My part for Rise Above map!! It's been a blast working on this one!
Also check out :
Original song [Rise Above] | Complete map | Process
[Spoilers for Hollow Knight: Silksong, of course]
More stuffs I can't fit into the process video under the cut
It's finally out!!! I worked on this for 2 months, started right away after i got a part in Feb-Mar so it's been marinating for a bit. Super refreshing to see the map scenes popping up again in the community (i haven't been around here that much apparently lol)
I mostly wanna document this since i don't get to do these type of stuff much. For the vid i try to keep it short and write about it here instead. sorry if it's more shitpost aligned there Anyway let's get into the process
Ideas and Sketches
I chose Lace II boss fight part, so i rewatched my own playthrough recordings, and ended up liking the clawline animation the best. It's fast paced, it's cool, it's a unique moveset. We don't get to see a character lands on their weapon that often do we?
Initial sketches i did during lunch break. very rough. but the main ideas are there. some camera plans and poses.
and then there's multiple digital roughs where i tried to figure out the camera movements. The first one has way too many cuts and i'm not very happy with the compositions, the second rough is made after i did the sketch on paper. It's a longer shot now, but camera following the needle throw while changing perspective might be too much so i scrapped it. I end up decided to go with normal 2D pan/zoom for my own good.
The other shots is reanimated from in-game cutscenes so it doesn't goes through changes as much and stick through to the end.
And as i said in the video, wings aren't require to get silk heart. I just add them bc it'd be cooler than just jumping straight to it. also woah it's just like the map thumbnail... (i swear it's coincident, props to ratatosk for the gorgeous thumbnail piece!!)
Clean-up time! This one took the longest bc i was still figuring out my workflow. I skip around and work on each shots in no particular order. The textured brush i used also have opacity problems that makes it harder to use the bucket fill tool later so linearts were fixed multiple times. I also adjust timings, overlaps, and arcs all the time since every chance i open up the file to continue the work something gotta feels wrong lol It's all trials and errors. I still got a long way to go.
Backgrounds. oughhhhh
You see, i don't like doing backgrounds it's tedious... (said the animator) I just based it off the references. Each parts get exported as its own layer for later where i color correct and add more effects. It's all hand drawn with the help of a trusty custom flower brush that i painted over anyway.
Colors, Rendering, and Effects
I go back and forth between coloring/shading and compositing when i feel like doing it (again) so the dividing line is a bit blurred.
I keep the color palette as limited as possible (they're mostly made up of just black/white/red thankfully) Painted shading in by frame, added subtle gradient shade. This is also where i animated in effects.
Now it's the fun part (for me) Compositing!! I'm actually pretty rusty with it but just getting to mess around in AE is fun in itself.
Heard someone said compositing in animation is like bass in music, you don't notice it until you take it away. It's the final subtle edit that makes all the pieces fit together.
Each background layers are now arranged as planes in 3D for parallax effects, similar to how team cherry did their backgrounds in-game. Then i animate the camera to follow hand drawn parts. The tiny orbs are made with CC Particle sim. Floating petals in the background are made the same way except i draw that one myself. and by that i mean i draw one single petal and make it explode.
After all the effects and lightings for my part it's pretty much done!
Now that i finished my part i kind of just lurk around and watch other's progress. There's still parts that needs help finishing so i volunteered to help with one. Xoey's part 19 is understandably difficult to handle under a small time frame so there's 3 helpers collabing with them.
Here's a bit of the progress on my part. I continue the work from Xoey's middle section animatic, they already got solid ideas and timings so i tried my best keeping those while adding more details into the animation before i finalized it. Made one more background for the zoom out shot and used another one made by fellow helper Willow!
This one i have about a week and a half to finish since it's close to the extended deadline. but now that i got my own workflow down i just breeze through it. I'm pretty busy that week too so realistically this took about 3-4 days since most of the work is done on weekends.
Final results in links since tumblr doesn't allow gifs too big or multiple videos on a blog post /smh
My personal favorite frame. ball hornet.
also look at this they draw everyone's sona/oc omg it's so cute...
This is a big ambitious project i did in a long while and i genuinely had fun! Hoping to make more of these (<- not me joining another map right away)
Big thanks to everyone that made this possible and for sticking around here :D woah did you actually read this whole thing
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