shockFX

There are 2 main players in animation industry , Western style , which you can refer from Disney , Pixar , Dreamworks , Blue Studio and etc , while on the other side , we have anime style , which come from various Japanese companies.

Some movies from Pixar

Often times we can differentiate their styles as they usually use very different approach. For this time , for the very first part of this series Myths of anime , I would like to cover the topic of FPS , frames per second for anime.

As the reference photo above , the higher the frame rate , the more unique frames shows smoother movements. Generally all videos are using 24/25/30fps , same goes to anime , what makes anime different and choppy is they duplicated a frame a few times. Instead of having 25 unique frames ( all frames look different ) in a second , they copy the same frame twice , 3 times or even 4 / 5 times depends on situation. Some may have wonder why can't anime make use of all 25 frames and make their movement look smooth , especially CG animation , since you can let computer animate the in between frames with ease.

Let's look at a sample of anime - Attack on Titan

You can tell that it's an anime title , not only by the "very anime" look , but also the animation , which they duplicate a frame twice for this 24fps video , technically it's only 12fps for the animation itself because *choppy* animation is how should anime look like , how people have accustomed to it , but that's not all the stories.

Here's how they convert a 12fps animation into a smooth 24fps video.

While animation for character and smoke remain the same as 12fps , camera movement stay the same as 24fps , check out the background that it always moving from frame to frame , and some of the effects such as sparkles will be 24fps too.

But on some other anime , they could duplicate each frame for 3 times , or more , or mixed 2 and 3 times , possibly due to the style of the animation , lower budget , or very tight schedule ( weekly release series ). Combine with these various reasons , lower fps animation has seem to be a trademark for anime , and how people perceive anime , so even though you may let computer animate the rest of the frames , make 12fps or 8fps turn into 24fps , but it won't be feeling like anime anymore.

That's all for this part , more of this will be coming soon.

AJIN is originated from a manga series that went quite popular in Japan , due to its bloodiness some website rate it as 18+ manga , such as this site.

The characters from the manga itself are having big and scary eyes , but when modelers convert into a 3D models , they look simpler and *friendlier*

Kaito , Kei's friend

Kei , Protagonist

Throughout the first movie , I didn't do much for the shots as I was still working on other project , so my shots are starting from episode 2. Next I'll talk about some insights of the shots.

This is one of the sequences that I've been working on , where this shot is telling that a vehicle with fog light turned on is coming from opposite direction , due to night time scenario , the when the vehicle come closer to the character it can be very bright , and make him look overexposed.

This shot is telling a different story , you can feel that the character is thinking of something , usually there will be narrate voice to tell what is he thinking about. At this case , strong defocus on everything else other than eyes ( story teller ) can enhance the feeling .

This shot is pretty long , if I'm not mistaken it was around 20 seconds or so. The tough part of this shot is optical flare position due to the bike is moving around constantly , motion blur than need to match with camera , background color control , bike color , and the reflectors too.

Optical flares are often use to tell strong light source or just to indicate the light direction , for bike , it is essential.

A random slow motion shot , where you can see characters fly in the air.

On top of my favourite sequences , this is definitely the top one . I've gotten the color script and worked on it with proper colors , and also set up a node set to create the light streaks effects with "fake light streaks shadow" in nuke . The is no background behind characters , it's all pitch black , gives you a feeling of they're in a different dimension. In the end there were still some retakes back and forth to make it better in terms of visual , colors , and "feeling".

The color script was base on this shot , which can pretty much tell everything that you need for the whole sequences.

For the first part of the movie , it didn't feature much of my shots as more of my actions shots should be coming on second movie . This is the only action shot I have. Short but strong !

And that's about it for this round , more of it will be coming as soon as I get the clips.

First movie of AJIN has been aired in Japan , and this is the trailer for 2nd part of the trilogy movie. It features more of the shots that I've been involved this time around.

One of my favourite shot is this !

*Come to mama*

With enough resources , I'll start uncover some works behind the scenes , tears and sweats that everyone have been putting on for this project , stay tune !

There's only a month left from Christmas , which reminds me to wrap up my work throughout the whole year. Although majority of my works this year are still not available to public yet , but here's the compilation of my works that has been broadcast.

After I finished Sanzoku no Musume Ronja , a long series project , a couple of lighting and compositing practice being done during down time while waiting for next project to kick in.

This is a very famous scene that you can get it free online for your own practice, it's call "The Museum".

It is truly surprising and great honor to be nominated in 2015 INTERNATIONAL EMMY® KIDS AWARDS NOMINEES , within the Kids:Animation category ! Yay !

Emmy Awards Nominees

After some amount of time of production , a longer trailer has came out . This project is definitely a very different experience compare with Sanzoku no Musume Ronja , where you have more bloods , humanity , gun fire to take care of. This trailer featured some shots that I've work on it.

AJIN , another anime title that I'm working on , and here's the first trailer.

Finally , I'm able to compile everything up after a long series that I've been working on has finished.

After half a year , Sanzoku no Musume Ronja has finally finished with a great ending. Roughly calculated that I've been involve myself into 14 episodes of it , out of a total number of 26 episodes. With completed footage , I manage to make mine own Lighting and Compositing reel out of it.

This is just a normal scene that you can see everywhere in the film . Everything in this shot seem to be easy to be done , it's just a piece of sky illustration with a mountain. But somehow one thing is playing tricky in this shot , and it is "Light streak".

The interesting fact it , most every episodes we are using different method to form light streaks , either make it out through our custom Nuke nodes , or color correct and animate a light streak painting.

Following are some sample of light streaks , some are base on the same settings and some are totally different.

From episode 8

From episode 16

Other than light streak , we often need to add some extra effects on top of matte painting , such as water distortion , water surface glitter , stars glint and so on.

A short that I've been working on last year , as Character rigger , Technical Director , Lighting and Compositor.

At the beginning stage , I was low-res modeler for props and environment , which is the lovely house that you see. It's then being refine into hi-res model for most of the part , but 50% of the models are remain low-res , just happen that it matches the feeling that require for this short.

Once character models done at the same time , I moved on to Character rigging , along with some shader test , seeking for the perfect material for these characters.

Lastly , lighting and compositing , and ~ TADA ~.

I was graduate from The One Academy Sunway Campus , along with completion of Digital Animation with Game Development Diploma program. For my FYP , I took the role of characters rigging , shading , lighting and compositing. After a full year of hard works, Cube Production , a team of six has finished their final project. ( Note that I fled away while project was 95% done due to other works and jobs came in at the same time, but I still did plenty of stuff and that still remain unchanged in this short. )

After characters being modeled by modeler , I took over and start rigging process as soon as possible. Both of the characters are basically "usable" after 2 weeks of non-stop speed rush work. Standing on today perspective , I would say I've overdone the rigging part to fix all possible penetration issue , where this kind of problems are usually getting fixed by vertex animation before render starts or just simply cover all the errors during compositing phase. 3D model rigs will never be perfect , because it's computer.

Next , I moved on to shading phase. For people who don't know what shading is , you can just imagine without shading , the character is only cover by plain white color. You can decide what kind of material you want your characters' model to have , color , reflectivity, or transparency etc .
It was a truly difficult task because that was my very first attempt on cel-shading. Characters' model must be simplify so that light can hit on their faces evenly without weird popping issue. In fact , a task as simple as this , a face with only 2 colors , light and dark , is the biggest obstacle that I need to get over with. In most cases , I chose direct light as it doesn't cause major issue and yet you can have a very good look of characters. But somehow when character moves his head , it will be kinda headache to keep lighting look as good as before.

Lastly , compositing phase, and it was all done under Adobe After Effects. Honestly , if I've learnt The Foundry Nuke that time , I wouldn't be taking After Effects as my compositing software because Nuke gives me more control of everything.

Even though I name this as Rigging reel , but yet it still involved a lot of lighting and compositing skills within this demo reel.

Rigging Demo Reel 2013 from Chan Kar Hoong on Vimeo.

Sanzoku no Musume Ronja , 山賊の娘ローニャ is now airing on NHK BS2 , not hitting on any international TV Broadcast channel yet , and I'm not sure whether it will or not.

I've been assigned to work on even number episode , 2 , 4 , 6 and so on.Hence, I would like to share some experience , troubles and some methods to counter with it.

Starting with Episode 4 , which is briefly talking about how Ronja found the "Gap of Hell" , and met someone that she never expected.

Birk , sitting on top of the edge of broken house.

This is an easy episode I would say , as compare with episodes after 6 , less characters , and not much special requirement for this episode.

But there is one shot that I worked on it , based on SVs request , I've made some sparkling dust that floats in the air due to strong and bright streaks like hitting surrounding atmosphere.

It's hard to observe with low resolution video quality , but somehow if you are able to get full-resolution footage , you will be able to see it.

And next , we move on to Episode 6. It was a little tough , due to bigger number of characters in one scene.

One of the requirement for this kind of pre-fight shot is , character's shadow shouldn't cover on other characters. In the end this can only be done by extract the scene into couple layers , and them back together during compositing work.

She looks so cute. ~~ This is an example of good lighting , a good direct-light with enough shadow to tell the volume of her face and nose.

A funny look of Mattis that couldn't answer her daughter's question. This shot is quite questionable in terms of light direction , because logically , they should have no light on their face with this angle , but that would look terrible for all the characters. In order to find the balance in between good look and hook up with the other shots , some minor light direction changes apply in this shot, even though it doesn't look the same as some shot , but it does not stands out too much.

Borka is always the trouble maker. His spiky fur on his shirt causes a lot of render problem , such as render will never look the same if you re-render again , or some random pop occur every certain frames , or even bad penetration occur when that fur is close to his beard or hair. For Undis (The only female character here) wise , her only issue is her extremely long nose, which could cast a very long shadow on her face.

This shot looks pretty simple , but I've been tested that streaks for some time to find the best balance for its color , strength and length, because this kind of "extra" compositing stuff is very subjective , it varies on different person , some might like it very much but others might think of another way.

Lastly , this is not my shot , but it is hilarious !! Mattis' dad , thick beard .

Next time I will talk about Episode 8 , an episode where all the difficult stuff started to surface.

FPS Race

I'm a fan of DigitalFoundry , a Youtube channel that benchmark games performance across PC and Gaming Consoles such as PS3 PS4 Xbox360 XboxOne Vita 3DS and etc.

Looking at the comment section of every videos is kinda eye hurt to me , as some of the people have wrong perception about FPS and color.Hereby, I would like to share something that I've learnt and know about it.

First , FPS , something people may refer it as first person shooter , but in this case , what I want to talk about is Frames per second. FPS , or frame rate , also known as frame frequency and frames per second(FPS), is the frequency (rate) at which an imaging device produces unique consecutive images called frames. The term applies equally well to film and video cameras, computer graphics, and motion capture systems. ( Wikipedia )

Nowadays , there are couple formats that are running for videos , 12 , 24 , 25 and 30. Some people may wonder, 12fps ? Seriously ? Who would watch that?

12FPS , a frame rate that is commonly use in some anime. Due to tight schedule and a lot of efforts required to get an anime done, animation of anime often produce in 12fps. This frame rate gives you a very choppy feeling, but it doesn't really matter when animation is well done with great timing and spacing.

24FPS , the most common frame rate for every movie , drama or animation in this world. 24fps is a standard video frame rate of PAL film format ( Film , old school way to make videos ), which is very suitable for animation , as you can divide 24 by 2 , 3 , 4 , 6 , 8 , it allows animator to hit timing correctly. From this , we can move on to "cinematic feeling". Yes , 24fps definitely provides a feeling of cinematic, this is all because everyone has been watching at this frame rate for years and decades. From TV to cinema , 99% of it are playing at 24fps, it's not surprise that 24fps gives some people a feeling of "Cinematic".

25FPS , this number is kinda nice for math maniac , 2 seconds you got 50 frames , 4 seconds you got 100 frames. ( Math maniac mode turned ON )~~ This is actually a PAL frame rate too , instead of film , this is a frame rate of digital video , due to everything digital start with 0 , and so you have 1 more frame , which is frame 0 , on top 24 frames , in total you have 25 frames. Else , nothing really special with this frame rate .

30FPS , or 29.97 to be exact , another common frame rate . It is based on NTSC format , widely use in place such as Japan and South Korea. 30fps is quite common on PS3 Xbox360 generation game, all because of it provides acceptable smoothness and you can save 50% computing performance for other usage as if you are aiming 60fps for smoother gaming.

By the way , 24fps was a standard for game fps during PS1 and PS2, for example , Crash Bandicoot !.

For games , developers have their options to choose either 30fps or 60fps. So , at some points , we all know that 60fps could definitely be better than 30fps , but why developers often choose 30fps over 60fps ?

(What to choose?)

Reason 1 : Restricted performance. In order to get to 60fps , you need double performance of what requires for 30fps, which could potentially use to enhance the overall graphic such as lens flare , particles , anti-aliasing and etc. Consoles' specification bound to death since the first day it release , in other words , developers can only access what that console can provide , you cannot upgrade it nor downgrade , it stick to what it mean to be , so every resources that you can grab from that console are precious.

(Both PS4 and XboxOne are using AMD APU processor)

Reason 2 : 30fps is quite solid for most of the games on console , a stable 30fps gameplay is pretty enough for most of the games nowadays. Back to the topic of "Cinematic feeling", 30fps is close to 24fps , so it tends to gives same feeling as we watch TV. But purely 30fps might not present a very smooth animation , the keyword to make it smooth is "Motion blur" .By applying motion blur on top of it , frames could blend into next and previous frame nicely, and present an illusion of smooth animation , but it won't be as costly as 60fps. One of the best example I would say , The Last of Us , from NaughtDog.

Of course, some people might still prefer 60fps over 30fps, it's not wrong about that, since feeling varies on difference person.

As time passed , I believe more and more games will go for 30fps , with higher polycounts , extra layers to composite , better particle and fluid effects, more joints for model rigs to produce better facial animation, as well as lighting and shading that is much more realistic. So far Ambient Occlusion is starting to step into new games , but soon , we might see realtime Ray-trace technology or Final Gathering come to us.

Cute Ronja !

As I mentioned before , I've been working on this project since Lighting and Compositing phase started. Some people might wonder why do you need Lighting and Compositing for an anime, but for audiences with eagle eyes , they can tell that this is an anime which is done by 3D CG method.

Works for following episodes are still going on , and it's not easy. But looking at the outcome which is airing on TV right now , it's kinda calm me down , and telling me that this is a great anime.

For first few episodes , we were still testing around and trying to know the best way to light up different characters . For your information , computer is way too accurate for an anime, sometimes it might gives some result that we don't want to see, but it's inevitable. Hence , what we really need to do for it is , "Rotoscope".

Image from http://www.digitaltutors.com/tutorial/1497-Rotoscoping-in-After-Effects

Generally , rotoscope is a process of drawing out the edge of the object you want to edit with it. For normal film , you need to work on 24 or 25 frames per second. For anime , it's slightly different , which is 12fps. Even though frames per second drop by half, there still a lot of works to do.

Let's see an example:

This is one of my shot , it looks simple , but somehow it might be difficult to balance the light direction in order to show the good shape of Ronja's face.

As the picture above , you can tell that the light direction is coming from left hand side, and it suppose to be sun light, since this is an outdoor scene. But we can't make light goes too high , because in this case , 3 very long hair shadows will cast right on her eyes, due to high angle lighting.

At this point , I want give an applause to every lighting and compositor who work on this project, including me :D !!

I will share more of my own experience with this project.

shockFX

Myths of anime [ Part 1 ] - Why anime looks choppy ?

The story of AJIN - Part 1

AJIN Shoudou - 亜人 - 衝突 - Part 2 Trailer

Lighting and Compositing Reel 2015

Random lighting and compositing practice

Sanzoku no Musume Ronja - 2015 INTERNATIONAL EMMY® KIDS AWARDS NOMINEES

AJIN Teaser

AJIN Trailer

Lighting and Compositing Reel 2014

Sanzoku no Musume Ronja - Lighting and Compositing Reel

This is where it started

Date Night -> Date or Fight

Rigging Reel 2013 - Not so rigging

Taste it , it's looking sweet yet bitter behind of it - Story of Sanzoku no Musume Ronja , 山賊の娘ローニャ

Frames per second - You can't see it but you can feel it 0o0

Sanzoku no Musume Ronja - Something about lighting ~

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