WIP MTD "Pencils"

Kept you waiting, huh?

Sorry that it's been a hot steamy minute since I've posted anything. One of my professors thought it would be a wise idea for us to lose a week and make a large project due tomorrow instead of a week into November. I just... Why? Why? I am sorry that it's taken me this long to finish this, though. Even Mother is disappointed in my lack of progress, the cock-flattening was especially horrific today.

But, I am still alive, on the outside at least. And I'm still working. I ain't hear no bell yet.

Anywho, these are the now-finished pencils. I think I kinda already explained this in the (WIP) MTD Postmortem post, so I'll try to touch up on some random topics I thought of.

It's important to streamline your work as much as possible, but also don't underestimate the amount of work that can still be present. Take, for instance, the Zero Suit. You know, I thought I was being real slick when I thought up something. For the Zero Suit, I literally just duplicated the BASE layer of Samus and erased her head. Surely, I thought, surely it'd be the easiest thing.

Very wrong.

All those damn lines were such a pain in the ass. Everything had to move just right. In the instance of animating cross-contour lines like this, it's important to find any kind of anchorage point to reference. For instance, for the lines on her chest, I used her nipples as the anchorage points to keep things moving correctly.

Don't tell my parents I was talking about nipples or they'll lock me in the cellar again.

It ended up taking way longer than I was comfortable with to make the Zero Suit.

Which brings me to my next topic, when to cut your losses. 

I'm a pretty big fan of making a shitload of variants, so naturally I wanted a ton for this one, too. But, this is also a big detriment to me. Each variant can take up a shitload of time just like the Zero Suit. I even considered dropping the Zero Suit so I could just get this animation done. I also came close to dropping the hoodie. You have to kind of ask yourself, is it worth it? In the case of the hoodie, will people care? I kind of like the casual feeling it gives off, but does it matter? Time management is so important in this, because everything just takes so much time. Plus, you need to account for external things, like your tablet dying or your circus of a university putting you through the wringer. Will the time spent animating a hoodie be worth it, or could it be used to do better things? Unfortunately, I did drop one variant element I kinda liked. It was her Zero Suit, but it was half-off and tied around her waist. It looked pretty cool. But man, I just couldn't invest the time in that. I had to cut my losses and move on. It's so, so hard to tell yourself to move on with an art piece. I think it's totally fine to take an infinite amount of time to make something when you're early on in your art career, but in my case, where I tried having a schedule, I just have to get myself to move forward and tell myself I'll do better next time.

Another thing, the background characters. I uh, I don't think they look super good haha. Maybe it's like, fine? But I think the difference in animation quality is really noticeable. In art, color is the great equalizer, though. You'd be stunned how many issues the colors completely cover up. So, who knows, maybe they'll look better when this is done.

They do have a kind of cool effect, though. Just like how people in real life keep me around because my disgusting appearance makes everyone automatically more attractive, they make Samus' animation look far more smooth to me. It's like one of those optical illusion pictures, look at them for a few seconds, then look at her, it's like magic. Next time, I'll absolutely animate background characters to be smoother, though.

I think that about covers it. I can't remember if I did, but I think I sort of covered the process of this stage in that earlier post. If any of you have specific questions, don't hesitate to reach out to me. 

I'm gonna be better with my time management, and I'll be working harder. I'll be damned if I can't finish this one this month. Largely, this post is just to let y'all know I'm still here. Stay tuned for the next WIP post, it'll be a real doozy.