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Fooly Cooly

. The most esoteric and totaly different in style compare to others anime. IMO the stories is more deep than evangalion and a matching humor like south park. With all the random crazy plot & the soundtrack make this to my favorites collection. To bad its the OVA is to short (6 episode) but nonetheless is worth a good time.

In the beginning

Well its all start after watching a quick flash movie base on FlCl soundtrack (Funny Bunny), Pink Colour a work by jayjayM at newgrounds (check him out). I really enjoy and inspired by the simplelistic (valentine) movie. While the songs still humming inside my head I start digging the stuff and resources for this piece. I'd seen the kewl bot few months ago on rebel-dm signature at Digital-industry forum so I made a quick search and found the sources of the render nicely cut by levelone (The German sprite guys aka PMI). Because I'd choose the theme Photomanip for this pieces, it seem necessary to place a good background that well match the render (actually I'm to lazy to begin with). I do a search at sxc.hu (good resolutions stock) after few boring click I try my luck at dA resources that's where I found the kewl (wow) Photomanip stock by anarasha-stock. Its really fit well with this piece many thanks to anarasha for providing this resources :thanks:. Next I do a search for some additional stock to spice up the pieces I found the second moon stock (with the flock of pigeons) of " David Gilmour On an Island" at planet-renders forgot the author name (remind me soon). After 3 hours of wandering for the resources by now I had memorise all the lyrics ^__^ so I sings. :bunny:

Read more... (click to view)

In the Making Walkthrough
The first thing I do is wash all the stock to make it compliment to each others. desatured (ctrl+shift+u) is the best cure for color blind so I abuse it wisely. Then I do some quick mental compositions and decide to remove part of the main moon stock and scale it to around 150%(vanishing points & warp). Using the heal brush & smudging tools I clean up the "The dragon fly" and left 2 dragon fly intact as a symbolic of duality. -with couple of dragonflies,2 moon & flock of pigeons I drew a stick and start writing bad poetry.

Blending
Is important, this is the tricky part. Normally all cutout renders is frisky (anti-alias/white). I'd used the "Layer>Matting>Defringe" to remove the white around the render so it wont get pixelated (anti-alias bad). Using the lasso tools I traced around the part that I want to feather(8px) and apply vector mask. Then I brush around the mask using 21px black soft brush. To get some more depth I duplicated the renders (ctrl+j) then set the blending to soft light and lower the opacity till I see myself smiling :) .

Negative & Depth
Depend with the texture and brushing. First, I created a new layer (ctrl+shift+alt+n) and start brushing with (soft 100px 60%) black color around the corner edge to created the negative space. Next tracing the light source, It not that hard to find the lighting source in grayscale, that one of the reason for desaturing the stock. So I created a new layer and add a radial gradient and reduce the opacity a bit. After that I do a few dot of black & white around specific part with 10-15px hard brush and smudge around like zombie. *pause* Ok that's a No-No, lesson #1 never brush or smudge like zombie its messy *play*. The reason for the brushing is to create a contrast & depth where spot that need to be white is whiter and part where is dark is black in colors instead of gray, flat and boring. Next I add an image adjustment levels & curves mask layer and spend few trying minutes till it reasonably acceptable to my sour eyes. Then I add an invert layer mask and set it to soft light with 20% opacity to bring it more depth & contrast and erase the mask using black brush around the part where I want to get a focus. lastly a b&w gradient mask on softlight. Now I can start the revolution in my bed.

Colors
Is like music if it harmonies as symphony. There is lot of way to color but IMHO it best to used the gradient mask or photo filter (Color balance & hue/saturation is 'ok' if not overdone). The first thing I do is combine all the layer (the original non satured stock) using the" Image > apply Image" tools (default settings). Then I used the "Gaussian Blur" filter around 5-6px radius (to remove all the texture) and set the blending to colors with lower opacity and erase some unwanted part. Next I add Cooling photo filter and sepia with 20-30% density. Its very cool but I want something hot so I add a Channel Mixer with bluish settings to add more music to the colors and finish it with BW gradient mask on pin light with lower opacity. Now I can see the two colors singing and thus my work on this part is done.

Effect
For the creative. At this stage the overall look is very nice ' a just' (so so) without motion life is dull. Bravely I started with another merge layer and apply the "Distort>Ocean Ripple" with medium settings to get the wavy texture. The result is pretty ugly (as expected) at this point so its time for a bit of tidy-up. After removing 80% of the ripple I lower the opacity and create a path selection using the Pen tools to create a stroke of line reflecting to the surf board flow. Then I smudge the path selection with full strength. So mighty the stroke was, I break the wave and create a motion. My path is cross so its end here.

Enhancement
You ever wonder why girl spend consuming time with their make-up just look to natural. Was it natural if it tempered? this make no sense what so ever.Its very subjective. To created more depth and style I do my final make-over with few more merge layer on Gaussian Blur (2-3.2px) .After duplicating the gaussian blur layer I set the first blending to softlight this make it sot of dreamy (clouded dream) and erase part of it using the soft brush where my main focus is. The second part is set on Lighten some cheap lighting effect I snobbishly apply and again I'd abuse the eraser tool. At last I made another repetition of image apply and set it to Smart Sharpen (cs2) with medium settings. This is probably the hard part if it overdone I might lost the colors and flow so I did everything twice and end the repetition cycle with it.

Finalize
its never to late, I duplicated the main render (the bot) and apply "Filter>Stylize>Wind" (direction left) to create a frictions motion. as my final execution I pray and drown the main character in the dark sea (making this a bit more bizarre than normal descriptions) to symbolize of leaving the old past behind and moving on to the next level. I end this pieces with Fruitgore Linotype fonts- boldly on top of the Moon saying "sea of tranquility" thus breaking curse of words and will. Then I saw the birds flying happily back to where it belongs...

END

specs

original canti cg by Nicolas BOIS (HaDDeS)
Photoshop CS 2 : 40 min additional 2 hrs courtesy of my ranting gibberish.
would like to say thanks to The Pillows for the catchy funny bunny songs ever.
thanks ^__^