Behind the Scenes: Queens of the Troll Age

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION

I’m Frogov D’Properly 鄭帝華, a self-taught passion artist who works after-hours and has by no means obtained formal coaching, so take all of this with a grain of salt.

INSPIRATION

I needed to be taught the brand new Blender Hair Curves system and wanted a topic apart from bushy donuts. The Trolls films had been on repeat in my family, so I tried Queen Barb after which added Poppy, and determined to animate them.

I suppose as an alternative of searching for inspiration, inspiration may also come knocking.

Setting a aim lets me know when it is “executed,” or at the very least, once I’ve hit a ceiling and should admit that it’s too tough.

PROCESS

The challenge took round 2 months of after-hours and weekends, with a reasonably commonplace workflow of:

Sculpt/Mannequin/Texture > Rig > Animate > Render > Video & Submit

HAIR CURVES

I picked Queen Barb’s coiffure as a place to begin to be taught Blender’s newest hair curve system.

I discovered the brand new hair sculpting instruments to be extra intuitive than the particle system, requiring much less twiddling with settings and take a look at renders. The Add and Density brushes give a extra pure distribution than the particle system brushes.

In brief, her hair consists of the primary mohawk and the perimeters.

For shading the mohawk, I used the Strand Intercept to get that root to tip variance.

GEOMETRY NODES

I used geometry nodes to put the studs on the choker, headband, and round Barb’s guitar.

RIGGING

Rigging the guitar was an attention-grabbing downside. Typically you need it to nudge with the precise hand, different instances the precise hand wants to maneuver independently, akin to through the massive strum motions.

Slightly than constructing a one-size-fits-all rig, the guitar was constrained based mostly on the shot. If it is a shot of her selecting, the Youngster Of constraint is parented to the forearm, and for the ability chord photographs, it is parented to the hip.

ANIMATING

The audio was recorded utilizing a PRS SE (sure, that explains Barb’s guitar) and a Fender Micro Mustang Amp into Audacity. I then used the pre-mixed solo observe as a tough visible information for putting the important thing frames.

RENDERING & VIDEO EDITING

I rendered in Cycles, and when potential, I rendered separate layers to save lots of time. For instance, backgrounds want just one body if the digital camera does not transfer.