I have been slacking

And by slacking, I mean... being completely and utterly addicted to MLP and Just Cause 2.

Yes. My Little Pony.

MY LITTLE FRIKKIN PONY. WHAT.

My entire friend group has been engulfed in this show, and though I used parts of episodes for reference of the animation I'm documenting, I didn't actually watch it until my current hiatus. I am so completely hooked and it's literally all we talk about.. WE'RE TALKING ABOUT IT RIGHT NOW!

It has even bled into our many other interests..such as League of Legends...

Garen has come to the defense of EQUESTRIAAAAAA



I will continue this animation with even better MLP knowledge, and hopefully any future animations of the theme will be of much better quality! Here is the current progress on the animation, and I do intend to fix spike's head bounce and some point.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14142040/MLPepisode.swf

Until then, enjoy the progress!

Dragon Steps, The Fun of Grouping!

Ah, grouping. I used to hate you so very much.

These are a life saver, and can provide some tasty movements if done right. What originally bothered me about grouped flash animations were the robotic and squared off chunkiness of the joints I would see in what I guess were poorly designed figures. As I get further into this animation, my comfort with it increases and I figure more ways to shortcut things without loss of quality. In this screenshot you will see a familiar character from an even more familiar cartoon....

Notice the bits and pieces used to create his body. Every piece is editable within themselves and the joints are represented by the little dots I've dragged here. When I rotate each piece, they rotate around said dot, keeping things moving in as natural a way as possible. when things look a bit too weird when rotated a certain degree, I redraw them.

Spike's a very enjoyable character, and in the MLP series he needs so much more love than he's given. His bouncy steps and helpful abilities are always a lot of fun to watch, and in this animation both will be explored. My friend will be providing the voice for spike, and I've almost completed the main, loopable animations leading up to the voices. Cannot wait for the lip syncing! Here are his current walk animations from the side and front... Also included is the updated walk animation for the donkey. He now has his cutie mark (oh god, did i just say cutie?) and an eyebrow.

And front side.

Stay tuned for more!

Donkey Steps

Today was a productive day.

After my recent commissioned animation of a My Little Pony styled version of the client's donkey character, I was brought back for round two! I've been dying to do some straight up animation and this project is going to be a whoooole lot of fun to work on.

I'm still trying to cut down on the time spent during the drafting phase, and after a quick storyboard session with the client, I hopped into flash and drew up the guidelined frames for the main character's walk animation. equine legs are SO DUMB. I was headbutting so many refs for so long... I just seriously wish i have something that's at least close before i begin working on the lines and colors!:

At this point the head and body are generally unmoving, and after sectioning off the foreground legs, background legs, body, and head to different layers I can work on getting things a bit more lively. I started from scratch with this animation because I made a couple mistakes with my previous one and starting with a clean slate was ideal for fixing everything at once.

The parts that I have drawn in are grouped off, but almost every frame is redrawn. I mostly use grouping to handle character heads and much easier post animation adjustments. After polishing things up a bit, I have a basic walk animation for the donkey. I don't know much about MLP, but after seeing a lot of fan art floating around the net it appears each pony has some sort of symbol.

I will be checking with the commissioner to see what symbol he wants. Here is the current status of the walk animation. I still need to add in a symbol, and any other details I may have missed after reviewing with the commissioner:

Finalized walk animations for both characters and possibly some lip syncing coming soon! The voice samples I've received so far have me all excited!

Until then..have the result of my character study of Spike:

I got a little carried away...so did he. We'll see where this goes at a later date.

Baby steps

I have tried things such as twitter and facebook over that past couple months to express my thoughts in little bite sized pieces..I have also kept an old deviant art account alive with a little bit of journal submitting there as well.

I need a central place to show off my WIP's and attempt to document my design process and inner thoughts so i've opened up this blog.

Below is a WIP lip sync animation I started a few weeks ago. The character included is one of the first comic characters I designed way back in middle school. her name, Kathy Katzu...is decidedly cheesy. Kathy apparently wants some chips from...an as of now undecided second character. the voice is provided by KidCoco.

Everytime I open flash I try to find more efficient ways of animating characters, and saving their parts for future use. The way I did this one was...quite a failure to be honest. The character's head is layered off in so many ways, that it's counter-productive. I wanted every bang of hair to move, along with her eyes, muzzle, and face paint. I can do this..but it takes so many clicks through so many groups that it's just a headache. I am better off going full frame by frame with what I'm doing here. My search for a perfect blend of frame by frame and grouped animation continues! stay tuned for updates.