For the last few days I've been overdosing on high budget, larger scale anime movies. Satoshi Kon is one of my favorite directors, and he's done some really awesome work on films like Perfect Blue, Millennium Actress, and Paprika. Most of them make no sense, but the visuals are amazing.
So today was Millenium Actress:
I can't find much online to really do the visuals justice, but the movie's really amazing as far as the wonderful muted color palettes that it uses and all the patterns in the clothing.
Last night, I watched Metropolis with Lauren. It's roughly based on the original B&W version, but it's a really wonderful reimagining based on the work of Osamu Tezuka. I remember seeing this movie in a small theater in Chicago with my dad when it came out in 2001, so I'm still really fond of it. It was hard to find images online that really capture the amazing visuals of this movie, but every shot is an awesome study in color. I really am relying on this film's palette for my own movie. Sure, it won't look anything like Metropolis, but the way the colors are so saturated but also very grungy really appeals to me.
Other than that, I've been spending my time at work today looking for resources for finishing my film on Deviantart. Right now, my favorite resource is this person's stock portfolio. They have some really great textures that I'm going to use on all the trees in my film, as well as some great brushes to give things some nice texture. I don't want anything to look too flat, so the more brushes I can use to make things more appealing the better :).
Today and yesterday I've been working on trees. I'll try and post some progress when I've really made some. I first attempted to make them move using the Warp Grid tool in Mirage after a few aborted attempts in Photoshop, but the warp grid was too much. It looked like a tornado had swept through and sort of turned the trees into over-reacting jelly. Now I'm working on a really subtle cycle so they move a little in the background. This is really for only one shot, but I don't want the trees to stand out too much from the rest of the movie. I'm probably going to have to mess with the colors and go over everything with some brushes and texture in photoshop to make it blend in better.
Okay! I'll post something to see later on.
