aehentai

Voyager

Added 2020-07-02 01:46:19 +0000 UTC

In the original comic, the first panel shows the Maje spouting a bit of exposition of how they've captured Voyager. I really wanted to add a bit of an establishing shot of the ship (as a good many Trek episodes do).

However, I was extremely apprehensive about this, and whether I could get the look right. I don't mind 3D mech and vehicles showing up in 2D animation, but I definitely prefer that old, hand drawn look in older anime. That's the look I wanted to go for.

I recalled a tutorial / timelapse from Otaking (of the Tie Fighter animation fame, check his stuff out, he does amazing work) that I saw a while back. In it, he showed a bit of how he took 3D renders of space ships and made them look more hand drawn (it essentially boiled down to adding hand drawn elements to the line art render, and then manually shading it all). So, I grabbed a 3D model of Voyager, found a good angle, used that as a rough base for a draw over, and then manually colored and shaded it. The results came out pretty good!

So I jumped into After Effects, slapped on a few effects and dropped it on a basic starfield, and voila!

At this point, it was looking pretty good, but.... it didn't have quite the right vibe. I looked through a bunch of older anime at the space scenes (Outlaw Star, Irresponsible Captain Tylor, Captain Harlock, etc) and noticed that space was generally not just a sparse starfield on black. It was always much more interesting, with nebulas, different shades of color. and a lot more stars....

That's the look I wanted... but it meant I'd have to delve into background painting again. Thank goodness Mclelun (the same guy who did the tutorials I followed for the clouds and trees in Under Pressure) also did a tutorial for fantastic anime starfields! An hour or so of experimenting, and....

Happy with this result, I dropped it into the composition with the Voyager drawing, and we have the final result!

I'm in love with the look of the result, though no idea if this will be the final version of this shot. I may end up changing the scale / speed around some, before all is said and done.

Look forward to more as I make my way though this project!