Sora no Kioku Artbook
"Sora no Kioku” which translates to "Memories of the Sky" is Makoto Shinkai’s first artbook. It comes with a glossy cover and if you take it off, you'll find the actual B5 sized, 175 paged landscape artbook itself. A very nice glossy cover featuring one of the scenes from 5cm’s “Cosmonaut”.
The main contents are:
- 5 Centimetres per Second, 98 pages.
- The Place Promised in Our Early Days, 34 pages.
- The Voices of a Distant Star, 12 pages.
- Shinano Daily Newspaper CM, 3 pages.
- Makoto Shinkai’s Style, 7 pages.
- Interviews with Makoto Shinkai and his ten member staff, 14 pages.
Throughout the book there’s little facts about how scenes were composed, what Shinkai had in mind when he directed them and what locations they’re based off. Sometimes you’ll even find the movie script itself.
You'll also find short introduction to computer graphics such as what RGB, anti-aliasing, resolution, trace and flare means as well as the production process. Some of the details you can already find in the booklet that accompanies "The Shinkai Collection" DVD.
There's also a short explaination of how Shinkai transforms his location hunt photos into the beautiful backgrounds you see in his movies.
Using Mac computers, Adobe Photoshop and After Effects, he demonstrates how he and his artists must pre-visualise the image in their minds so that they know what they’re after. As each of the artists render the images, they create their own colour palettes suitable for that image such as something appropriate for that particular season, weather, time and temperature setting. It is important that they are consistent.
The steps taken are...
- Using the original photo as the base for colours, decide which colours are best and will be used then, balance the colours.
- Pick out colours using the dropper tool and then remove any unnecessary details.
- Decide where the light source is which in this case is the sun and will be above the mountains on the right. Create the shadows that will be projected as a result of the light. Here shades of blue were used and the “Multiplier” mode was used for the layer.
- Cut out the shadows cast on the ground, create a new “sky” layer and use the gradient tool to render it. All the trial and error with colours will be finished by this point because it is important the image is produced the way the artist wants it to look like. Once the image is completed, the rest of the workflow will be smoother.
- Add in the details from the original location hunt photo and any extra rendering needed. At this point, the customised brushes are used to balance the image as a whole.
- Add detail into the highlights (the brightly visible areas) and concentrate on making the areas where the viewers should be focusing on stand out. In this example, the focus is on the spots where setting sun’s rays are reflecting off from; the detail and colour of the water surfaces in the fields, the metal hand rails and railings by the road.
- Using After Effects, the clouds and setting sun is added into the final image. In this sample image, the setting sun was a prerequisite thus the mountains are rendered in a darker shade of colour.
If you would like to get your hands on this book yourselves, it is available for import from HMV JP or if you live in the UK, Otaku.co.uk. If you are looking for wallpapers, you can find them at the official site.
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