Illustration: Another look at a mortuary art piece.

 This one had many o the same issues as the last one. Missing textures but also it was too harsh looking and lacked the mood I wanted. 

I was able to soften it and also make the lighting look more naturalistic and bring the focus to the death and grieving man statues. 

Below is the original.

Illustration (take 2) Death as a Friend

 

I was happy enough with my first image but since I finished it I have tried to reopen the file and becuase. I changed computers and Blender versions it was missing textures and I decided to fix that. In the time between finishing it and seeing the problem I also learned a lot more and thought this could be very much improved and I think I had been . he skeleton is much more real looking and I used cycles to render it, which is much more accurate the EEVEE. Above is the new and below is the old so you cna see the difference. It took 90 minutes to render. I could have optimized it more but it is also poster sizedin case I decide to print it. 

Illustration: Death as a Friend

 

Another in this maybe series. Made in Blender this one I had a very strong idea for based on an engraving my friend Jeannette showed me decades ago. Well, sort of... it turns out the engraving "Death as a friend." Looks nothing like this and then I thought it might be  from another old illustration, "Death as a friend to the poor" which was a little closer to what was in my head. Could be I saw something and just associated it with a title I like better. 

In any case, this is an old woman holding hands with death in a lonely room that doesn't look like it's had many visitors recently. I tried two versions: colour and black and white. They both have strengths and weaknesses. Did post-processing in Sffinity Studio and discovered that the NIK plugins now work in them, as they did in the older Affinity suite! 

Animation: The Cask of Amontillado 2020 6 minutes 14 seconds

After about two years of preparation and animation my animated "The Cask of Amontillado" is finished. Mike Luce is the voice of Montresor and Michael Z. Keamy is Fortunato. I tried to be the voice of Montresor at first but I was beyond terrible and Mike Luce kindly redid that audio for me. I went with human like animal characters this time instead of cartoon humans. I thought it might work better and give me more options with the animation plus added some symbolism. 

I used Cinema 4D as I am not ready for something like this in Blender yet. It was edited in Final Cut X and I did not use After effects for the compositing but used Apple's underrated and often ignored Motion software instead and it worked out great. The animation still has some issues I am having trouble with, such as decent walk cycles and some of the movements were not as smooth as I would have liked but overallI am very happy with the results. Nothing is ever perfect, is it? The settings were a long haul to make as the upper and lower catacombs are huge and cavernous and lit by torches. The sound was a little more complex as I had to record a bunch of foley and sound effects to flesh out the sound and add more atmosphere and detail to the short. 

During the final edit, I noticed a bunch of things I had somehow missed, one was the wrong source files were used for a sequence which made the image looked pixelated and another was a terrible clicking noise during a dialog scene I can't believe I had not heard during the editing process. My excuse is that the noise here is non stop between the construction and the fact I am not in glorious isolation but home with my spouse which does not give me the solitude I need to work efficiently. Constant distraction is death to a project like this so I am glad I was able to get it done and be happy with the end result. 

I have two posters ready in case I decide to enter it in some festivals. I have had the luck to be in one or another over the last 6 years so having promotional stuff ready is a fun way to tie up a project in a nice bow. 

If you like the animation, tell me! Like it on Youtube and pass it around so maybe it can get some attention and love! 

Chog est mort / Chog has died

The inspirations for "Nomi et Chog" are both gone now. Chog was a little joy his whole life. His owner, Tobias Allen was with him.

Les inspirations pour "Nomi et Chog" sont morts maintenant. Tobias Allen, son maître était à côté le petit Chog à la fin.