How do you approach gathering reference material?

General Discussion
#1

Hi guys,

I’m currently finding myself in a spot, which I have been in for the hundredth time. My client requests me to do a certain type of VFX (in this case simply a level up vfx) and while I have a lot of experience as a player and experienced a dozen level up vfx myself, my memories are very blury and I would like to collect some nice references.

Also, the game I’m working on has a typical vectorized cartoon style, so I have to mostly stay away from soft alpha masks/blending. Now, my main problem is that whenever I have to gather references, I’m not sure where to look. I’ve used google, pinterest and now recently started to look through artstation, as well. However, if I just look for “level up vfx” or something similar, I get around a handful of results and that’s it.

My next idea would be to go through the Steam-Shop and look for games with a similar style and then watch gameplay videos hoping to find a similar effect. But, this is going to take a lot of time and I was wondering, whether there is a better source or way for this.

How do you collect your reference material? Any cool tipps to find more?

#2

You can check out the Chinese website, a website called Magic Box, which has a lot of videos about special effects making。

#3

Jason Keyser (aka. VFX Apprentice) has quite a big library of stylised vfx ref on pinterest. Always worth checking out.

Then I always recommend following as many vfx good artists as you can on all platforms (ArtStation, Twitter, YouTube etc.). There are often some hidden gems which you will only discover by continously keeping track of the vfx world :slight_smile:

And lastly, I’d look at other games that you like the art of and are remotely related to what you are trying to achieve. In the level up case, e.g. Diablo, League of Legends, or even Mario.

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