This autism awareness/acceptance month…perhaps I bit off more than I could chew. In my defense, I already knew I could do a lot of the things involved in this exercise! Objects falls off a shelf, squash and stretch, walk cycle, head turns… what could go wrong? You see dear reader (and viewers), I also made a background from scratch as I showed last month! Which took up its own time but I’m very pleased for the goals I had in mind for it! Correct perspective, detail for detail accuracy, then writing down the script of my intentions for this exercise which was and still is…
#19 Character reaches for an object on a shelf overhead!
I went to YouTube to study, then used myself as a model, then took snapshots from the video I took, so I could understand the motions I needed to capture and storyboard. It helped a lot, and maybe my pictures can help you…which I will share if you can help fund the video for animation exercises level 2!
So for my subject, I wanted to depict a scene from my current hyperfixation video game, Deltarune, chapter 2. In this scene, the player goes to the librarby (yes, that’s how it’s spelled, it’s an in-game joke from Undertale, its predecessor), and you learn 2 things from the book that Kris pulls down from the book shelf on the 2nd floor where striped bird blocks the way to the other 4 bookshelves: 1. Kris’s mom has checked out this book numerous times, as the topic regards humans and she has likely read this to guide her parenting style with Kris. 2. Kris is very uncomfortable with their humanity for unclear/yet to be disclosed reasons. This is shown when the flavor text talks about the book depicting different types of humans, and Kris specifically, not the player, shuts the book quickly. The player has SOME control over the protagonist but the story indicates to the player that Kris also makes some personal choices, from hiding their brother Asriel’s internet searches and closing their eyes when the player tries to peer inside, to this specific choice of shutting the book, not interested in reading further. This scene is perfect for what I’m practicing while keeping me interested in my exercise, because I do not want to give it up if it frustrates me more than it interests me. I will depict this as shown, and you can get an idea of what I’m going for as shared below.
Kris Dreemurr reaches for a book in the 2nd floor of the librarby and shuts it quickly.
Between April and May, I believe I can finish it, and as of writing this blog post, I have worked on just this animation alone (minus the background) for nearly 19 hours! Doing this frame by frame is both very rewarding but from the outsider’s view, very slow! But the feeling of watching 3 drawings that I put one after another and watching them move outweighs the speed factor for me, and I hope that you check out my Friday streams where I specifically focus on doing this and many other exercises in the future! I stream from 4-6:30pm right over here on our website using twitch! I hope you can tune in sometime in the spirit of body doubling and creativity. Also, everyone has heard already, but I’m so excited for the release of Deltarune Chapter 3 & 4, coming out June 5th! I will probably record my play through of that at a later time, and fingers crossed, I can avoid spoilers! I think I can get this one done by next month if I continue at the pace that I’ve been working on it. And in today’s livestream, I did manage to start creating cleaner line work for it that may be seen next livestream. I will also be livestreaming my playthrough of the game’s new chapters on Sundays, schedule TBD.
I appreciate your patience and encouragement as I continue to learn animation, and as an early warning, I have a medical procedure that I will be preparing for in July, so any support would be appreciated for when I am recovering during that time!
As mentioned last month…I’m working on an animated music video! I believe by that time, I should be done with working on character designs with the musician, and I am not sure if I will be releasing the designs in a month, or the month after. We shall see what happens! I will say that the storyboard for it is finished, so things like the character design, background design and other elements are currently in the works.
and lastly, I will be reaching out to my fellow community members in the next couple months for building Corsi-Rosenthal (CR) boxes. The People’s Press Project will be creating a tutorial video and distributing CR boxes for cleaner air and combat airborne viruses and pathogens…it’s going to be fun because once they’re built, you can get a little creative/artistic with them, so stay tuned for that as well! Take care for now!
