Here are a couple of test/trial images from an odd, little project I’ve been working on over the past few months. I’ll post others, as they come (hopefully with increasing quality and awesomeness). Anyway, feel free to comment and critique. Enjoy.
Reminds me of those Monster Hunter felines. Use the hair particle simulators on those fury felines.
Ha. I had to look up Monster Huntrs, but I can see what you mean. Particle hair is probably the aspect I’ve toyed with most on this. It’s actually there, just used minimally - otherwise my results were too inconsist. The closer the cats are to the foreground, the more visible the particle systems are.
Here are a couple of interior scences, without the characters put into place yet. I’m still working on the best solution to accomplish that. Currently, it’s simply giving the cats their own render layers, so I can tweak AO and lighting the way I want (and not crash my computer) and then compositing it all back together, which is a little more time-consuming than I’d like, but it’s what has given me the best results so far.
The exteriors are only partially completed yet, so everything outside the windows is just a blank plane in this area.
Also, need to add a few odds and ends to fill up some space.
Purrrr-fectly cute 
I like it but it looks a bit cartoonish for my taste.
Very punny 
Thanks.
Thanks, it is indeed quite cartoony - trying some NPR stuff.
Yeah cats are fun 
Pretty promising tough. The scenery is detailed (I love that tree!) but still very clean. I think this is why it appeals to be cartoonish. Some postprocessing would help a great deal here.
Just one thought: The eyes seem to just stick out of the skull… like with a muppet giving them a rather… weird appearance. Prolly you should work on that soon as you get into the mood for it.
BTW: Nice particles!
Thanks for the input kyomotion. I’ll see what I can work out with the eyes. Maybe just closing eyelids a little would help. This my first go at character modeling, so I appreciate the advice - still getting it figured out. Haven’t fully demystified postprocessing yet either, so that will be an excellent learning experience.
Glad you enjoyed it. 
Try animating those cats playing some music. That will be fun to watch.
Well, it’s been a few weeks, and I’ve knocked out a few more images. I certainly could have fiddled with things a bit more (a lot more really), but I set myself a goal of getting a completed version of this project uploaded by tonight…and that time has come, so here are some of the results.
[ATTACH=CONFIG]346178[/ATTACH]
[ATTACH=CONFIG]346179[/ATTACH]
[ATTACH=CONFIG]346180[/ATTACH]
This started out as something of a tongue in cheek project to create an over the top nerdy children’s story; however, somewhere along the way, it took on a somewhat more sincere tone.
Due to those changes along the way, the cohesiveness of the project took a bit of a hit, but I’ve managed to keep the images and story together as best as possible. I’m giving myself 10 days to make any changes, and then I’m going to call it a wrap and move on. Any suggestions or critiques you might have are definitely welcome; though, I may not get around to implementing them all before my deadline. Still, I plan on continuing to create similar content, so I can always stand to improve future work.
You can see the entire story by following the link in my signature.
Thanks a bunch everybody
your attachments aren’t working.
You’re right Modron, they are definitely broken 
I thought I had checked them after posting even. Tja. Thanks for the heads up. I don’t I think I would have realized that very soon on my own.
I’ll try this again.
Very surreal.
I like this, It’s a very unusual concept, but that is exactly what makes it interesting. I like the way you have managed to re-create a hand-drawn style rather effectively.
Is this BI using NPR rendering, Or cycles + Photoshop/gimp etc?
Thanks Jamie B. I used cycles for rendering, largely because CUDA comes in really handy for the setup I used. Because it’s NPR, I dropped light bounces super low, made shadows really hard, and could get away with low samples in the process. This made for some really quick renders (which is super-awesome). The shaders are very, very simple for this. The more complex I tried to make them, the more inconsistent the results I would get.
I tried using Freestyles to get the line art, but particle systems and freestyles simply don’t agree. I’ll have to try separating the elements better - use freestyles for the simpler geometry and just use edge detection filters to get the complex geometry (For the above, I just used edge detection in GIMP for everything, but I had to sacrifice the type of control I’d get with freestyles.).
The hand-drawn effect is still a work in process. I’ve taken and tried different concepts I’ve seen from other NPR tutorials and projects, and I’m slowly getting a grip on it and finding what works well for what I’m trying to accomplish.
…also trying to better my character modelling and rigging (so many rigging headaches)
Cool man
You planning on uploading any more W.I.P renders for this thread? Or are you pushing for a finished project now?
There might be one more batch of W.I.P. for this. I plan on keeping this experiment going, so there could be follow-up W.I.P. posts for additional projects. My goal is to incrementally improve my use of Blender for NPR renders, so I’m not expecting to get things perfect this go around - just to make the next better than the previous.
In the continual pursuit of bettering my blender skills, I’ve started to refine the character models I used above to see what I could come up with. Once I’m happy with them, I’ll use them in a follow up project. Then I’ll repeat the cycle anew with better models and another project.
Here’s the general direction I’m going to head. It’s a pretty quick sculpt (missing eyes and all that), but it should approximate the level of detail I’m going to run with… I might decrease it yet, not sure. I’ve abandonned particle hair, as it’s frustrated my NPR attempts. I’ll have to work out another method: material, poly-model, or line art. On the upside, I’ll be able to use the Freestyle nodes more readily.