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More from Draygone
This is the title card I just created for my video series, Let's Play (With Draygone). No, I'm not plugging it... yet.
The sprite was not exactly an easy thing to create. At first I started out with something larger, but I discovered that creating large sprites is rather more difficult than creating a smaller sprite, so I scrapped it early on for something smaller and with less frames of animation required. The sprite I had already used for my Great Dragon Gaming logo seemed like a good starting point. Things thankfully started getting easier from there. Alas, it meant I couldn't show how the shirt buttons up around my wings, but not a major loss.
The frame to present the title with my raised hand was probably the easiest frame, on account it's modified right from the GDG sprite. The walking animation was also a simple enough task, as I had done walking animations before, though I had to figure out which way the tail should be swinging and the head was a bit too far forward. The rest was a bit trickier. Having my back facing the camera like that required some figuring on shadowing, and the bowing probably took the most effort. Even though the legs remain unchanged for those last few frames, I had a heck of a time trying to figure out how to deal with an open gap between them. Closing the gap made the legs to wide. It was a bit of a "duh" moment when I realized that my tail would probably be back there "filling" the space. The tail raises slightly in the last frame partly because I assume that it would naturally, and party because it seemed a tad uninteresting if my lower half was completely unanimated.
The head was probably the easiest part of the bowing animation, if you can believe it. Took a bit of minor work to make it not seem disjointed from my neck as I bowed, but no big deal. The arms were the biggest issue. Couldn't quite figure out how to make the pose look natural. This was the best I could do, and hopefully it's good enough. The wings of the pose were a mixed bag. I wanted them to spread a little as I bowed, but being that that part of the animation would only be three frames, I didn't want them spreading too much. At first, that's what was happening, but I managed to catch the issue before I got too far. And when I got around to testing the animation, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the wings did not need any significant modification. Does it count as a "got it on the first try"? Eh, close enough. :)
Actually animating this probably was the most tedious part. Maybe there's an easier way of doing this, I dunno, but in addition to the basic 10 frames of animation, I had to save a frame in every little position change in the animation. In total, this thing is 47 frames of animation. Thankfully, Gimp 2 has this feature where it takes an animation and makes every layer comprise of only the pixels that change, so the file size is considerably smaller than what you might expect. Yeah, Gimp 2 was used to animate it. MS Paint was used to draw it. Why MS Paint? Because it's what I'm used to, and I really don't need anything more complex.
This thing took close to a month of work. It wasn't that hard. I was just a big procrastinator. Which is strange, 'cause it was mostly fun to create. Just the idea that it still counts as "work", I guess, since I was going to use it for my LPs. As such, I also had to worry about how long the animation lasted, as I had to make it fit in with the theme. I wound up having to remove a clip during the intro in order to give room for it.
(plug starts here)
Video editing has become a largely enjoyable pasttime for me, and I use this joy to create let's play videos. Those who don't know, a let's play is, in simplest terms, a video game walkthrough with commentary. There's nothing to say mine are that different than others, aside from the occasional special moment here and there, so to some it might not make much sense that I'd give it special treatment with an intro and closing credits. I don't do it to make mine seem "better" than theirs, and I still encourage those who are interested to give LPing a shot, even if they have a bare-bones LP. But as long as I enjoy video editing, I'm going to go the extra mile. Or at least an extra quarter-mile.
So far, I had created 41 "LPisodes". This animation was to be used starting with the 42nd, an Atari special, which can be found here:
http://www.viddler.com/explore/Draygone/videos/55/
The sprite was not exactly an easy thing to create. At first I started out with something larger, but I discovered that creating large sprites is rather more difficult than creating a smaller sprite, so I scrapped it early on for something smaller and with less frames of animation required. The sprite I had already used for my Great Dragon Gaming logo seemed like a good starting point. Things thankfully started getting easier from there. Alas, it meant I couldn't show how the shirt buttons up around my wings, but not a major loss.
The frame to present the title with my raised hand was probably the easiest frame, on account it's modified right from the GDG sprite. The walking animation was also a simple enough task, as I had done walking animations before, though I had to figure out which way the tail should be swinging and the head was a bit too far forward. The rest was a bit trickier. Having my back facing the camera like that required some figuring on shadowing, and the bowing probably took the most effort. Even though the legs remain unchanged for those last few frames, I had a heck of a time trying to figure out how to deal with an open gap between them. Closing the gap made the legs to wide. It was a bit of a "duh" moment when I realized that my tail would probably be back there "filling" the space. The tail raises slightly in the last frame partly because I assume that it would naturally, and party because it seemed a tad uninteresting if my lower half was completely unanimated.
The head was probably the easiest part of the bowing animation, if you can believe it. Took a bit of minor work to make it not seem disjointed from my neck as I bowed, but no big deal. The arms were the biggest issue. Couldn't quite figure out how to make the pose look natural. This was the best I could do, and hopefully it's good enough. The wings of the pose were a mixed bag. I wanted them to spread a little as I bowed, but being that that part of the animation would only be three frames, I didn't want them spreading too much. At first, that's what was happening, but I managed to catch the issue before I got too far. And when I got around to testing the animation, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the wings did not need any significant modification. Does it count as a "got it on the first try"? Eh, close enough. :)
Actually animating this probably was the most tedious part. Maybe there's an easier way of doing this, I dunno, but in addition to the basic 10 frames of animation, I had to save a frame in every little position change in the animation. In total, this thing is 47 frames of animation. Thankfully, Gimp 2 has this feature where it takes an animation and makes every layer comprise of only the pixels that change, so the file size is considerably smaller than what you might expect. Yeah, Gimp 2 was used to animate it. MS Paint was used to draw it. Why MS Paint? Because it's what I'm used to, and I really don't need anything more complex.
This thing took close to a month of work. It wasn't that hard. I was just a big procrastinator. Which is strange, 'cause it was mostly fun to create. Just the idea that it still counts as "work", I guess, since I was going to use it for my LPs. As such, I also had to worry about how long the animation lasted, as I had to make it fit in with the theme. I wound up having to remove a clip during the intro in order to give room for it.
(plug starts here)
Video editing has become a largely enjoyable pasttime for me, and I use this joy to create let's play videos. Those who don't know, a let's play is, in simplest terms, a video game walkthrough with commentary. There's nothing to say mine are that different than others, aside from the occasional special moment here and there, so to some it might not make much sense that I'd give it special treatment with an intro and closing credits. I don't do it to make mine seem "better" than theirs, and I still encourage those who are interested to give LPing a shot, even if they have a bare-bones LP. But as long as I enjoy video editing, I'm going to go the extra mile. Or at least an extra quarter-mile.
So far, I had created 41 "LPisodes". This animation was to be used starting with the 42nd, an Atari special, which can be found here:
http://www.viddler.com/explore/Draygone/videos/55/
Category Artwork (Digital) / General Furry Art
Species Raccoon
Size 640 x 480px
File Size 70.2 kB
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