Collection of stylized VFX

Hello everyone!

I recently posted a lot of VFX into my Artstation, thus compiling a bunch of different effects. I thought I’d drop them here to receive some much-needed feedback and insight to improve future effects! Hope you all enjoy:

PS: Sorry for low-quality gifs, I don’t know how y’all make those buttery 60fps gifs.

Blood Moon

Arcane Missiles (WOW Styled)

Arcane Missiles Impact

Ink Based Magic

Desert Arena Ambience FX

Snake

Torches

Procedural Stylized Fire Shader (Used on the torches)

Fairy Themed Magic Stuff:

If you want to see all those VFX (and others) in more detail / in action you can check them out on my Artstation profile.

I’m excited to hear what you guys have to say about them!

2 Likes

Overall this is an awesome collection of VFX!

I really like the behaviour of your fire shader, it’s got a really cool wispy feeling.

I think your most successful effects are your fairy magic ones. The top fairy glow has a great range of colours, and your other fairy ones have some cool shapes and a variety of nice timings.

In terms of constructive feedback, I do think that in general, the most of your effects use a very narrow range of colours, and I think you could try and balance the brightness of the elements of your effects to try and establish what your primary read is in each of them.

I’ll demonstrate here with a paintover I did for your Arcane missiles (and I don’t have a graphics tablet with my during the christmas break, so please forgive the mouse drawing)

So you can see on the left your original effect, with a colour gradient below which shows which colours you used.

You can see in my paintover, I used a gradient that goes deeper into the blue for the darker part of the effect. Adding these extra hues helps to add depth and interest to the effect.

Additionally, I changed the head of the missile so that the brightest values are at the very front. This makes it so that the head of the missile is the primary element, which creates a clearer visual hierarchy to the effect. On the original image, there is no clear primary element, so my eye doesn’t know what is the most important part.

Additionally, I added a soft glow particle to the front of the missile, to basically be fake “bloom”. This really makes the head of the missile seem hot, and shows that it is the source of power for this effect.

3 Likes

In terms of timing, I’m seeing some cool timing in different places, with the different elements moving at different speeds, and with some acceleration and deceleration, which is cool.

However, I do think that there are places that you could improve the timing more.

For example, on your Blood moon effect, there is some anticipation where the moon grows darker and more red as it builds up energy. However, I think this is a great place to add some really strong anticipation before it shoots out the beams. First, here is an exmplanation what I mean by anticipation:

So in that video example, before the character jumps up, he crouches down to show anticipation for the action he is about to do. Because your beam firing is a very strong effect, I think we should show an even stronger anticipation of the energy built up on the moon.

HEre’s an example of what I mean. If we really emphasised the moment before the beams shoot out, and we can even add in a dark frame right before the beams fire (though this should only be 0.05 seconds or less (it’s something you feel more than see). Also you can see in my paintover (and again please forgive my mouse drawing) that we can work in some oranges, yellos and subtle purples into this effect, rather than just using only one red hue.

2 Likes

Overall, you’ve done some awesome work, keep it up!

If you’d like to read more in depth about colours and timing, I recommend the League of Legends style guide. IF you download the PDF the videos are embedded and the section on timing I found really helpful.

2 Likes

Hey Beardilocks!

It’s incredible how much information you conveyed on those 3 posts, and i can only agree with everything you said!

I’ll be doing some updates to the Blood Moon effect and Magic Missiles taking your feedback in mind, when I do it I’ll post an update here on the comments. I think I’ll also rework the fairy “sneeze” effect (4th of the fairy ones) with some of my newly learned concepts.

Overall, thank you for your valuable feedback!

You’re welcome, keep up the great work :smiley:

1 Like

Did some changes to the magic missile. I do think it looks better than before, I’m also experimenting with a bunch of different trails.

I think you need more shadow behind head . You focus on head