Look Development
Bushitoad
AI Toon Arnold Shader
Bushitoad had an important goal of achieving the mood of the film through stylization. I was researching and testing different ways to creat a watercolor look for the film.
I started right away with creating the aiToon shader for the character. However, the basic settings gave me a very simplified image.
I added a Cell Noise to the weight of the outline, which created a variety in thickness of the outline (video 1). In the second video, I increased the value and the lines finally reminded me of the ink outlines from the concept art.
In the second video, I also created watercolor-looking noise and multiplied it to the textures. It wrapped around the geometry and made the character look 3D again.
Concept art by Marley Smith
In the third video, instead of multiplying the noise, I created a 2D camera projection onto character. This brought me really close to desired look, but unfortunately, this shader was reacting weirdly to the fighting and movement of the character.
We decided to take another route and add the watercolor texture in the postproduction stage. In the final shader we used for rendering, I adjusted the transparency and added a green tint to the cell shadows of the characters.
Stylized Procedural Textures For Water Splashes
For one of our first Proof of Concepts of Bushitoad film, we were still eploring the ways to blend the 2D and 3D environments and characters. This custom Blender texture I created for many of our whater scenes.
This is the first composited Proof of Concept.
Wet Pavement Shader
I studied the displacement maps created with the noise and IOR values to create the puddles.