Nice :D

If most of the time spent was on her lovely lively tail then trust me it was worth it
She has a feel reminiscent of Rotoscoped works of the 70's I love the style

That feel must come from the framerate, it was rendered in 60fps, and that looks rather odd.

The tail didn't take as much work, as it takes the limelight. :b Though also not simple to animate, since I am not aware of any automatic helpers help, 4 tail segments need to be placed by hand every few frames.

I love what you are doing. Keep doing it

Alright boss! My rate is $20/h. I'll be coming in 2 weeks to collect my first paycheck.

*sits by the door, awaiting the knock *

Great work!

Looks good!

Nice! :3

Hum. Definitely a foxy dance.
Can tell by that bushy tail dancing.

Curious what software you made such in.
But being able to animate, even if first one, is quite the feat!

Thanks much. The tail was very important and I love it myself, looking at it's movement. Didn't even look that lovely to me while setting up the movements in annoying keyframing work.

Blender and Photoshop, nothing else. Blender renders the actual animation, Photoshop is used for optimizing the frames, reducing color count to optimal levels, pixelating the previously smooth ground shading and setting up the finished GIF animation. Sounds short and simple, but I went through a 2 day hassle to get together, what you see there.

Oooo interesting. I've poked a fair bit at Blender (2.7 to 2.8) learning (ideally at animation), but I've a long ways to go to do it ideally. Motivation is hard limiter and learning to rig (add bones to mesh) fluently before animation is what I need to do. Plus a lot of other vital things, UI and shortcuts. So I can certainly understand the pain and hassle you went through for this. Though would not have suspected Photoshop GIF optimization, but I guess that was a necessary thing.

But thanks for answering that question.
I'll not hound you in other curious questions.💙

Oh please do you if you want to go on. I know most artists out there seem kinda ignorant about talking to people, but I am very communicative. I'll happily answer whatever you throw at me.

The very much biggest amount of the result in this animation, I have all learned within 2020. In 3 years, I also had big motivation and time issues, even though I knew where I wanted to get with 3D animation, since I am planning to produce a serious movie through it. At some point, I wasn't willing to waste my time with some job anymore when being forced to neglect what I really want to accomplish, so I quit my job and spent the majority of days on Blender since then. In 3 years, I created the base mesh for the character you see, but that's it. Everything from texturing, to rigging and lots of other knowledge to gather in order to be able to do something serious with the software, I got into my brain within this year. Very spiritually exhausting at times, but it's god damn worth it. Those skills are stuff, that nobody can take from you, that money can't buy, that lets you create whole worlds only through a keyboard and mouse. It's insane.

So when I get back on a serious level at the beginning of the year, I wanted to go with time and switch to Blender 2.8, but I don't know if the program was still buggy or if I just didn't understand the settings, but the shading was messed up so bad, I wouldn't even know how such weird shading effects could come into action. To me, it looked very buggy, because I wouldn't know how anyone could have intentionally wanted that kind of shading, that Blender displayed me there.
So by intention, I sticked to 2.79 and enjoy the program, it runs very damn well, though also has it's weird crashes, always gotta remember to save. Also for my style with the hard shadows, 2.79 seems to be the better choice than 2.8, because 2.8 concentrates more on photorealism and offers lots more toold to accomplish that, but as far as I could see it from my peek into the program, what I want to accomplish gets more complicated, because I don't know yet to work with nodes. Also the render methods being usable in 2.8 are less suited for this style, rendering those clear colors would take me longer in 2.8 because of the image simapling, which works differently in Blender 2.79 internal.

Working yourself from zero into rigging can indeed be troublesome, but only for a little while, still remember this well. Wrapping your brain around the logic of how to work with bones, their relations and constraints, is somewhat overwhelming at first. But once your brain is containing all the logic about it, it's rather easy to do and great stuff. The step from having a stationary model to having it move around is priceless. Having 3D skills at all is priceless, so I encourage you to keep going with it.

Alright, if you say to then I have no obligations against such then. I just don't wanna disturb people from working nor making large comment chains. Something of that sorts.

That is quite a lot to achieve in 3 years. From making your own model, rigging, texturing and then animating. I'd like doing sculpting/model creation more than animation, but I severely lack the mental abilities to do that. More a learning issue than it is doing, I may be a strong visualizer, but coordinating that to outside my mind turns into a scrabble word game that is unsolvable, cannot put pieces together. But that is a issue on its own, everyone learns at their own pace and to the best of their abilities. Money certainly cannot buy the skills one needs either, that goes for anything that is self learned.

Going from Blender 2.7 to Blender 2.8 is a very large difference. Blender 2.8 is certainly work in progress, but EEVEE wasn't meant for final production realistic rendering. It was designed as a compliment addition to Cycles as a much faster yet inaccurate real time renderer. It is used so one can get a rough idea what the final results may look like without dumping a huge amount of processing time with Cycles. So in all Cycles is the photorealistic renderer where as EEVEE is all about "approximation guessing" for very fast yet quite inaccurate results. You can change your render engine between Eevee and Cycles in 2.8 as you wish in Render Properties, default is Eevee (unless .Blend file loaded was set to Cycles). If curious, you can read and see on such difference between Eevee & Cycles here: https://cgcookie.com/articles/blend.....time-rendering

But sticking to 2.79 is both good and bad. Good part is tutorials and guides use that UI where some things changed in 2.8+ as well the UI making it harder to find things or stuff removed/changed (renamed). But work with what you find comfortable.

I do intend to keep at 3D Blender learning, but motivation is difficult. Last I ever messed with the model I was, I was poking around B-Bones (Bendy Bones, amazing for tails). There is plenty of public models and private shared models around, so no short supply there. But having the knowledge and skill to create/sculpt your own model from scratch? Now that is an amazing skill to have.

On small note, if you've not poked with B-Bones, do poke at such. I can't say much on it, far too inept for rigging/bone adding. But they prove to be interesting when it comes to tails.

I can very much relate, because 99.9% of people got nothing for large comments and a long correspondence. Don't know if it's ignorance, or laziness, or just habits of modern society, or everything together..... It's kind of a shame. Gotta admit though, wouldn't want to write such essays every day either.

I achieved 90% of this whole result in like 4 months. Due to motivation issues through job and other stuff, in those 3 years I got nothing done but collect some experience with modeling, but that's it. In 3 years, with way too long breaks, I crafted together the majority of the mesh which you see here, but everything else like texturing, rigging, physics and other details, everything learned within the last 4 months, because I am sitting down at the computer every day for many others and particularly search for educational videos on the exact elements I want to accomplish.
I am a good learner for stuff I want to know, but very bad at stuff I don't care about. Which is why in some subjects in school I had good marks, in others very bad ones. I was always good with subjects of language, art and physics, but really bad at stuff like history - which you can blame on the teacher, because if we had something important like the world wars, I would have been interested. But if you get to learn about nothing else than stuff like farmer rebellions back in medieval times, who the hell cares? I am more a future guy than for the past. Seems like I digressed there a little.......
So you are having issues, learning the matter of Blender? Well, since I always like to help people with their interest in things I like too, I can offer you to be your teacher. I am even daring to do so, because that I was I have just done to a good friend of mine, he knew nothing about Blender, and now - as he says himself - through my help, he very well gets into the program and understands things. If you would be willing to give me access to your computer over Team Viewer (if it helps, after we would get to know a little better), I could teach you. Learning modeling and texturing, I define as the rather simpler things in Blender. And with a bit of controlled guidance, you should easily be able to learn that. I understand that things can be overwhelming when you try to learn something all by yourself. It's soooo much easier to do this through guidance, with the possibility to ask for specific things, that are on your mind. I learned the basics of Blender through some official aducational DVD they are selling. It was very well done, but you can't ask the Disc for specific things you want to know. There is where I had to do lots of search work to do through the years. So much time and effort went into building up those skills, but this is why they are so valuable. Can't be bought or obtained easily, it comes down to nothing but effort. But once you have them, nobody can take them and they give you incredible possibilities over your entire life. Not only potentially for business, but for whatever it could be used for. Like 3D printing. If you got some modeling skills, you can design 3-dimensional things, that you can get printed. So 3D animation basically enables you to have custom stuff, that nobody else would construct for you. And as I mentioned previously, the limitless possibilities of creating whole worlds only with the help of a computer, it's insane. That is why I take this whole things so freaking seriously, because I see the potential. Which is on several whole different levels, than simply drawing.

It's great that you have quite a bit of knowledge about the whole program so far. You say it right, Cycles is basically intended to be used for photo realism, and my style got nothing to do with this. Which is why (so far) I stick to 2.79, the internal Blender render engine is a lot more suited for my creations. Drawback though is, that for rendering final images it doesn't really utilize a graphics card, but that's only a matter of a bit of time. I built me a secondary computer for the main purpose of Blender renderings, and that computer didn't get a dedicated graphics card due to this fact. It's got an Intel i9 processor with a little integrated graphics chip, which can still handle the bit of work a GPU has to do in my workflow. Then, all the rendering is done by the powerful CPU anyway.
So I am sure one day I will switch to Blender 2.8, once I am far more advanced with everything Blender does and maybe also having learned to create realism based animations, but so far I don't see the necessity. It's my advantage, that I am not intending to work in some media company or stuff, where I have to follow their requirements. Which is either some totally different software than Blender, or if it was Blender, they'd certainly require knowledge in the newest build.

I have never been interested in using any public models or material there is, because that is the big thing of art - YOU create it, you can do anything, and especially 3D animation leaves hardly any limits to that. Right from having learned the very first basics in the program, I started with the model of my fox lady up there. She is still my first somewhat high level original creation, which is only logic, since she was my subject of education for all those years. Which is also she will be retired soon, because it is a model full of technical flaws and problems, because she has been created through various phases of skill - from very low skill to my today's level. And I want to create a whole new model, which would be so much better with what I know now. If I showed this model to some experienced 3D artist, he would slap his hands above his head and puke into the corner.

I am using B-Bones. =) I got them in her tail. I only learned about them not too long ago, but since you can change regular bones to B-Bones and back at any time, I just switched her tail bones to B-Bones and that made the look better. I was hoping I could animate the tail with only 1 or 2 B-Bones, but you still need some more, depending on how flexible it is supposed to be. This tail consists of 6 bones, 4 of them were individually hand animated, the last 2 bones at the tip are physics controlled, because the tip only needs to follow the movement of the rest of the tail. Hand animating 4 bones is tough enough. It is my huge advantage in 3D animation, that I want to animate in anime style, which means I can work with less fluid movements and a lot of still frames, which saves SOOOO much work and rendering power. Going photorealistic must be such a pain. So anyway, B-Bones also have a drawback. They sometimes like to twist around in a weird way and you need to manually twist them back. Can be very annoying and I don't understand, why they can't keep their original twist. In the program, when switching to B-Bones, a bone gets seperated into up to 32 single pieces, whose exact movement is then calculated through software depending on where you move head and tail of the bone, and each piece doesn't only bend, but potentially also rotates. Can be good for so many things, but not for a classic tail. But I guess, I might find functions, which prevend uncontrolled twisting.
I also use B-Bones for the hair, because due to anime style, I can't use the awesome functionalities Blender has for realistic hair, I need to create a creative setup for material hair strands, which then are controlled by bones, which get controlled through clothing simulation. It's complicated, but the best method I so far know. In order for the hair to bend smoothly, B-Bones are being used.

Oh my that is a lot to... uh read and reply to. Will do my best to keep it short though.
I don't mind large comments or paragraph chats. But I am so slow at responding to them given I constantly go back and think, edit then rethink again. Certainly don't mind casual talks though, except I don't talk much naturally.

You've far greater motivation, dedication and willpower than I do when it comes to this. While not going into detail, I have no clue what I truly want to achieve. More less to this day, due to reasons out of my control (and unable to find alternative solutions), I have never had a job either. This leads to great desperation sometimes, but desperation alone can't keep one motivated to keep doing something. Not to count a slew of other issues that kill any long term interest in things.

I can agree one can be good at learning things they like and terrible at learning stuff they don't like. But certainly in school days I had my subjects I liked and did excellent in, but the ones I did terrible in were either boring or taught in a way I was not able to learn and had to adopt my own way of learning (English/writing). Not like the school system cared though, just push you a long regardless.

Hum, don't believe I have any issues learning. Just I have personal issues, mostly lack of private learning space, now a days that prohibit me from peacefully learning. That combined with other issues, I don't really have the motivation or willpower to push myself to bothering anymore. A shame really, but will certainly keep what you said in mind should situations change. Or I find the willpower to not care about privacy and a quiet study anymore. The costs of living with family, against ones will really. However fully aware Blender or any 3D program (have poked at them all, 3dMax, Blender and Maya) are much easier with real time guidance than pre-made videos to some cases. Though as far as buying DVD tutorials are similar, that is not possible for me. Even if I could, probably wouldn't given I can't take such that serious for myself yet, at least not at the time, but there is a lot of potential for certain.

Blender 2.8 offered better performance which gave better usage ability. Which was good for me given my PC is not really a true powerhouse. Other reason I moved to 2.8 was given the changes it had, better to learn new in latest version than older with different layouts. But that is entirely a personal decision some make, yet I'd suppose if I was really serious and learning I'd stay on the version that tutorials and guides were most up to date with.

Public models are good to learn with and or draw inspiration and some cases motivation from. Hum, but you do have a fair point I cannot disagree with. Creating your own thing from scratch is a grand showing of what you have learned and can do. But there are infinity ways to create something, with no true way being perfect every time. So while maybe a professional may look scared of an "amateur" model, there is far worse out there. Professionals who make something of equal, yet obtained position of professional.

Figured that tail was bendy boned, but hair I didn't really think of but that does make sense. Though more for physics and less manual adjustment and moving, they still sometimes require it. While there are easier ways to animate as far as I know (grease pencil is one iirc), I have not an idea how one does such ideally. Though am certain you can find such ways out in time, trial and error is how this goes anyway too. There are functions to prevent twisting and bending of bones in unwanted ways, is more axis locking by using other bones or bone properties themselves. I recall watching a tutorial on it, but really was nothing for me to learn and mostly was out of curiosity there.

Perhaps easier to use FA notes if wish to chat more. I don't mind.