Digital Doodlers and Animation Amateurism

Latest work. Timings, as always, need some work. But this is the prep before the next major part - to be continued!
There is also something I need to do about the ‘look’ bit. I know it’s not right, and I know how to fix it, but I wanted to post the WIP.

Revised lean in, look, and new power on.

Up next? Well, I think it’s pretty obvious!


I think I want to do something with his eyes right before it transitions to the POST screen. But I’m unsure what…

Update time!
After a couple of trials and tribulations, trying to figure out how I was going to render Tetris? Animating a game of Tetris, even a short one, was….. boring.
I decided to do it as a loop. A constantly falling waterfall of tetriminos. It loops over 18 frames, so everything in this section is built on 18-frame files, all using the same timing - in order to make sure the loop works properly. Developing the loop and figuring out how to work within it took a lot longer than I anticipated, hence the delay in posting anything new.



Black Mage -ception!
I just realized that after the tetris wall on the left expands down, it jumps in to it’s final resting place. Well, I’ll need to fix that!
And yes, I did tweak the ‘walk’ animation to reflect a more realistic gate, and you know what? I didn’t like how it looked as much. It’s like the animation needs the offset in apparent motion with BM’s head/hat when paired with the hands/feet/robes. That split activity seems to emphasize the various movements more. It’s freaking weird, and hard to explain. I wrote over my test file by accident, so you all don’t get to see it, but I just didn’t like it as much.

Up next? Fix that left hand wall. Then BM is going to get stabby. For science. It’s not going to end how he wants!

I did this next one for three reasons.
First, for the bit. I like to poke fun at Logan Sergeant.
Second, because I wanted to do an animation where Black Mage pulls something from his robes from the ‘near’ side instead of the ‘far’ side. If you go back to the previous page, when BM pulls the paper from his robes? That’s a ‘far side’ item retrieval - using the arm furtherest away from our viewing perspective to reach into the robes. This is ‘near side’.
Third, how does he pull the knife? Because the next part of the Tetris-In-His-Head is Game Boy BM pulling a knife.

Some updates.
I am working on tiny pixel fiddly bits, and there isn't a lot of change going on - mostly working within the constraints I set for myself. But, I figure I could post something about why this is so fiddly.

Here are two scenes, double sized. The first is Black Mage (BM from here on down) just after teleporting into the scene at large. This is full blown, NES color scheme BM. The second is BM just after he's teleported in during the tetris waterfall/loop. That guy is using the Game Boy color scheme I've chosen - this isn't the 'true' Game Boy palette, but an approximation used by a few emulators. Same pose, different colors. And obviously different sizes.

NES BM:


Game Boy BM:



For reference, here are the two images at normal size - see why I post double sized copies most of the time? I think it really, REALLY highlights the differences in size as well.



So, here is a pair of blown up shots, in the editor (Pixquare, which is awesome). NES BM is made up of a bunch of 4px by 4px squares. In effect, each one of the "pixels" that makes up NES BM is 16 actual pixels.

This first shot? The blue square outlines are 8px by 8px.


And zoom in even more, you can see the individual pixels that make up each on of those 8x8 squares.



*As a brief aside, my static Black Mages I draw up? Each "pixel" for those guys are one of these 8px by 8px squares. But not this guy!

Still, even with the slight constrained 4px by 4px base for each "pixel" in BM here? You can get a a LOT of nuance with that much space work with. Like truncating the tops of BM's eyes to make them "angry" or have the eyes slowly blink.

Little NES BM? He's a 1 for 1 duder. Each one of the "pixels" that he's made of are, in fact, just a single pixel:


This means nuance is forgotten, and you end up having to do just dramatic gestures. Slow blink? Nope! Eyes OPEN or CLOSED, that's it. Want some variability in the fingers? Hah! Not when the pixel IS the entire finger.

Comparison shots, zoomed in and zoomed out.





So yeah, working with the small, 1px pixel-base BM is a pain in the butt. But I feel like if I can get nuance out of something so rudimentary? Then getting it out of the larger constructs when I have a greater degree of control and variability should be a lot easier!

And lastly? Color palettes!
NES BM colors versus ALL of the Game Boy colors - BM, the overall background of the scene at large, and the inside of the Game Boy once we zoom out.




Next post or two? I want to go over the tetris loop, and how I'm constructing the next "chapter" of the animation within the confines of that loop.

Tetris loop!

So, I built the Tetris section using a base template of a looping waterfall of tetrominos that is 18 frames long.

Here is that base template, double sized.


18 Frames to loop around, in order to have the waterfall occur at this pretty brisk clip and still look seamless. I explored increasing both the timing of each frame to slow it down (to, say, Tetris level 1 speeds) and having the pieces move less distance (one square of each tetromino, currently) per frame. While they worked, sort of, it made animating Black Mage a pain.

Here is a 15 segment loop, stitched together. 270 total frames, each and every frame held on screen for 20 ms. In addition, this is the original dimensions as well.


Alright, ready for this? Here are the fifteen segments.

For previous sections, I would break up portions of the animation based on theming or the storyboard I had drawn up. This has been a fascinating exercise in setting these looping, set timing-per-frame segments and then animating the little bastard inside of them.

Anyway? I’be got some wild ideas for what comes next - effectively chapter 3!

How in the hell does Black Mage escape this Tetris mind flay?

By causing a “game over”, of course! And he does that… like this:

Carhole said:

I don’t want to hijack the thread from your animation theme but woukd definitely recommend artists and hobbyist give Sketchbook a try. I own Procreate and license Paint, Adobe’s (now) Fresco, and always return to Sketchbook.

Click to expand...

Hell, Carhole, hijack away if you are so inclined! The more the merrier!
... Is it bad that after I went ‘oooh’ to the coral and the Canard, I started imagining little stick figures clambering on/over the belt drive motor mount?

goes to look at sketchbook
$1.99 all in, no subscription? Done. DONE. I’ll definitely be looking at that later. Thanks!

The thread turned really animation focused because that just happens to be what I’ve been working on. But I can see the end of the road of the current project - I have it gamed out on paper, just need to translate those thoughts into the animation.

However!
I have lots of ideas, and a lot of them don’t involve animations. Up next? I want to do a pair of character studies.

• One where I set a ”normal” height and draw a bunch of body styles and characters to the same scale. I’ve been focusing so much on Black Mage, but I have lots of other characters, both unique and derived from other sources, that I want to try and draw this way.
• The other one is to do a hi-fi to lo-fi study of a complex object (like, say, my little roadster), rendered in pixels. What I mean, is how far down the resolution-scale rabbit hole can I go and still maintain enough visual fidelity to state that it’s my car and not just a car.

As someone with no formal training or classwork in art or displaying things visually like this, everything is new to me. Everything! Each time I work on a new animation sequence or start trying to figure out how to make an object look a certain way, especially given my preferred pixel art medium? I learn something. Every single time. And that’s freaking awesome!

So please, post away if you feel like it.
I’m having such a good time with this and I wanted to share it with folks - doesn’t mean that everyone has to jump into this particular branch of doodles with me!

Carhole said:

or go old-fashioned and buy a wooden one to pose on your desk.

Click to expand...

... I may or may not have taken a bathrobe, an extra thick coat hanger, some wire, and some dowels and ginned up a contraption to look at how it hangs/ folds when the arms/sleeves are just so.....

I confirm (deny) nothing!

So , the (nearly) first two chapters are in the spoiler. It’s an 11mb gif, 896 frames, and 1:07 long. It starts with BM arriving in the main forest scene and ends with him putting his knife away and blinking inside of the tetris game. chapter 1 is arrival through the Power light turning on. Chapter 2 is screen turning on and ‘Diabolical’ scrolling down through to causing the game over condition a few posts up from here, and reposted in the second spoiler.


Cool?
Cool.

Chapter 3 is storyboarded as “Ascend!”, and is Black Mage’s escape from the odd Game Boy-esque trap he’s in.

Start of it: Game Over Screen pops in after the end of chapter 2 (second spoiler). BM stares at it for a moment, then decides he is done.



At the end of that sequence, extends the platform across the screen. My storyboard/note for this is simply ‘extend platform’. Didn’t know at the time how Black Mage was going to do it.

I’ve ginned up three options, and I’m not sure which one I like best.
Option 1:



Option 2:



Option 3:


A pointless Lounge poll may be coming soon…

Edit: fixed the image links.

Option 3 is the simplest.
Option 2 was the most complicated, and the most fun to figure out. I think it also just looks cool.
Option 1 feels like it matches the aesthetic I’ve been working in/toward.

I went with option 1. Option 2 was a fun learning experience, but I don’t think it fits really well. And option 3 is just boring.

Carhole said:

For whatever reason I’m no longer able to see your images but couldn’t tell you if it’s a device, firewall, forum, or image host issue. It appears to be image hosting at a glance as I can see that you’ve inlined a bunch of stuff.

Click to expand...

Since it’s so darn many, I’ve been throwing the majority of them up on Imgur. Everything seems to be popping in just fine - switched to a browser I never use and they show up. Might have been a short term thing.

Ah. I’ve moved away from chromium entirely (firefox / safari), so I have no idea if it’s systemic.

I wonder if this’ll show up, since I’ll have Ars host it.

Did this while sipping on a chai - my little day off ritual where I do pixel art in public.

Prep for escape. I want to do some dust effects behind Black Mage as he moves across, but this is the gist of it.

So, sans dust.




With dust:


I may have gone a bit overboard with it, but I feel it still works. I mean, he looks like he’s cosplaying as a snowblower or a skidoo or something, there are so many particles flung up! But not bad for a first attempt at it, I think.

Coming up on the end really soon.

ASCEND!



Oh, and I played around with Sketchbook earlier. That is surprisingly robust for as simple as it is to use. I like it rather a lot.
Quick screen grab of the map I tossed together right quick for a story idea I’m working on.

Putting these in Containment…

I’m getting closer. Up next, I wanted to have BM fall off the… screen? Sure. That. I think this works, mostly because it’s quick. Then I wanted him to roll out to the path. I had him sliding at first, but I like this better. Plus, I had to come up with, nearly from scratch, two of the three of roll animation transitions. It’s a bit rough, but for what it is? Maybe even with a small timing tweak or two? Could work pretty well!

Snapping fingers to power off, through ascend, fall, and roll out.


Up next:

• Tweak the timing of then roll out. It’s close, just not… quite… there.
• Get BM up on his hands and knees, then kneeling. I have kneeling to standing already.

SO CLOSE!

Fixed the rolling, I feel. It wasn’t the timing, it was the hat.
Take a look at the little pause at the end of these two (file is internally labelled as 65 - roll).

First? The hat (and part of the roll animation) is pointing up instead of left. It‘s the same at the end of the roll - it’s based on the original sprite when BM has been knocked down / died in the original Final Fantasy. And the angle of the hat just doesn’t work for rolling.

---

So, like the other two parts of the roll? I had to get creative, come up with something new.
And holy cow does it work better! Not nearly as jarring, hat is pointed in the right direction, and ends up in roughly the same ‘splayed out face down’ position as above.

---

And here is a still of all three parts that make up the roll. New on left, original on right.

And now he’s standing.



And tack that on to falling / rolling / standing?




Up next? Angry notes.
Maybe a gesture at the screen.
And leave.
Credits.

I could do more to smooth out the standing animation. A couple of intermediary steps. I should do that. Because outside of that? There is maybe two hours of work left. Tops. Just repurposing and reusing previous stuff. Which means I’m looking at the end of this week and I’ll have my first no-shit full length animated sequence done!

Holy fuck.

Some tweaks to the standing animation. For the most part it smooths it out. Maybe a timing issue here and there (bit too long at the end for some of the motions, and when his hat is twisting as he sits back on his heels could probably bit a touch faster), but I feel it’s much better just with the slight tweaks and additions I’ve done already.



On to the finale!

Carhole said:

Messing around with simultaneous contrast. We ended up settling on variations of these combinations for making our house a bit more playful. We’ve got a lot more to do but this is kinda fun to look at:

Click to expand...

In what medium? For some reason I’m seeing wood cuts with variations of the pattern, set up in various sizes/patterns in different parts of rooms. Damn, now I’m thinking about that - one of the first times I’ve kind of regretted how small my apartment is.
….
Oh, and this REALLY caught my eye; that shift in contrast from dark to light on the spear when it crosses his body? What is that called?


I think I did something similar for BM when he’s tiny and I had a more limited Game Boy color palette, but I’m not sure.

I got stuck in with video editing tonight. Also, I wanted to see if Ars would accept an MP4 as an attachment.
In short? I’ll be god damned!
Rough and tumble. But this was more a proof of concept than anything else. And also fighting with Procreate dreams.

There are a few seconds of black at the start and about 10 at the end, but for a first effort? I’m actually quite happy with how this turned out.

I wonder if ya’ll can see/play it…

View attachment 1-66 Combined Procreate Dreams MP4.mp4

I will not go back through and redo all the lightning effects from the first chapter.
I will not.
This entire exercise is about learning, and showing that visually over the course of a thing is important!

But man am I tempted, because I think this looks much better than what I did when BM was trying to check the time…



As opposed to:



There are elements I‘d keep, but I can see so many little areas for improvement!
Which just tells me that yes, this project is doing exactly what I wanted it to do!


Still kind of want to go back and rework it .

ajk48n said:

Hell. Yeah. Lots of work in there, and it call comes across coherently and is entertaining.

And every animator always wants to improve their work. Go back and make some changes. If you really really feel it needs the change, go for it. Otherwise, there's nothing wrong with calling this done and moving on to the next one where you'll encounter even more problems opportunities to improve!

Click to expand...

I itch to change it, to make it better, but I feel like it serves a real purpose too.
It is an easy way to demonstrate growth and learning. And it serves as a self-teaching / encouragement tool that you can get better at things with more practice and knowledge.**

*Note - I said ‘better’, not ‘good’.

But yeah, there are LOTS of things I’d change about this project if I knew in November what I do now. I’ll lay out that list in detail when I’m done with this project, hopefully very soon. He has to finish writing, put the paper away, and bounce on out of there, credits, and maybe a bonus. Then I have to stitch it together, setup the youtube channel (because it’s getting too damn big for a gif!), and get it up onto the internet with all the fun notes in the description about how the character is owned by Square Enix, etc.

I’m hoping to finish this weekend.

Further ideas are calling!

I’m also thinking about getting these now:
3 sizes of wooden desktop mannequins on the cheap. I feel like I do a decent job of ”pre-vis” in my head for how a given movement or pose should look, but it’d be nice to have a reference to better gauge that! Now, if I could find them on NOT Amazon….

ajk48n said:

Almost any physical art store should sell those

Click to expand...

…. So they do! Well, to Michaels this weekend, I shall go!

headache said:

But goodness, what will mr bezos do without your dollars!?

Click to expand...

Hopefully trip into a puddle of super chlamydia?