Digital Doodlers and Animation Amateurism

Diabolical · Jan 15, 2024

I want a thread to talk about this, and wasn’t sure if it went here, further up, or in the lounge. So, here it is.

I am playing around with pixel art and animation. I have no prior experience as an artist - I have ONE semester of ceramics and ONE semester of drafting, 23+ years ago. So while I can appreciate the end product, and have done some messing around in the rudimentary digital tools of MS Paint? I came into this almost a few months ago almost completely ignorant of the software and hardware to use to get desired results.

My initial draw into this silly avenue of a hobby? Making a new avatar for Ars. Further on, it became something to do while I watched TV - something I’ve struggled with for years.

My inspiration for while I teach myself how different pieces of software work? Original Final Fantasy Black Mage.
This guy.

Yes, plenty of versions of him exist out on the net, but I wanted to experiment with tools and software. Oh! Without further ado, and why this is here and not elsewhere? I’m fairly agnostic when it comes to software, but fairly firm on hardware.

Hardware:
Ipad Pro, 12.9”, whatever generation this thing is.
Logitech Crayon stylus. Because it was USB-C and much cheaper than the Gen1 pencil when I bought it.

Software:
Pixquare. My preferred environment. I like the tools, the layout, and how it responds to various inputs. I love the 8-bit aesthetic of the interface. Plus, it was cheap! https://www.pixquare.art/
Pixaki. Does a better job of some things than Pixquare, but the tools and interface is a bit more finicky.: https://pixaki.com/
Procreate. Because it’s a great resource. I use it for rough sketching, and for getting ideas of how different brush effects might be recreated in a heavily pixelized way. I’m certain with the proper setup and tools, I could get it to do everything I want, but holy SHIT can it get obtuse in a hurry! https://procreate.com/ipad

To stitch GIF’s together, I use https://ezgif.com/ . It’s easy, it’s free, and it does what I want it to do for now.

Back to the drawing!

So, above? BM? Cool. I decided to go through 8-Bit Theater and try to build all of his Black Mage designs to work how different poses interact with the pixel art in certain ways. How his robe moves and adjusts, when we see his feet, and what that looks like.

That resulted in this (sprite sheet here on Imgur):

So Yeah, a lot of the silly things. Including a cursed BM pony that should be purged from memory. Which is why it’s spoilered.

Once I finished up with those, I wanted to do a scene. I started playing around with an idea. The Black Mage‘s face turning into a Tetris screen. That is how this started. And now? Well? It’s becoming more than that. Here is my latest effort, with more details to be written up on it later - and yes, that background color was chosen for a reason. As well as the positioning of BM in this picture, and the amount of empty space around/below him.

In addition! I was inspired by Sekrit Santa this year, and have decided to do an homage to my giftee, @Xenocrates . The general idea was to do the inside of a 3d printer, with his avatar looking in, while the ancient version of his namesake (which is not crates full of xenos, as I thought FOR YEARS) doing work in some sort of retro future extrusion forge thing.

Anyway, it’s a very, VERY slow work in progress, but progress is being made! And yes, some examples!

Xenocrates, the elder, his head in a jar. Think Futurama.

Now I wanted him on a bot. Here is version one. I’m a bit embarrassed about this guy, but sure, here you go

. To be honest, I only really like the hammer. Everything else? Not so much. And I just realized this version doesn’t have the Tron inspired toga on! Oh well!

Version 2, both with and sans Tron Toga. And Bit. Which I have on there as a place holder - I’d like to animate it in. Or replace with some other ‘digital-visual assistant’. Like Clippy. But ancient….. ideas… Also, unlike version 1, I much prefer Version 2 without the toga. And those aren’t wheels for the ground - their for a rail-runner system Mounted along the wall/floor. And yes, this is pretty heavily inspired by a recent game I played. Shocking, I know.

And lastly, here’s a shot of the left side of the scene. Not pictured? The PCB behind the tile - I’m planning on cutting out chunks for ducting and cables, and there is PCB behind there. But the columns, tile, and a general positioning of the Jar-&-Bot. Along with the window looking out at Xenocrates’ avatar. Off to the right, I want to have a terminal where the ‘order’ is being replicated, in front of a large clear window. Not picture, off to the right, will be the extrusion area of the 3d printer.
In my mind.
I’ve been coming back to this about twice a week, but honestly, I’ve been pretty focused on animating BM. Anyway, scene (full sized so far on Imgur):

So yeah, that is what I’ve been up to while watching stuff on my ipad. It’s great, since I can split the screen so video is on the left, and the editing software is on the right. I can’t watch things without doing something else, and this lets me have it so close to where I’m focusing that I can actually pay attention to the task (doodling) while still absently paying attention to the show/film/whatever - other hobbies, I end up just ignoring the show.

I wanted to share. And I work on something every day, almost - it’s what I do to unwind from the workday when I come home at 11 at night. My latest? Dealing with the fact that PNG images LOVE opacity settings, while GIFs don’t understand what they are. But that’s a post in the future!

..

So, what have you been working on? A few months ago I was the master of the selection tool in MS Paint3d. And now I’m making casting animations. It has to start somewhere!

invertedpanda · Jan 15, 2024

When it comes to animation, I typically work in video formats or web stuff, but rarely anything super fancy. DaVinci Resolve for video, and.. Well, VS Code for web stuff

As an example, this was originally code-based animation that I later switched over to video just to preserve it long-term:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjiEzYKQTUY

(artwork was pen + watercolor, which I scanned in and then used some basic CSS & JS animation stuff).

Otherwise, digital doodling typically comes in the form of Adobe Illustrator (or Inkscape in a pinch). I use Photoshop a lot too for raster stuff. I used to do a lot of digital painting way back when, but when my hands really started to fail I pretty much lost that skill entirely, as gripping a pen/stylus is really, really hard to do for long enough to actually create.

I kept saying I'd get myself a Cintiq or something, but never happened (and now it'd just be a waste of money for me). Right now I have an XP Pen tablet that I use on those rare instances I actually want to draw, but it's mostly collecting dust. Of course, back in the day I was Wacom all the way.

ajk48n · Jan 16, 2024

Ooh a thread I feel informed about. I've tried my hand at quite a few animation styles at college, and settled in 3d. Not that there was much choice, I never was really good at drawing.

As for software, there's such a variety depending on what you want to do. As mentioned above, there's specific ones meant for pixel art. For simple animated drawings, Procreate really isn't too bad. It lets you ghost frames, flip back and forth, export gifs.

When things start getting into the motion graphics style stuff, there's After Effects. Which can also be used for cutout style cardboard animation, from super simple up to pretty damn complex.

On the fun but slow animation front, there's stop motion. Basically no complex software required if you're just messing around. Lots of phone apps on that space, and the only hardware that can really help is a small tripod for the phone.

Once you hit 3d, there's a million options. For free, there's Blender, probably one of the biggest success open source software stories. For specifically animation (opposed to texturing, VFX, etc), Maya is the standard for big animation houses (although they use a lot of plugins to make it easier to crank out work efficiently)

ajk48n · Jan 16, 2024

invertedpanda said:
I kept saying I'd get myself a Cintiq or something, but never happened (and now it'd just be a waste of money for me). Right now I have an XP Pen tablet that I use on those rare instances I actually want to draw, but it's mostly collecting dust. Of course, back in the day I was Wacom all the way.

Fwiw, I've got friends that are really good 2d artists. One of them started and then moved away from a Cintiq. Depending on how you have it setup, it can be a bit painful on the neck and wrist drawing for a long time. That same friend was really happy when Procreate came out, and moved almost exclusively to that away from the Cintiq. Obviously opinions are going to vary on that

Diabolical · Jan 16, 2024

Work tonight while watching episode 1 of Severence.

Background! As more than just a flat expanse of nothing. So, I’m thinking forest night. This was what I came up with as a first run through of trying to do trees.

I have it on a transparent background layer right now, just to really easily see the difference between a light and dark backing with the light/dark mode here in the fora. Not bad for a first pass, if I’m honest. Pixquare has been adding some new line tools, sprays with variability in density. Has been fun to play with, especially here. Leaves in the dark..

Edit: and if it wasn’t perfectly clear, I am soooooo not anywhere close to being good/proficient at this stuff. I’m fairly certain there are 7 year olds who are better digital artists than I could ever be

. And I’m enjoying discovering new things on my own - I’m certain classes or videos would shorten the learning experience dramatically, but that little endorphin “ah ha!” experience I get when I figure something mundane out is just too much fun.

Diabolical · Jan 17, 2024

Playing with layers for the scene, different brush types and ways of doing foliage while watching Severance episode 2.
With BM and broken clock this time to set an idea of scale.

The light green on the left is the bones of another tree. The green line is the top(ish) of the third layer. Plan is three foreground layers, one lightly populate layer with BM, then two background layers with the moon/lightsource/whatever being behind everything. I’m constraining myself to four colors for reasons, which adds another (damnit!) layer of challenge.

But once again, liking the results so far.

The Aloof Alot · Jan 17, 2024

I count 8 colors (light brown, brown, black, white, blue, light green, medium green, dark green).

I dunno, if I wanted to do retro graphics in the style of 8-bit games I'd just go with the maximum color space of my preferred hypothetical-but-once-really-existing-output platform...

Diabolical · Jan 17, 2024

The Aloof Alot said:
I count 8 colors (light brown, brown, black, white, blue, light green, medium green, dark green).

‘All will become clear, with time.“

There is a whole narrative reason why BM and his spells are a full color spectrum, while the scenery is trying to stay at 4. And why those four colors are the way they are. Dark dark dark green, medium “forest” green, bright grass green, and very very light green.

Diabolical · Jan 18, 2024

First pass at a layered scene. Not quite there yet, but I feel like every failure is a learning opportunity. And I can already see places where yeah, this can be done differently/smarter/better. And this feels more day time than night.

So, not bad. But needs a lot of improvement. Tomorrow, I’ll start again.

Diabolical · Jan 19, 2024

I was explaining to one of my coworkers what is happening during the most up to date cast animation, then decided to feed it through EZ GIF and slow it down to half a second per frame. I did this so that it would be easy to see:

how the lightning is formed and how it changes during the casting motion, and resolves into and around the shatter clock face.
how BM's robe changes as he goes through the full motion.
when zoomed in, you can see the details on the lightning itself.

The lightning I did with two colors - white, and a decently high opacity yellow with watercolor turned on - it doesn't overwrite the color it's applied to, it's added on top of it. Added onto itself makes a deeper yellow. Then I took a smudge tool and ran it around the edges in order to give it that semi-transparent glow effect.

For the animation itself, I wanted the lightning to come from and bounce between his hands, form into a ball, then start moving forward. As he gets it to the halfway point, I wanted the lightning to behave like the primary 'mass' of it was caught in a cats cradle of energy held by his hands, finally flung forward at the end. This is where the ball expands outward rapidly to become a circle that "summons" the broken pieces of 'stop time'.

The lightning is different in each frame, because I wanted it to, well, look highly energetic and unstable and like an overexcited plasma ball. I guess.

I think that really comes through when it's slowed down, and when sped up? I really, REALLY like the effect.

Tonight, I'll start the second attempt at making a night forest scene. Instead of a daytime forest.

Diabolical · Jan 19, 2024

And try number 3 of night forest. Work in progress.
Trying to keep it simpler this time around. Not sure I’m liking it as much. Switch between light and dark mode in the fora to really get a feel for how it looks.

Diabolical · Jan 19, 2024

I decided that I wanted to go even darker. But before I dedicated time to it in Pixquare and really push forward with making it look 'good' (to my eye!), I wanted to do a quick rough up with the fill tool in paint here at work. See what I came up with. Result? Yeah, this is an avenue I want to explore. I lose some of the finer detail, but it's supposed to be freaking night time and dark as hell!

ajk48n · Jan 19, 2024

It's looking pretty good. If you can allow yourself one extra color, I'd suggest an ever so slight brightening of the dark side of the tree. It would help give a little contrast to the sky. It would also emulate the lighting that the stars or moon would be shining down.

On a side note, a really common thing for lighting sunny daytime scenes is to add some blue color to the shadow areas. That emulates the sky itself adding light to things that the sunlight isn't directly reaching

Diabolical · Jan 19, 2024

I am specifically replicating the color palette of the original Game Boy. Well, an emulated form of that original color palette.

The original palette is four shades of green - the lighter two are pretty damn close in shade, and didn't offer enough contrast for what I wanted. However, one of the emulated versions of the color spectrum (the one I'm using here) provides greater contrast between the various shades. Which means that my options for what I'm doing with the scenery is... limited. I very specifically set that limit of using those four colors only, partially to fit the theme, and partially as a challenge to myself.

Granted, if I can't get this to work the way I want? I may abandon the original Game Boy, 4-shades only palette and move forward a generation to the Game Boy Color. A LOT more options there

.

If I can get the general scene good to go with a color to spare (and I'm certainly going to try, now!), then I am absolutely going to try your suggestion of adding a slightly lighter touch to the darker side of the trees, @ajk48n. That sounds like it would work awesome, but I don't get off work for another 4 hours or so.

But then! Damn right I'm going to try that. Thanks!

Diabolical · Jan 20, 2024

All the further I got tonight. The episode of Severance I was watching was extra distracting. But yeah, I can see some potential here.
I want to get the for- and background trees in, then make some attempts at some sparse foliage.

But, good start, I think.

Diabolical · Jan 21, 2024

And I am excessively happy with how this has turned out. Need to work on the timing, but fleshing out from this point is now the goal.

Diabolical · Jan 24, 2024

I was distracted by the last three episodes of Severance, and was also scrapping some ideas for how the next part of the animation was going to go. Now I’m watching Invasion, and even though I’m entertained? It’s not nearly as engrossing as Severance,

Anyway!

Basically, how does BM get to the scene I’m working on? Simple, he ‘ports in.
Great. What the hell does that look like?!
I’ve already scrapped two ideas because I hated how they looked, even roughed out. This is attempt number 3. It’s nowhere near ready, but I figured I would share a work-in-progress screen shot of Pixquare in use.
(Link to full sized image)

1) I normally don’t use a checkerboard pattern this dark - I have it set to more easily see the lightning arc. Most of the time it is a LOT lighter. I also have guidelines that I have aligned to the same size as the grid for now (the dark blue).
2) I’m zoomed in a bit more than usual as well so Pixquare will actually show the clear delineating border for each pixel. Each part of the checkerboard is 8x8 pixels.
3) Onion skinning is turned on. The red is the previous frame (#9) lightning. The green circle is the total size of the finished portal - I keep a dummy frame at the end of whatever sequence I’m in to keep that final outline in mind.
4) The only layers currently visible and able to accept inputs are Portal (current) and BM (Black Mage!) - I really need to hide that guy. Filled in circles mean that layer on that frame contains data. There are some layer grouping tools that are relatively new to Pixquare taht I haven’t played around with yet.
5) My currently selected color has a set opacity that is partially transparent. I can tweak that on the fly with the bottom left slider - I tend not to do this, mostly because I forget it‘s there. The top left slider is how many pixels wide my current brush/tool is.
6) The current brush/tool? Set to the blur tool. So I can smudge the area around the lightning to give it, at actual scale, a really good low-key glow effect.

That’s the important stuff. I love this program, even if it’s a bit limited in it’s ultimate tool set. But the dev is actively adding things to it, and I looooooooove the aesthetic for a pixel art program. It was also one of the best priced applications for as full featured as it is.

Diabolical · Jan 27, 2024

Still working on developing/making the portal animation. Luckily this is a hobby, so I can afford to be distracted by Masters of the Air. Every once in a while I pop out a sprite sheet if I’m a BUNCH of frames into a piece of animation, make sure I don’t get lost in the sauce or miss anything.

Figured I’d share one of the current WIP.

Link to full sized image.

The general idea was to have the first link stretch across, then have the two points both stretch downward to a third, coil back, then BAM, connection made. Then I’ll make a swirly bit in the center and as it expands, the triangle becomes a circle and wala, BM is standing on the path. The final circle is the eventual size of the portal. The frame to the left of it is currently nekkid, sans it’s yellow embellishments and blurred ‘glow’. Finally, I have my normal BM and his ‘tada’ pose, which is what he’ll be doing to cast the portal and is how he’ll first appear in the scene.

I also suspect that once this final link is done, I’ll parse out the timing then move on to the next file. I suspect It’ll take three individual files to make the full portal-in animation: Created (this one), expand and arrive, and finally dissipate.

Anyhow, picture.

Diabolical · Feb 2, 2024

Whew. So, it’s been slow going. Doing the lightning is fiddly work! Primary white, partially transparent yellow accents, blur to add glow. It get’s pretty intense. I followed that up with working on what I’m calling ’the circuit’ - the lines in the foreground that react to the lightning.

Finally got the first part (of an expected 3) of the portal-in animation done to the point where I’m moving on to the next phase.

Here it is.

And now, phase 2. Arrival.
Preview! Black Mage Inbound!

Diabolical · Feb 3, 2024

Alright, I had a thought while watching the two players, one controller speedrun of Megaman 6 from last years SGDQ.

This was the result of testing a NES Megaman ’level-start’ teleport. I want to add some glow and ground circuit effects, but I’m actually really liking this idea. It’s simpler, and it uses waaaaaay fewer frames to do. And I think it fits the aesthetic a bit more. May look at a precurser, like a circle on the path or a beam of light that comes down first, but I wanted to see what this looked like. As a rough test.

Diabolical · Feb 3, 2024

I tried a variety of glow and lighting effects, dust clouds, etc, and honestly? Even ones I liked, I felt didn’t really fit it. So, no. But this is still the way I feel he arrives on scene.

Here is a ping-pong gif, arrival and exit.

ajk48n · Feb 3, 2024

Teleportation is looking pretty good. One thing that looks a bit off to me is how much detail the ground has compared to everything else. Like the resolution of the ground has like triple the number of pixels

Diabolical · Feb 3, 2024

ajk48n said:
Teleportation is looking pretty good. One thing that looks a bit off to me is how much detail the ground has compared to everything else. Like the resolution of the ground has like triple the number of pixels

The path, specifically? If so, yeah, I see what you mean.

It's semi-placeholder. My original thought was to make it into cobbles or 8(ish)-bit bricks. But for now I just spray-painted down some pixels to delineate it from the rest of the scene.

ajk48n · Feb 3, 2024

Yeah the path. I've had similar issues before. Like, you can't just do everything at the same pixel size of the character, because there wouldn't be enough room for detail. It's definitely a balancing act of detail vs. 8 bit-ness

No hard and fast rules obviously

Diabolical · Feb 5, 2024

New path! Less busy, but more busy! Plus… well, take a look!

Diabolical · Feb 7, 2024

Wanted to switch things up for a night or two or three.

Additions:
A bit of shadow for the back tile. It’s rudimentary, but I did it this way to allow for “plotting” shadow as I go. I fully intend on adjustments and such later. Hence the jarring lack of shadow around the viewing window.
Rails for the bot carrying around Xenocrates’ head.
Punched a hole in the tile to run some cabling through,
Slapped an airlock on the wall - would allow transportation of the head from inside out into a special ‘forge bot’ in the extrusion area.
Still working on the elements, of course.
I also truncated the bottom and top of the scene to better constrain what I’m going for. I’m not sure I want to keep all the empty space in the center, fill it with ‘stuff’, or remove it and narrow up the scene a tad. Back to Black Mage related stuff tomorrow, I think.

Full image link: Link

ajk48n · Feb 11, 2024

I'm not sure of everything that's going on there, but those robot arms look great!

Diabolical · Feb 12, 2024

I’m building cast animations. This is time consuming and a bit tedious, hence no image updates. For each cast attempt, I can repeat the motions of the Black Mage, but I want the lightning part of the spell and the circuity below the ground to be different from cast to cast, more dynamic. And since the lightning requires three different elements to be done per frame (white, translucent yellow, and blurring)? It takes a bit!

Casting animation goes in this order:
(Done) 1st attempt (you have a preview of that a few posts up - it’s a bit different now, but roughly that is it)
(Done) Confusion.
(Done) 2nd attempt, which is a half cast
(WIP) Anger.
3rd attempt.
Rapid fire attempts
Finale.

Since these are functionally very similar to what I’ve posted before? That is why I dropped any fresh updates. Still working on it, though!

Diabolical · Feb 18, 2024

As stated, there was a lot (A LOT) of tedium, but I’m now at the point where I am pressing forward with the next part of the animation.

Some things that I will need to address soon:
1) Turning these into video and uploading to youtube. Because 5+MB gif files are getting silly.
2) Coming up with a timing standard and building everything out based on that standard. Individual files work great, but stitching them together creates timing inconsistencies a ross the entire file. But that’s more a video processing thing that I will attack later!

Up next? Well, Black Mage needs to walk towards the viewer. While… something else… is going on.

But anyway, here are two gifs. The one in the spoiler is my original long animation sequence where Black Mage looks around and casts a bunch of spells. The effects are simple, and it taught me a lot on how to make BM move.

And now? So many frames! The ‘flare’ transition is little rough, but it’s all still WIP anyway. The next part is going to be super fun to figure out!

ajk48n · Feb 18, 2024

Diabolical said:
As stated, there was a lot (A LOT) of tedium, but I’m now at the point where I am pressing forward with the next part of the animation.

I know you say you're only an amateur, but that sounds like a professional animator right there!

ajk48n · Feb 18, 2024

Diabolical said:
2) Coming up with a timing standard and building everything out based on that standard. Individual files work great, but stitching them together creates timing inconsistencies a ross the entire file

Make a spreadsheet, they help out a ton for this type of thing

Diabolical · Feb 18, 2024

ajk48n said:
I know you say you're only an amateur, but that sounds like a professional animator right there!

I am NOT a programmer either, but I can sure swear like one!

ajk48n said:
Make a spreadsheet, they help out a ton for this type of thing

So, it’s more that I have various frames delayed for different times. And it would be better if all frames ran on the same timing - say, 20ms for each frame. At that point, if I want to delay something half a second? I’d be making duplicate frames to make that same delay, as opposed to editing the timing of one.

It would be more tedium. A lot more. Which is fine! I can do tedium!

And at THAT point? You bet an additional tracking document of some sort is going to be involved! Even If it’s just a notepad and a fountain pen! Luckily enough, I have plenty of both!

ajk48n · Feb 18, 2024

Diabolical said:
So, it’s more that I have various frames delayed for different times. And it would be better if all frames ran on the same timing - say, 20ms for each frame. At that point, if I want to delay something half a second? I’d be making duplicate frames to make that same delay, as opposed to editing the timing of one.

Ok yeah that makes sense then. Much easier to just duplicate frames to delay.

Diabolical · Feb 19, 2024

Tonight’s effort? I’m walkin’ here!

In all seriousness, I think I need to wiggle the hat.

ajk48n · Feb 19, 2024

I love the hands and feet wiggles! Is he supposed to be walking or gliding? If it's waking, try giving a small up and down motion to the head as well as the hat

Diabolical · Feb 19, 2024

Now I’m going to take a break for a bit, work on something a bit different.

But I feel this really explains the color choices for the background beyond BM and his magic.

Diabolical · Feb 19, 2024

ajk48n said:
I love the hands and feet wiggles! Is he supposed to be walking or gliding? If it's waking, try giving a small up and down motion to the head as well as the hat

From above, now featuring head and hat wiggle to go with the hand motions.

ajk48n · Feb 19, 2024

Lovely!

Nitpick in spoiler if you care.

These are just general animation notes. Feel free to ignore as needed. Ultimately, differing styles in animation are great. It's what makes animation so interesting.

The bouncing up and down should happen twice as much. It should be at it's lowest point when both the left and right hands reach their most forward/backwards positions

Also, you could reverse the curling of the hat. Have it curl upwards when the head moves down

Diabolical · Feb 19, 2024

Regarding your suggestions?
Yeah, I realized that when I was done. But by that point, I was done, you know? Food for thought for next time I do a walking animation, though!

ajk48n · Feb 20, 2024

Hehe yeah. Gotta stop somewhere, just thought I'd mention it in case you were interested

Digital Doodlers and Animation Amateurism

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