Carnival Emperor BTS (Patreon)

Created 20-7-22

another very simple shot. I recommend you try something like this if you enjoy blender. The difficult part is drawing the mask, but once you get enough practice with patterns and rococo style detailing it's not so bad. I learnt how to draw like this because I had (have?) a very strong venetian carnival aesthetic phase.

The eyes are a drawn iris, black sclera and softly glowing pupil. The emission is set very low, so it's not too distracting. When doing this kind of 3D/2D art style hybrid, trust the rendering engine. It's based in reality, but it puts out what you put in. There is usually no need to add post effects things like artificial glowing/bloom around eyes, in my opinion, it rarely looks good. I personally also never use denoising, it gives everything a watered down look, but I know that's not ideal in many situations. Just focus on composition and lighting as primary skills if you're starting out.


Cloak is likewise simple, just a cloth sim. I always render at lower framerates, which sometimes give my work a stop motion look, but the side effect is that it slows down particle and cloth sim.
There is a way around this if you choose - I just duplicate every frame of animation one step forward so each frame holds for two, and render at twice the intended fps (e.g if I want it to look like 12, i render at 24, with every frame duplicated). I'm sure there is a more professional way to do that, but that's just how I figured it out.