. While at Anime Detour earlier this year, I checked out a panel on the works of Masaaki Yuasa. After seeing a range of works in his style, I decided I needed to check out Ping Pong.

I was kinda skeptical at first. Mostly because I never checked out sports anime but I also was concerned if I would get tired of the art style or if it would lose impact over the course of the series (11 episodes). Not to mention, I also didn’t know much at all about Ping Pong.

After the first episode I noticed something interesting in the credits. They had a team just for advising on Ping Pong. This isn’t uncommon, but I was pleasantly surprised. It really paid dividends for the series and making it realistic from a game standpoint.

Ping Pong follows a small group of characters, all from various regions and different playing styles. The series starts with a tournament, the middle portion is the summer/start of a new school year and wraps up with another tournament, with all of our characters a year older.

So should you check out Ping Pong? YES! I initially intended to marathon Ping Pong in an afternoon but I didn’t, instead doing about 4 sessions of 2 or 3 episodes. I wish I had marathoned it. I found myself eagerly waiting for the next viewing session to see what happened next.

The characters are very unique and I am pretty certain there is a character for you to get behind and pull for. In my case I had two favorite characters, Peco and Kong.

Artistically speaking, the artwork didn’t get old as the series went on, I never felt like it was a novelty that had overstayed it’s use. The extreme movements in sports anime lends itself to this art style and I thought the team used this style extremely well. It really shows off in the matches.

From a story perspective and even character development, I don’t really have much to critic. I actually wish there was another episode or two to develop the characters outside of Ping Pong a bit more but it wasn’t needed. I especially enjoyed the series and how it progressed after the initial tournament.

The final episode was really special. Not every anime pulls off the final episode and I felt Ping Pong did an amazing job. Anytime I can walk away from a series with a smile (no pun intended) on my face, I can’t complain.

I highly suggest checking out Ping Pong, I know it is a series I will go back and watch again soon. Ping Pong is available from FUNimation.

You can also read more about Ping Pong on CartoonBrew.

Con Announcement: AnimeFargo

Posted on August 20, 2015 by Chris Biewer

Con Announcement this week, I am heading back to AnimeFargo this year. I am really excited to see the growth of this con, now having it’s second event and meeting some of the people I met at the convention last year.

I am also happy to announce that I will be presenting two panels this year.

Friday, September 18th
Artist Open Forum 9pm-9:45pm

Saturday, September 19th
History of CGI in Anime 4-4:45pm

Artist Alley is still up in the air, I will notify you once I hear back on that front!

Dragonball Z Resurrection of F Review

Posted on August 14, 2015 by Chris Biewer

The time has come for me to review Dragonball Z Resurrection of F. It’s no secret that I am a huge Dragonball Z fan, it is one of the first series I watched and one of the biggest influences into me deciding I wanted to be an animator.

I am going to review Resurrection of F as a Dragonball Z fan so SPOILER ALERT, there will be SPOILERS below. Check out the trailer below.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5z_nWwKBiRw&w=560&h=315]

Quick rundown of the story, a henchman from Frieza’s army organizes a small army to find the dragon balls on Earth and bring Frieza back to life. Piccolo and Gohan realize someone has summoned Shenron but are unsure of what is going on. Frieza and the troops who resurrected him head into space to train to get revenge. At this point we find out a startling revelation, Frieza has never trained a day in his life. They also spend time gathering troops to come back and try to destroy the Earth and get their revenge on Goku and company.

Frieza was never really my favorite villain, I was more a Cell guy. Although the battle between Frieza and Goku was too good to pass up for seeing in theaters. The animation for the film was great. Some of the impact frames that you only see for a split second are amazing. Large bloodshot eyes, fantastic effects, just such great accents and details were spent on those impact frames that made the fights more intense.

Overall I really enjoyed Resurrection of F… Except for 2 points, here we go.

I am going to sound like a Vegeta fanboy, but hear me out. Towards the end of the film Goku let’s his guard down and gets taken down, opening the door for Vegeta to kill Frieza. Vegeta steps in and takes Frieza down with a series of attacks. Before Vegeta can finish Frieza, Frieza destroys the Earth. Whis, then reverses time backwards to right before the moment when Frieza destroys the Earth. This allows Goku to destroy Frieza before he can blow up the Earth.

My problem with this, is it felt like a bad cop out. If Frieza was just going to destroy the Earth, why not do it at the start of the film or after he brought his army to the planet or when he couldn’t beat Goku? I wasn’t super harsh on this part of the movie. The reason was because they mentioned Whis’ time reversal power earlier in the film, so as an audience we were set up for this result.

Quick side note, I really expected more from Jaco. His character brought nothing to the movie other than a couple chuckles that Saiyaman could have achieved.

The main thing that had me disappointed was the timeframe in which Frieza returned to Earth. So after Frieza was revived, they left Earth so Frieza could train to beat Goku. We find out in the film that Frieza was only away for 6 months to train before returning. 6 months.

Now you can say that Frieza didn’t know any better or that his ego was in the way. The reason I don’t buy tho argument is that Frieza witnessed Goku’s battle with Buu from hell. We also find out that Frieza held Buu and Beerus in the same tier as fighters. So clearly 6 months was not going to be enough to destroy Goku, which brings me back to my main point, why not just destroy Earth right away.

Overall I really did enjoy the movie, I felt the animation was great, and the fight scenes were exactly what I wanted to see. The fight at the end of the Battle of Gods left me wanting more. My critique of the film was I feel that they used Frieza’s ego as too much of a crutch from a storytelling perspective. Will for sure be buying the film when it is released.

Behind the Scenes 2: Shaping Cosmic Rage

Posted on August 6, 2015 by Chris Biewer

Last time, I shared with you about how the idea of Cosmic Rage came about. Now, I have lived in the midwest almost all of my life. Living in cities no bigger than 150,000 so when I moved to Minneapolis shortly after college, I was kinda surprised. I mean I never imagined myself living in a larger city to be honest. Probably because it was something I never gave thought to. I was always cared more about what I was doing for work than where I was living.

Cosmic Rage was something I started in high school, but shelved for a while as I was searching for my next move after college. It was about 6 months into my job in Minneapolis and I became friends with one of my co-workers. One day we decided we wanted to collaborate on a project. Cosmic Rage was that project.

In the early days of the project, we wanted a motion comic aspect to the game we wanted to work on. Over a year or so, life took us both different ways and our priorities changed. He took a larger role for work and has made some amazing work at his job and undoubtedly mentored a lot of people so far too. As for me, I decided to keep the motion comic going in my spare time.

So why was a motion comic something I wanted to make versus other methods of storytelling? I have always been visual person, so I knew artwork needed to be made. I tried a couple variations of comic and manga style but I wanted the viewers to have the full experience, moving pieces, audio, and color. I didn’t have a way around this all though. I spent some time researching motion comics and found some interesting ones, but they all were basically still comic books, just with faded in type and subtle effects. I wanted to take Cosmic Rage further than that.

One night in Minneapolis I was channel surfing and stumbled across Archer. I was intrigued by the artwork, the characters looked like rigged illustrations but the backgrounds looked painted, yet 3D. I took to the internet after watching the show and found a blog on how Archer was made. This video got my wheels started on how to make Cosmic Rage.

A few render tests later, I was convinced this could work out for Cosmic Rage.

Auditions Open!

Posted on July 16, 2015 by Chris Biewer

Quick note, voice actor and actress auditions are open. I added a button to the menu of the site that will link to the auditions page. Over the next week or so, there will be more characters added to the page, so be sure to check back for more.

Recent Viewing: Dragonball Z Battle of Gods

Posted on August 8, 2014 by Chris Biewer

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQJM963be_I&w=560&h=315]

For a night I felt like a kid again 🙂 It has been the first time in close to a decade where I was going to see new Dragonball Z, from FUNimation. I was super excited, the film was going to be a full length feature, meaning it would be almost twice as long as the previous 14 movies. So is the film worth your time?

I am going to do my best to avoid any major SPOILERS since it was only in select theaters. I also persuaded my girlfriend to go to the movie as well and she hasn’t seen more than the first 4 or 5 episodes of Dragonball Z. The film handled non-Dragonball Z fans pretty well, by laying out enough history so you had a basic groundwork of some of the characters and storyline.

There was several things that stuck out to me in the film. One of the things that really stuck out to me was the amount of comedy and throwback jokes that long-standing fans. Several times I was finding myself sitting in my seat with a smirk from the jokes and a few one-liners. If your a fan of Vegeta, he is in the film more so than I would have thought. From the trailers and previous Dragonball Z films, my assumption was that the film would primarily feature Goku as the main character/hero and the other characters would only have small portions. The dub version had a few curse words, which was a little surprising. The film probably had more curse words in it, than the rest of the series and films combined. Finally, the amount of CGI in the film was also surprising. It’s the way of the industry in Japan, going more into CGI or the 3D realm if you want to be specific. Several shots had some pretty heavy 3D camera work and environment work. I enjoyed it and think it could evolve pretty well with the DBZ universe. A few of the scenes were a little rough, but you can see that they skills or technical prowess is starting to develop.

On a final note, it has been announced that there will be another new film next year. I have a hunch there was a set up in this film for the future film, it is a personal belief, no spoiler or insider info. I am curious with the reboot of Sailor Moon, if this film and next years film are testing the waters of doing more on the series or if they will stick to films. I guess only the future will tell 😉

Production Update 69

Posted on November 18, 2013 by Chris Biewer

Production is starting to get a little more on track this week. I did have some early travel for the holidays, but I made some great progress on the freelance front this past week in terms of getting things set up to render this week before piecing some things together. I did have a chance to work on some Cosmic Rage this past week.

I did have to dive into the project file and get a little familiarized with it again. However, I can report there are only 2 sections left that need texturing. Although I might revisit the texturing of the walls, in the scene. My goal is to get everything textured this week and have new production art up net week. You guys deserve it for being such great fans and checking out the progress, even though it has been a little light.

Once the freelance project is wrapped up I can start working on some test renders for the scene and moving on to more environments. Looking forward to getting back on the project this week and can’t wait to have new work up for you! Thanks again everyone!

Production Update 64

Posted on October 15, 2013 by Chris Biewer

Not much to report on this weeks Production Update, unfortunately. I spent the week working on some freelance projects so I can get some funds to put towards Cosmic Rage. On a sidenote though, I finished up one of them today so this week I will be able to get back to work on Cosmic Rage in some capacity. I apologize for the lack of updates the last couple weeks, but with the funds from freelancing, I will be able to purchase items that will make the production faster in terms of 3D models, and I am now thinking of adding in some VO for the first episode. Which is really the reason for the freelance work. I’m still on the fence with it and it will probably be something that gets figured out as episode 1 gets closer to being done. Thank you so much for your patience!

I will also be writing about this year’s SGMS conference as well! Stay tuned!

Recent Viewing: Attack on Titan

Posted on October 10, 2013 by Chris Biewer

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luYOt2-c2TI&w=560&h=315]

The above trailer belongs to a series called Attack on Titan. It was a series that I watched in spurts when I had some downtime because the title has a pretty big buzz associated with it. The fact that you are reading this is evidence of that. You are either reading what another viewer thought or you have heard something about the title and are interested in knowing more.

I am going to start by being completely honest, I think this title is going to be a big series for the anime community when it gets released in the states (by FUNimation). The series is a stark contrast from a lot of the titles that are coming out. Attack on Titan is not a series based in comedy, not a musical promotion anime and not one for the harem crowd either.

The series takes place in a world where humanity has retreated to within tall walls to prevent “Titans” from getting in. Titans are giant fleshless human creatures that exist to wipe out humanity. There are various classes of Titans, some 12 feet tall and some with abilities, as you will see in the show.

The animation of the series is pretty enjoyable. Some have griped about the color palette, I personally didn’t mind it. There were lots of earthy tones, some oranges, tans, etc. I felt as if it felt the world they were portraying well. Considering the circumstances of the story, they wouldn’t have various colored buildings, etc. The action scenes are animated well, with several shots having unique camera views.

The soundtrack to the series enhanced the animation and the unique story. I was watching the stream so the title isn’t dubbed yet. I am excited to see the dub when it is eventually released. The opening tracks by Linked Horizon are some of the catchiest openings I have heard since Evangelion and Deathnote.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OkpRK2_gVs&w=560&h=315]

While the trailer provides a unique look at the world and the story, it really doesn’t do it justice. There is so much more to the series than story outline I described, but I want to avoid spoilers for readers who haven’t streamed it this season. Let me put it this way, Attack on Titan may be an early favorite for my presentation for next year’s SGMS conference.

Have you watched it yet? If not, go check it out on Crunchyroll, I don’t think you will be disappointed.