Over the last few weeks, I've been working on setting up a 2.5D rig of my character Nix to use in a youtube series I've been planning called Nix's Tower. In Nix's Tower, I'll be talking about writing advice from a disabled and queer perspective, how to represent us better in your own works and about life as a queer, disabled person in general. Not too dissimilar to the content I already make on Tik Tok, just longer. That longer run time though means I would likely struggle a lot with the actual filming of the videos, which is where Nix comes in.
using Blender and Clip Studio Paint, I made this little scene.
Nix themself was drawn in Clip Studio Paint, and then, any parts I wanted to be able to move independently were separated out onto their own layers and laid out in one big sheet. There are also several different versions of their face, right hand, shirt and cane included in the sheet, which was imported into Blender to allow for the different expressions and outfits.
You'll notice the sheet has a lot of empty space, this is because I plan to expand on things later when I have a bit more time to spare. Some of the planned additions will include more hand gestures, an alternate version of the legs for when Nix is sitting in their wheelchair, more shirts, tails, and possibly some other wings. Additionally, I also want to split Nix's face into several different sections, mainly separating the jaw, eyes and chin/jaw spines (which are supposed to be retractable). This will allow for greater variations in the expressions Nix will be able to make, as right now it still feels a bit restrictive. That will take a significant amount of time to rework though, so for now, I'm going to stick to smaller changes!
I wanted to keep everything on a single image file so Blender was only loading one texture into the scene, right at startup. I thought this would have been more efficient, In hindsight though, I think it would have been better to just import the individual pieces as image planes with their own textures, but by the time I realised that I was too far along in the process.
Once I had the individual pieces imported into Blender and organised back into a vague nix shape, I began setting up the rig. I really enjoy the rigging process when working with purely 3D characters, but this ended up being a very different process to that. still enjoyable, but different. The "2.5D" rig is dependent on not just the bones connected to mesh, like with a lot of the 3D rigs I've made, but also a series of drivers connected to the material settings. These drivers move certain parts of the texture either "up and down" (along the y-axis) or "side to side" (along the x-axis) to swap between the different variations of the face, hand, shirts and canes. Admittedly, I still haven't gotten the hang of Blender's Drivers, so it was a slow process to get them set up, but the end result was worth it!
As for the background, it's all made in 3D, with some very simple, custom toon-shaders applied to everything. Many of the props are either things I have in my own home office space, such as the computer setup and LGBTQ+ pride flags while others, such as the stained glass windows and the potted mushroom vine plants, are references to some of my stories and comics. Finally, some elements are either things I would like to have, such as the disability pride flag, or things I have in real life, but had to be put into storage since I rent and have nowhere to keep them, like the medal display.
The background is honestly very simple. The only feature that is animated is the sky in the background, which moves over the length of the video.
Like with Nix themself, I plan to add to the background as my channel and content grows.
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