Chinese New Year e-card :The Making Of

Hello Steemians,

With Chinese New Year just around the corner, I wanted to create an e-card to give to everyone. So I made a scene in the style of Voxel Art.

Here's the card :D

Here is a bit my breakdown of the process:

The software I am using is Magicavoxel, which specializes in this kind of art style. Using it is kinda like building Lego, but you're doing it in the computer so you don't have the risk of stepping on any ;D

First thing is to build the main subject. Since it's going to be a year of the dog, he will be my focal point in the card. I start to build it from the head. The tricky part about voxel art is you don't want to put too much detail if you are going for that cute look but you need to make sure the audience knows what you are making.

As long as you capture the traits of the animal in your stylization, people will recognize it. A dog's traits are its snout, long ears and standing on all fours.

Here is the dog nearing completion.

Now I want to build the "diorama". I turned the dog to gold, Put on some patterns on the wall and created some Chinese gold coins around on the floor.

I felt that this scene is feeling a bit empty, so I came up with the idea of putting chinese lanterns above the scene. the material of the lanterns will be adjusted so they will emit a glow that will cast over the final scene.

I added in wires for the lamps to hang onto , Text on the walls and magical pixie dust that falls into the scene.

Now that I am satisfied with everything I have to move the camera around to find a composition that I like. I am going with this isometric view. Once that is locked I will render the final image. Rendering in 3D terms is when a computer converts the 3D model into a 2D image by using complex computer algorithms. This can take time depending the on hardware you use and the complexity of the scene. For me this took around 2 minutes to render out.

Fun Fact: For the first Michael Bay directed Transformers film, it took 38 hours to render a single frame!

Here is the final render of the scene.

Thank you,

Happy Chinese New Year!
Gong Xi Fa Cai

@wanaf

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