the decorative elements on the clothes are clouds, butterflies, flowers, cranes, most of which I drew in blender. use ps to draw complex patterns and then transparencies to the clothes.
You can see in the model that there are a lot of line textures, such as an edge line on the dragon’s eye sockets and eyebrows, which you can’t achieve with the cel shading material alone. At first I tried to add edge lines to the colour nodes, so that the whole object would have edges, but what I wanted was the effect of the colour blocks being stitched together, and without the edges the model is blurred and a lot of detail is lost, which is a problem with cel shading. This is a problem for cel shading, because cel shading relies a lot on light effects, especially in my scene, which is almost always at night, and without a strong light source, the cel shading material will only show one colour of the dark side (solid colour).
So I modeled the lines at the turn of the character’s facial structure. For example, the dragon’s eye sockets, the corners of the mouth, the brow bones, the inside of the ears, the marks in the middle of the tongue, the decorative lines on the cheeks, and the indentations of the nose.
The legend of Dragon Nuo mask:
Nuo culture in the legend, the evil dragon is the representative of the evil, ghost legend, and open the mountain Mang will be (Dragon King) and the mountain king and other Nuo God, is specialised in driving away the evil dragon such as the evil evil ghosts and positive God. When they appear, break the horns of the evil dragon, to defeat the demons to ensure the safety of the people’s lives, the essence of Nuo can be prevalent in folklore passed down to the present day. Now more dragon masks are used to pray for blessings and blessings of the open mountain mang will, on behalf of the five grain harvest luck.
In the short film the protagonist is designed as a dragon on the one hand is very much like the dragon, the dragon in the culture is often an auspicious symbol, but also suitable for the emergence of the protagonist as a representative role, the powerful and mysterious qualities and the short film it is kind and full of affinity for the behaviour of the formation of the contrast.
In the Song Dynasty, the technology of weaving Luo can be said to have reached its peak. The Song dynasty Luo’s many names and technological advances made it a famous fabric of the time, known as “Song Luo”.
Nobles and officials of the Song Dynasty usually wore costumes in bright colours, such as red, green and purple, and embroidered designs, such as dragons, phoenixes and cranes, in gold and silver thread. Merchants, craftsmen and farmers of the Song Dynasty also had different costumes. Merchants’ costumes were plainer, usually in black or dark blue; craftsmen’s costumes were more practical and comfortable, usually in linen, cotton and other natural materials; and peasants mainly wore blue lab coats and black trousers, with simpler styles. The interior of Song Dynasty clothing was also very elaborate, with details such as collars, cuffs and belts being handled with great care.
All manual labourers in the Song Dynasty period, tambourers, hawkers, peasants, boatmen, and so on, had a common feature, that is, their tops were short, mostly short jackets or short shirts, not exceeding the knees, or just above the knees.
Mapping：
Nuo opera costumes pattern: Nuo Nuo opera clothes mainly red, on the one hand, the fire, the worship of the sun, part of the reason is that the red symbolises good luck, people think it can dispel bad luck.
Embroidery is an essential part of Nuo opera costumes, common dragons, cranes are more representative, but generally only high-powered roles will appear on these clothes, such as the dragon belongs to the emperor, cranes belong to the emperor’s officials. So here I chose clouds, swallows, butterflies and peony flowers, these are very common people elements, the common people like butterflies and flowers in the fields, clouds and flying swallows are also very popular. Here I draw a good pattern in Photoshop first, and then use the transparent paste printing to the character.
Mapping process, surrounded by reference images.
During production I often compared the two characters together to keep the style consistent.