Sonyas VFX Sketchbook

Unloading a collection of my current adventures in VFX. Feedback is always welcomed!

Toon Explosions;
I really wanted to push the “Toon” Idea and took heavy inspiration from The Legend of Zelda, The Wind Waker.
com-crop

Lightning was fun. Went for a shader graph approach on the left with overlaying RGB color channels and textures, and a normal texture sheet for the one on the right.
com-crop%20(1)

Tausend Dank!

https://www.artstation.com/lupusdesigns
https://www.linkedin.com/in/sonya-jalette-28b88313a/

1 Like

Hi Sonya,

nice start! The zelda explosion looks a bit hectic to me. I think one reason for that is, that you let the particles plopp away from one second to another. If you checkout the original explosion you’ll see, that the creators faded the particles over time and let them be on the screen a bit longer:

1 Like

Thank you so much for this video! I went mad looking for good reference. Ill be sure to take a look and make some changes!

Adding to my Sketchbook my exploration in flames.

com-gif-maker com-video-to-gif

1 Like

the fire on top/right is a highly tessellated geometry?

Its just a material flipbook of realistic fire sprites, set with grass wind modifiers to add some noise. I personally think it looks odd but I was curious how Unreal handled Flipbooks.

Hey Sonya! These fires are a really nice exercise for exploring stylization! I think you’d benefit from trying to study the reference a little more before delving into the technical aspects of the exercise with materials, etc. If you can really boil down the elements of the fire you feel are integral to its representation (the underlying shape language, the motion, the ‘feel’) then you’ll have a much easier time making simplified but convincing effects!

Looking at your third fire, the base of the flames captures the curls and licks you’d find at the base of a fire, but I feel like the evolution of the particle shapes and the conical shape being created by your initial velocities as the fire moves up is betraying the ‘feeling’ of the fire you’re trying to capture; try finding some reference of similarly scaled fires and study the elongated shapes and curls that the flames create as they dissipate and the tension that exists between each lick of flame that pulls the forms together. If you can emulate these elements in the materials and particle behaviours I think you’ll have a really nice effect! :smiley: