 Hello everyone, I don't know if it's working. Yeah, it's working now so I Am deduce and my real name is Andrea Thank you so much for for attending this presentation. The presentation is about my journey with Chris Marcello I will talk about how this tool changed the way how I work and it changed all my process and all my career for the best So this was all done in Blender Obviously, I don't know why I have to tell that Who will come here and say I did this is a max and free this is your max and I have I'm going to talk Yeah, it's Blender. Okay. You already know it. So it's all done with Chris Marcello Blender This is the art that I did before before a new Blender. I did two drawings on a digital art and I wanted to show this because there is a parallel between The art that I did before and the art that I start to do once I started using Blender the thing is Before Blender, I was drawing on my spare time. I was a full-time web developer and I was drawing at night and I had two main themes in my drawings. I loved science fiction but I love to put some comedy in my artworks and I wanted to tell stories, but it was I was beginning. So I just got inspiration from my real life So the big adventures in my life This is like one of the most Exciting adventures that happened to me at that time So so it was also like a self therapy. I have to admit But the thing is that I'm showing this to you because these two different artworks I realized that I like so many things and I start to try to merge all these things To try to find my style. So I have so many slides I I don't know why I put so many slides, but I go fast on this first chapter This is the result of my search like trying to mix this and this it ended up with this kind of artwork This is what I've done on to the digital art before Blender if you look at this closely You see that there is not Really something new. It's a little piece little pieces of Manga's Some French comics some pop art, but then if you look at the big pictures it looks a bit new because it's a merge of Different things and I also put my own Interpretations of the different things and that makes it quite different and This is this is why my journey before with pencil then I discovered the software Blender and then with pencil tool And I thought oh You can put drawings on the plane and animate it put it in a 3d space That's interesting that also it's just it's not just Simple drawings you can move the layers and put them in different axis Rotation and you can deform them and in the end you have something that if you look closely at the details It's not really new. It's Sailshading is drawing is 3d, but the whole thing all these things together plus your own Interpretations of all these things it makes something that You don't expect so I didn't expect that I would do this kind of artwork Before I used Blender so I tried I started to apply this and The interesting thing is that It's like these tools already existed before we call this 2.5d It's putting 2d drawings in a 3d world But the difference is now is that it's all in one software and the fact that it's so easy to do that you can go to extreme Extreme artworks with this style. So it's something that I could have never done with other softwares and in the end This kind of artwork ended up airing on adult swim in in the US this was a commission that I made for them and If you look at the artwork, it looks like nothing. It looks completely messy But then you play it from the right camera angle and you have some slight You can see parallax effects, but here is not parallax. It's real 3d And the fact is doing this on other software will have never been possible It would be an item air to try to place all the pieces because you see the the arm of the guy here It is completely at a different place the girl behind is a different place It's impossible to to try to to do do this without having the real-time feedback so this is Like where Christmas see led me I started alone in my room I did all this alone by myself and it it got Seen by some people a professional people and it it added on TV and I continued exploring this This tool I added 3d elements at I mixed drawing on top of 3d But you know you can draw on top of surfaces of meshes with with Brazil and this is the Thing that I'm doing now But but now that I have learned all that I try to remember What why am I doing all this? What is the purpose the things that I want to do? Yeah, I want to tell stories and I want to make a good scenes And cinematic scenes because watching movies is my favorite thing If you saw my other conferences on that I did in parallel other places I mentioned this this topic on every talk that I do. It's it's Poker also, so I'm sorry if you already saw it me talking about it, but I like to mention it every time Like 2d animation is still my favorite thing. I like technology. I like 3d. I like the for new tools but today It's it's really the the thing about today is that it cannot get old Like if you watch poker or so Movies like this everything that you see in the frame is an artistic choice if it puts one just one line for the for the silhouettes the people have Two or three shades not not more for the shadows and lights and it's not because of a technical limitation They could have done more but it could it would have it would have taken more time But they chose to do it and the thing is when you have a 3d software the The danger is that when you're like too much on the technology you use it Thinking that it's good, but it can get old really fast for example, if you create an artwork in 3d without putting any 3d any art direction in it You just use the software as it is for example you you buy a plugin that generates a tornado And you make your whole movie about this tornado and it's awesome Then in five years someone will come to you and say hey, you know, I remade your movies and I made it better And you ask him how do you do that? Well, I just added more polygons. I updated the software's plugin so your movie gets old just because of the update of the software But if you put art direction in it You can try to enhance this this art direction, but it won't be better. We just be different So for example, someone can come to you and say hey, I remade Boca Russell. I made it better How did you do that? Well, I added more lines So it's it's not better. It's it's just a different movie by the way, I did the I did myself. I made a copy paste of the backgrounds Don't mind so 2d is still my favorite thing, but what I like about 3d and softwares like Blender Picture is completely unrelated. It's it's I didn't have time for this slide, but It's a scan of my house that I rendered again. I don't know why I scanned my house and I rendered it so The in 3d you can make a whole movie and once the movie is done You can go back and edit little things. You can add textures to the cloths. You can change the backgrounds You can still learn while you do the movie and with all your knowledge You can go back to the past and redo these things in today. It's really hard to do but now because of softwares like this like responsive you You can you can at least have something in between which means that it's 3d But there are drawings. There are some things that you cannot completely redo But at least if you change the camera angles of some stuff you can still fix it So you and you can also add some pure 2d elements in a 3d world That's what I like about at Christmas Hill and you can do also the opposite. I started to to experiment to do Full 2d drawings, but with 3d elements on it. So in this case I Won't be able to edit the character anymore But at least I can edit the glasses once the movie is done So it's a balance as you can find it and then and that's makes this tool super great so And I know I think that happens when I started using Christmas Hill that there are some things that I didn't expect that happened So this is me filming my little puppet. I do some paper and stop motion animations In the background it's Blender playing in real time. I didn't want to bother doing the green screen I just put a screen there. I played it's a viewport of Blender Actually, I forgot to and check the overlays. You see the cameras there, but it's playing and The interesting thing in Blender is that I can work like I work in the real world Like the the Blender viewport for me is like a real space if I want to add something there I just add it there. I don't I don't do do it later like I will do it later on another software It's you need for example. I wanted to do a Tilt shift effect on this the tilt shift is when you blur some part of a drawing to make to fake Depth of field so to do the mask for the For the blur, I just took the Christmas Hill brush and I drew the lines for the mask So the mask is just there at the same place I separated it in the compositor and in the end I have The the mask on the blur at the right place So if I wanted I could animate it this this blurry effect because it's it's the drawing that is playing at the same time So now on each of my artworks, I do everything in camera. For example here. I have some Length flares. So if you know that flares they they appear on the lens of your camera they are supposed to be on on front of everything and They have to be stuck on the camera, but they have they need to be around the light source So I did that literally that on Blender. I've put the lens flares with some rigs With some constraints so each one when the camera moves the lens flares moves with it But they stayed in the axis of the of the Light source so all my contents that are doing Blender everything is there on the place I don't go anywhere else And in the end in the end of the animation there are so many things happening, but I cannot list everything here I have just another example for example this in this video. I wanted it to end with Fade to black so how you will you do a fade to black in the real world? Well you would draw Lines in front of the camera and it just makes the fading So it's it's like an obsession for me most of my artworks. It's all One single thing render from Blender like I just press render and I wait and I deliver the fight to the client Everything the the lens effects the even some grains. We don't see it but there are some grains appearing in front of the camera and There are some dust and I couldn't find a good dust texture So I just use the ducks dust manually on the timeline on a grease muscle object for floating in front of the camera and and now so So now now I have my own process this ended up with commissions for Google or for for for brands and for For pens in YouTube and all around the world So it couldn't and I couldn't have done it with another software Now I am I still have some experimentations that I do at home. I There is the puppet animation that I haven't explored yet. I Wanted to do paper animations to Puppet animation, but the thing with this style is that it forces you to have the arm of your Character either a robot arm or a spaghetti arm, you know Because when you fold it the the computer cannot guess how the the cloth are supposed to be folded on a drawing So I thought maybe if I use Multiple drawings and switch between the drawings at the right time depending on the angle. I could mix Traditional animation with pet animation, but this requires so much work first I used the time offset modifier and I said if you are at the angle of over five degrees Then go to frame one or else you go to frame zero and frame zero means there is nothing So I just hide it, but then I thought well, but no my timeline is completely Unusable I want to have the timeline playing so I really did the same thing with different arms But this time I made it animated So the timeline is playing at the bottom and at the same time you have all these arms Switching on and off depending on the angle. It's it's a lot of work I wanted I wanted to make an add-on with it But imagine so here you see you can show for example an animated tattoo on the arm and you you press play and And you have your animation playing at the bottom and the puppet animation is playing at the same time But this is impossible to maintain like I thought if I wanted to send this to To someone else if they wanted to update the character They would have to upload the images with the right naming and I would have to try to make a automation I left it in my In my my folders if their developers who are interested in this we can talk I see the blender team here So so I would try to harass them But the thing is actually in the end I always like I think like Many people here when you see a software like blender you want to put your you want to put your Your idea say could you implement this and this and this and I realized at some point that the tool is already great as it is so I left this project on hold and I went back to drawing and Actually dressed without the current drawing tools just placing Wait, wait, this one is not playing just placing the your Christmas ill objects On the freely space and just moving at the right speed It is really enough. You have discovered tools that have to create interpolations and this this animation ended in It ended in stores in the US in the Crocs shoe store And this this of animation Well, if we have veteran animators here They want to be impressed by what I'm going to say, but for me. It's a big step. I did this whole animation in two days It's it's I started the sketch on my sketch the draft on my sketchbook on a Sunday afternoon Because the client wanted so many modifications and I said, you know what we'll start from scratch It was two days before the deadline. It was right. It does For like like a big big big things in Play so I did this two days before the deadline and it I and I could finish everything just because now I am I know the tools and There are so many modifiers that can help you to add extra motions Noise effects the depth with the mask everything was done all with with pencil So now well Of this light this was about social media. I mentioned it on on my on my presentation Depending on what at what time you saw it But I realized that there are so many slides in my presentation, but I can talk to this to you later I'm trained and the idea is to tell people update your social media It's it's nice to have a community You can also have your community of your own like we have the blender community and The community helps me a lot in my creations and The awesome thing with blender. It's awesome. It is scary at the same time This is me sculpting things with blender easy playing in real time at the background like now I realized that everything is possible and You have no excuses now You cannot say oh, I can't have money. I don't you just need your computer Anyone has a computer now so anyone can do anything here. Thanks. Thanks so much to to to the the Blender developers In my case, maybe the only things that can stop me. Maybe he's procrastinating on watching series But it's it's also part of the job. Yeah, I have to watch our kind I have to I have to stay update to what is going on so so I But this is it it all started on on my desk and now it's big projects going to places I've never expected So I'm super happy with it. It started I remember it started when I was on holiday and I saw the trailer of the hero movie And it was a pretty presentation by Daniel Martinez They say that we are going to add to to the animation in our software Thank you for the idea and I know that the same way has as as people Hacked Blender to do things that even the developers did not expect I think that people will do the same with with pencil like we just do a 2d software And I think people are going to hack it and do an amazing thing. So thank you so much for watching the presentation and I'll be around if we have some questions