hi all! im leaving the youtube tutorial nest to create some of my own vfx, hopefully for potential portfolio pieces, so i decided to start a sketchbook so i can get some feedback n share what im working on.
for my first piece, im doing a fireball spell w a celestial theme. here’s where it’s at:
let me know what u think n if u have any notes or pointers thx !!!
been a while since i used this, but thought i should revive it to keep a record and to hold myself accountable !
i saw a great reference for a grass-type sword slash, and it gave me the idea for what im working on atm:
made a little bit of progress ! i added a dummy and some hit effects but i thought it was still lacking for a portfolio piece so i decided to spice it up a bit. im thinking now of how i might make the third hit extra special. off the top of my head i could make the slash bigger and add a zelda-type sword beam, but feel free to throw me any other ideas or suggestions while i go reference hunting ^-^
been lazy and not making much progress but managed to do some. i pretty much followed through with my original idea for the last attack. it does feel a little lazy and uninspired but i also felt like the animation i chose doesn’t give me a lot to work with in the first place so oh well! i edited it a bit to at least give it more drama.
im pretty happy with how the charge turned out! although i sort of built it weird and ended up spending way too much time needlessly overengineering it.
i used ribbons following invisible sprites which were animated using the rotate around point module so i could more freely adjust their position and curvature as well as evenly distribute them. however, that module only writes the points’ positions, and so they have no velocity, which was an issue when i wanted to add little grass particles following the curvature of the trail. also for some reason i had decided to make the trail points rotate around the camera’s forward vector, even though the camera is in a fixed position… but at least it’ll be useful if i ever want to capture another angle!
i think im getting close to the finish line with this, so i’ll do my best to stay motivated and keep chugging along these next couple days!
been keeping the ball rolling and im just abt there! i added a good bit of polish and most importantly changed the sword beam to a tornado which makes more sense thematically with what im going for and because i already use subtle wind elements (which might need to be reinforced) and curl noise forces. here’s what i have now:
i don’t think there’s much left to do. i do think the tornado doesn’t feel very grounded so i want to add a dark grass patch trail following it. the hard shadows have also been bothering me for some time, and i think the dummy could get a little bit more airtime, but please feel free to leave any other feedback or suggestions!! whether it be in the textures, timing, or presentation, i want to make this as good as possible before i grow tired of looking at it, and i have no doubt that i’ve become blind to some things at this point.
finally digging my teeth into this again !! i got some valuable feedback from friends, and it made it a lot more obvious to me how much work the tornado still needed, something i was aware of but was too fatigued to acknowledge lol … i also got some notes that maybe the tornado needs better hints of anticipation, like an energy buildup beyond just the “charge” and so i looked towards league of legends’ yasuo, who i also realized was likely subconsciously my muse this whole time.
i took a couple pointers from his Q3, paying special attention to the values of the tornado and how the core contrasts with the trail. before, my tornado had no focus, and so i honed in the values to make sure that the eye was drawn towards the bottom and to make it clear where the supposed hitbox would be. u can also prob tell where i got the buildup of energy around the player from 
i do think it takes away from the slashes though, so i may reel it further back so that it’s a little more subtle.
i also wanted to improve the dissipation since a tornado is more than just wind, but a vortex of energy that eventually breaks apart. i really like how it looks now that there’s that moment of drama !
my next and hopefully last big change will be how the dummy gets knocked up. i plan to either leave it as is but provide extra gameplay feedback for the dummy’s cc’d state, or i might just have fun w it and make the dummy be taken away w the tornado and flung off screen !
i almost thought i’d never finish this lol but here it is !! if you’d like to see it in better quality along with a full breakdown of each emitter i’ve included those in my artstation post.
for this effect, my main inspiration was pixel artist sun’s flower slashes effect, and onetupthree’s wonderful breakdown of a stylized slash effect was my bible. klaus’ fire slash effect was also a very helpful reference, and of course i couldn’t have done it without mr yasuo league of legends himself !
