Zephos' Filter Forge in Anime Art Showcase!

Hyooooo! ^_^ This thread is about some filters made in Filter Forge I recently submitted being used in one of my image projects, six filters to be exact so that I can showcase the power of Filter Forge! Please have a look if you have the time ~^_^~

Okay! To start off, here is the original image of my favorite healthy fictional female biped Xyni, yeah, the same one I use as an avi, but more... errr... well preportioned:


Step 1: Original Image



Unfortunately, I use H2 lead to draw, which means that my drawings are pretty much invisible unless under infrared light. Of course, this isn't a problem with Sketch Cleaner, a filter created out of trial by fire ideal for cleaning and refining scanned in drawings for coloring and clean up as shown below:

Step 2: Sketch Cleaner



You can't see it in this image, but it converts the white to transparency so that you can just color on the layer below it. Sketch Cleaner can also export mattes so that sharp selection becomes a snap without worry about interacting with the actual line art. It also has three modes, this is the middle mode "Sketch" which retains the full gray scale instead of just black and white unlike "Lineart" mode. Although it wasn't available at the time of this image's creation, Sketch Cleaner has options to reinforce detail, outlines and tone independantly for more control than just pushing the Line Sensitively slider could ever provide! Well, onto the next step!

Step 3: Shoujo Strands



After a bit of coloring, I slapped on another filter called Shoujo Strands... probably best to think of it as a shiny anime hair generator though but without the black lines since it'd be a bit redundant since I drew them in already ^_^. Shoujo Strands normally works best if not confined to an area selection but can also be used for base coloring as shown in this picture. Unfortunately. it's quite difficult to get the flow pattern exact with the hair, so I just have to approximate ^_^

Thanks to the power of internet magic, the color is now done and I've used Filter Forge to make the background!

Step 4: Sakurama & Aurora Galora


Two filters were used in the creation of the background here. The aurora and stars in the back was of course created by Aurora Galora, funny name isn't it? Auroras don't really look like this in real life, but I got a stack of RPGs and anime that say otherwise (apparently). The blurred field of lilies in the back is the secondary function of a filter called Sakurama which generates fields and storms of flowers and flower petals, you'll see it's primary function with this next step:

Step 5: Sakurama & Diamond Dust



Sakurama's main function, as it's name suggests is designed to generate the ever present effect in anime and manga of cherry blossom petals scattering all over the air, great for romatic scenes, bad for lawn mowers I'd imagine. The second filter used in this stage is called Diamond Dust. I'm still on the twelve step recovery program to stop using Lens Flares, so Diamond Dust does the dynamic lighting trick nicely. In this case though, I used Cross style mode dust instead of literal diamond dust, ahaahah *nervous laugh*. Of course, I deleted and adjusted some parts of the generated filter layers within Photoshop for a better composition. At this point, the drawing is basically done, but just for the heck of it, onto step 6!

Step 6: Manga Kata



After some helpful advice from John Michaud and CFandM which led to me dividing my original Manga filter into two parts, I submitted this filter which converts any image into manga style! Somehow I really wanted to throw my Speedliner filter into the drawing too, but at the risk of excessive image overkill, I think I'll save that for another showcase, ahahaha.

Well, thank you for reading this post ^_^ I hope you find the filters I submitted to be as useful to you as they were to me (If they aren't let me know and I'll spank them!). Ahahahah ^_- Next time, I hope to talk speedlines, energy beams and meteors -- my favorite! Till then, happy Filter Forging!

Oh yes! If anyone is interested in seeing the full sized image color image at the end of Step 5, please click below:

Full Image!

Thank you Kraellin! I’m glad you asked, actually, I’ve never really though about it until you asked now that you mention it. It’s a bit blurry to classify styles of anime because it depends on the production studio (KyoAni, Gonzo, etc) as well as the genre of the anime (Shoujo, Shounen, Ecchi, etc X_X) along with the original mangaka or designer’s style.

In terms of individual artist style, since my specialty is character design, I tend to notice different styles the most in the line thickness/blackness, use of saturated colors versus light ones, simplification and choice of emphasis, and body and facial proportions, in particular, the eye style of the character.

Eye style is actually like a signature or fingerprint for mangaka/anime artists and many consciously go out of their way to make theirs unique, in particular are Koge Donbo’s of Digi Charat fame and Akira Toriyama of Dragon Ball Z fame – the later of which nobody outside of the artist himself wants to touch with a ten foot pole since it’s so recognizable, ahahah ^_^. You can usually tell an artists work by the eyes of their characters alone.

You might have seen some anime/manga style art drawn out of Asia that looks sharply errr… unlike the original Japanese thing. This would be a good example of a difference in cultural esthetics as in North America comic art at least, there’s a tendency to use thick black lines to outline characters, use black focused shading instead of saturation focused shading and emphasize muscles and anatomy over line, silhouette and errr… the “moe factor” which is apparently an inherent genetic trait that dwells in all lifeforms – kinda’ like the Force.

There are of course, varied opinions on the subject of anime style, but I hope that you might have found my explanation to be useful ^_- You might have noticed on the forums, but I only use horizontal anime smilies. I’ve only used the normal smiles three times – all within the Keep Smile thread on Comments on Filters, ahahah. X_X

Thank you for taking to the time to read it all StevieJ ^_- Oh! What an interesting effect! Which filter did you use to get this effect? It's like it converted the highlights into a bump map ^_^ Makes the part where cross dust appears which was quite hard to see in the original really appear like stratches and marks... hmmm... maybe the start of a unique way to add metal/glass stratch marks to a surface filter idea? It's possible that combining Diamond Dust with your filter would have that effect.

thanks, zephos. hadnt even thought about names coming from different animation houses. i thought it was more a generic style that just sort of developed in common. so, yes, that does help.

Good gosh, about time you release these, Zephos! And right on time too. What freakin' excellent example images — your showing of the steps is really quite helpful. I want to try the Sketch Cleaner out on some rough things I do, because that's quite a lateral usage of Filter Forge I hadn't thought about before. (I'm big into my distortion filters, but restoration ones aren't quite so easy to come by!)

The end image looks AMAZING. One thing I would've personally added is some subtle photographic grain to give those falling pink leaves some more texture, because they look kind of flat in front. But all in all, lovely composition.

I'd like to run some of these, esp. the Manga Kata, in ways they weren't originally intended for. But I can clearly see how this could automate and benefit anime artists. To my knowledge, I'm not aware of any other anime-specialty filters in the FF community... yet! But I hope it grows, I like comic/graphic novel-type effects.

I hope we'll see more filters from you soon after these go through... I'm waiting for them to show up on your profile so I can use them firsthand!

Oh! Thank you Torley for your kind words! I understand that you create textures for Second Life, correct? Why do I get the feeling we've met before, ahahaha ^_^ I hope my filters will be of some use to you. It seems that my specialty in Filter Forge is the direct opposite from its strength as a seamless texture maker. Ironically, only one of my filters is designed to be a seamless repeat (Infinite Frame Works), but I think Manga Kata would be quite interesting to use in glitch art and for experimental use. You got a point with Sakurama. The leaves in the end did indeed look a bit flat to me and I was wondering what it was missing, some grain might definitely add some flavor to it!


Thank you for your offer StevieJ ^_^ If it isn't too much trouble, I would highly appreciate your efforts in fine tuning the filter -- oh, but only if it doesn't take too much time out of your awesome metal and abstract filters ^_^ I think you're pretty much our resident abstract filter maker here and the filters you make are most excellent! ^_-

Oh! It seems that my filters were all accepted (I was sorta' afraid that the Shoujo Strands one might have been a wee bit sexist)! Happy! Happy! Although, there were only six in the example here, there were eleven total -- Energy Beam and Speedliner are probably the most related ones to anime/manga that weren't featured here... "The Defiler" on the other hand? Errr... not so much ^_-.

^_^ Good to know that it's coming along! I look forward to seeing it in action.^_- Thanks again for persuing your filters with such passion! ~^_^~ Looks like I got my wings back when the full version of Filter Forge came out for a while, so I hope to keep on making filters on my side too! -- ee-yeah!

Gorgeous WORK Zephos, WOW and I learnt stuff!

Hey Zephos, nice work!!! I also wanted to let you know that I haven't forgotten about you. I accidentally deleted the filter that I had ear-marked for you....in a mindless rampage to clean out all the junk in "My Filters" Anywho, I liked the effect too....and I've started to rebuild it again....

PS.....Many of those filters are resubmits that I added example pics in the "comment" string....

zephos,

very nice screen. definitely a japanese feel to it, though i dont recognize the wood. have you tried any bamboos?

thanks, zephos