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#basically i don't think art can be boiled down to the finished product
gideonisms · 2 years
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idk with this ai art stuff we kinda have to face the fact that the bots can make art as good as ours, maybe one day could generate stories just as easily, but they probably aren't having as much fun doing it. Their job is basically marketing. Ours is living
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nighttimepixels · 5 years
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Heyhey Night! I have a buncha questions after seeing all your animations and they're just so cool so! I hope this is ok!! Can u animate normally too, or only pixel? Not that that's bad, just wondering! What's ur preferred kinda animation? Do u prefer lipflaps or lipsyncs? What's the hardest part of the animation process?? What's ur favorite?? Any part u don't like? What's a thing people don't see that u put a lotta time into? Do u have a fave animation u've done? Thank u btw for all ur art!!
Oh stars, okay, yeah- I’m happy to answer all these!! I’ll break them up so it’s easier to read X) And awww geez thank you so much for your support, sweet anon! It really makes my day when people say they like anything I’ve made, and stars knows it’s all the more true with the sweet sweet time sink that is animation   (´•̥̥̥\\ヮ\\•̥̥̥` )
I’ll also put this under a cut since it gets a bit long :)
Can u animate normally too, or only pixel?
This one cracks me up a little, don’t worry about it XD I totally can! In fact I enjoy it a lot - and... gods, animation software is a nightmare and a half, to be honest. That’s the biggest hurdle.
I do just straight up love pixel art and the aesthetic I can achieve with it, but I do at times miss ‘normal’ (non pixel?) animation, heh. Especially sound-syncing! I do all my pixel art in Asesprite which imo is the best pixel art program, not to mention made by an actual pixel artist - buuuut it doesn’t have a sound file option. Which makes sense! Er, frankly, most pixel artists wouldn’t... use it to animate like I do? More for games, or for looping gifs? So I can’t complain much, it makes a lot of sense that it’s a low dev priority.
Now, when it comes to other animation programs... I’ve tried a lot. Unfortunately, the ones that are preferable for the feel I like are either way out of budget (stares at TVPaint in the distance) or... well, have too high a learning curve for my single-person workflow, really. (OpenToonz, sigh...) And a lot of the free programs are good for getting a start in animation, but once you get to a certain point you really feel the limitations (whether it’s workflow, sound import, exports, trying to make something more finished than a rough...).
Then... there’s animation programs I just don’t like, and a lot of those are angled towards bone-style animations (nothing wrong with those, they just don’t fit my style? and are too much time investment for a single artist to output more quickly...), or are, well, freakin’ Adobe Animate.
I... gods, I do not like Animate (formerly Flash). And I made a whole 2 minute+ animation in it a couple years ago! (It’s very rough and bad and doesn’t make sense, pfff, not gonna link it XD) It’s... clunky, and vector oriented, and freaking lines don’t go where I want them too, and it tries to predict too much?? It’s hard to put to words, gah. For me, my animation style would be much more... raster oriented. Flow, hand drawn inbetweens, yaddayadda. Animate’s great for... plenty of things, but not for that kind of animation. There are far better animators than I who make it work with freakin’ aplomb though! So really, it’s just my taste, haha.
.... Er, that got long! I’ll cut off more rambling about animation software and tl;dr boil it down to “I love animating period, but turnaround is something I have to keep in mind as a freelancer, as well as budget, and my current focus is pixel animations for a number of reasons.” X)
What's ur preferred kinda animation?
I’m not exactly sure what this one means! Between pixel and non-pixel? Er, they both have their pros and cons, so I couldn’t say! But if I have to break down my current animations into categories, I’d say I have cutscenes, loop environments, and the broad game-like animations...
The first would be something like this animation feat. teasing Edge, the second would be something like this one with skesgo’s Starlan and Cinnamon, and the third is... everything else! From headsprite loops to ‘small’ characters running and so on.
Honestly, they’re all a lot of fun for different reasons! Cutscenes are generally the most challenging, but they give me the chance to push my limits and try and pull off something cool, whether I’m having to conserve frames (to keep the cost of a commission down) or whether I’m going more all out (which is a pricey commission, or a fun personal project, lol).
Loop environments are their own challenge - it may not look like it, but I put a lot of thought into how to make them look as natural as possible! From timing of talking characters, to where to place a blink, to exactly how many frames it’ll take to ‘soften’ a motion (so people aren’t just snapping between major poses) and so on - it takes... a lot of time to animate even simple scenes well, so I do a lot of mental math on how I can keep things affordable when someone approaches me for a commission. And frankly, I totally undercharge;; but I do my best!
Game-like animations are just fun. They range, they’re silly, to intense (I’ve animated fight animations before for game concepts), to indulgent, and beyond! Headsprites are always a delight, especially if I get to push the expression X) and I love tiny things (I mean... I am a pixel artist...) so getting to make lil tiny babs even just walking can be fun - and also, a lot more time consuming than you might thing, esp if you wanna make it smooth, like this lil Frisk I did last month or so:
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Do u prefer lipflaps or lipsyncs?
oTL
B... both??
Okay, lipsyncing basically is very time consuming. AND, I freakin’ love it. I love puzzles, and when it boils down to it, that’s what super fun & expressive lip syncing is (some Ghibli animations are the heckin’ best for this)...
and, I’m a pixel artist, without sound-syncing capabilities in her main art program oTL Yeah, I can export frames and line them up and check but... gods, it’s so time consuming. I’ve tried it out of desperation - but for even five seconds of sound (sayyyyy a lil Vine...) that’s hours upon hours of transferring back and forth just to check.
So even though I love lipsyncs, they’re too time-consuming (and ergo, if I’m being commissioned, often too expensive) to do often! Someday I’d like to get back to doing them more often, but for now, practically I stick to/’prefer’, in the loosest terms, to do lipflaps. For the layman, this is that ‘two frame’ (maybe three) open-closed style of animating mouths- however, I’m working on ways to keep that style, but make it more expressive! It depends on the project - and in commissions, I’ll pretty much always prioritize giving the client a little more body animation than mouth animation, unless it’d really fit what they’ve requested.
What's the hardest part of the animation process??
.... damn, this is a tough one! Sometimes I’d say it’s the initial concept work - but it depends on what I have to work with. Sometimes that parts a breeze - and honestly freeing, bc I can take the time to try and push what I’ll do with it!
Roughing is one of my favorite parts, tbh. It can be tricky, sure, but getting to go from keyframes to in-betweens & smears to adding the flairs of secondary motion (think hair swishing, or coats flaring, etc) is so exciting and satisfying.
From there it’s all refining, and tweaking...
Hm. Honestly, the hardest is probably the initial cleanup and lining. It’s cool to see it come together, but it feels so much slower, and it can drag - and then you find bits that actually don’t translate well from the rough stage, so you have to go back and rework, and oof it can just drag in this phase, heh. Plus, I’m always tempted to add more frames, but it’s not always realistic - I’m a perfectionist, to say the least, so I’m constantly having to leash myself back so I don’t turn a project into a half-a-year undertaking, pff.
What's ur favorite??
Probably gave myself away talking about the roughing stage X) It’s just loose and fun and free! But seeing it all come together is also damn satisfying too, so that’s not to say I don’t like the refining portions either...
Outside of that, I also really like the beginning of the color stage! .... Before having to translate shadows/highlights to each and every frame *shudders*. That gets tedious, but it’s so critical! Anyways, though, I heckin’ love colors. I always have a rough palette in mind at the start of the process, but I go ham and play with it as a little break and a true test when I get to actual slap together a full frame with full color, highlights/shadows included! It’s exciting, like a preview of the finished product, basically :D
Any part u don't like?
Heh, by the time I get to shadows/highlights, I tend to be getting impatient, I suppose. It’s not that I don’t like it - I definitely highly value it, and if it was the only thing I was working on in an animation that’d be different, but as a one-woman team I’m just raring to be done at that point; it’s very nearly the last thing I do, after all, so it’s a struggle to focus. X)
I suppose one that always gets me is more complicated backgrounds. It’s a work in progress, as I’m getting better and finding the fun in them for sure! But I’m still not where I want to be in translating ‘background concept’ to ‘finished background’ - it feels more stiff than my animations, I guess. So it’s a frustrating part... but hey, it’s part of it! And learning to embrace the challenge is a big help.
... I just always have to make sure I have a big cup of coffee and a good jam playlist going when I sit down to do ‘em, in the meantime.(=▿= ||||)
What's a thing people don't see that u put a lotta time into?
Definitely the coloring. This goes for both backgrounds and the animated characters themselves. It’s... never as simple as it looks? It’s time consuming, and while some parts of frames can be copy-pasted, I also put subtle work into the animations that mean that some pixels are off so it ends up being marginally faster to just recolor, but then there’s shadows, and working in pixels means that if I miss one then there’s a flickering pixel mid-animation, and sometimes there’s an unconnected line and then you bucket fill the whole damn thing, and gods know I’ve got colored lines so I have to be exacting with keeping the same ratios highlighted vs darker in shifting frames...
*deep breath*
... Yeah, basically the coloring is super time consuming. And balancing bg coloring with animated elements in the image itself is a whole extra challenge on top of that. For 99% of my animations, I can damn near guarantee I’ve spent at least twice as much time coloring it as I have animating it.
Do u have a fave animation u've done?
*looks at my goblin hoard of animations in horror like I’ve been asked to choose a favorite child*
... Stars above, I can’t choose! I love them all, and at this point a good portion of them are commissions- it wouldn’t feel right to choose!
*...carefully covers the hoard’s metaphorical ears*
... also, that said, I can admit a soft spot for any of them that involve humor. I tend to get to do extremely expressive faces and action there, even if I have to ration the frames, so it turns out really fun X)
And though rough and I’ve definitely done stuff I’m more proud of, I still crack up at this one I did a while back of the nonsense ‘ass’ joke between Red & Stretch... their faces were too much fun XD I’ve gotten waybetter since then though, Big Oof, I see so many things I can fix; might go back and redo it someday.
Honestly, though, I just freakin’ love animating! They all have their ups and downs andI always put a lot of love into them and find a way to have fun with it and try to push any emotion/theme (when applicable). I like to think it shows, but idk, that’s something I have to leave up to you guys X)
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jokerfic · 5 years
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Do you ever find it hard to push yourself to keep writing/to finish a fic? I really admire your works, especially pastimes, because you write both good quality and a good quantity with your stories. I find i'll plan out this long fic, and know all the details, but when it comes to writing more than a few chapters I find it difficult to continue. I don't know if it's just me getting bored of my own idea or being lazy but, do you have any advice for seeing a story through to the end?
Oh, it’s hard forrrr suuuuure. There’s a post floating around about how Charles Dickens shouldn’t be given credit for his prolificity bc he didn’t have streaming services and it strikes me to my core every time I see it. It’s part of why I like Neil Gaiman’s writing advice more than anyone else’s (in no small part because it’s really advice, not rules for you to follow– I hate “writing advice” that’s really a bunch of “don’t EVER use adverbs” and “write only in the mornings!” and other things that only cage you in rather than making you feel free)– it basically boils down to “write anything, write everything, just make the time to write.”
and generating content is just one part of the multi-pronged problem– the second is generating content for a specific project, consistently enough that you actually finish it, lol. some people would have you believe that if you love a project enough then it’ll always come naturally (and imply or even outright say that if it doesn’t come naturally, you don’t really love it– side note, I like some of Charles Bukowski’s poetry but he can eat my entire ass with that “if it doesn’t come easily then it’s not what you’re meant to be doing” idea). That’s only part of it. A thousand writers better than I am have already said that love/“inspiration” only gets you so far, and after that comes the work.
I’ve found that to be true. Not that the love doesn’t come back! I’m constantly falling in love and out of love with different WIPs, and each time I fall back in, I get a little bit (or a lot!) more done, but there’s definitely a point where I say “okay, I’m not allowed to work on anything else until x book is finished.” (Whether or not I stick to that resolution is a different matter.) Honestly, it happens the most with jokerfic because I have a small but active and devoted audience and I start to feel THE GUILT if I leave them too long without new content bc they’re so loyal and it has to be a symbiotic relationship or it’ll 100% die.
idk, man, I’m mostly musing out loud here because writing is work, and it might be fun work, and fulfilling work, but you have to allot time and energy to it specifically, and if you do want to finish and publish something on the longer side (fanfic or original), you have to be the one to decide to put that time and energy into it– no one else can do it for you.
All that to say: you have to figure out what motivates you, and what’s important to you. Personally I’m motivated by a moderate dose of ambition and just a little bit of spite (I see writers I don’t like flourishing, I think “I can do better than that,” and it’s good for at least a few pages), as well as feedback from readers and the desire to be able to re-read the specific, finished work whenever I want to. Probably more significantly, and not to be morbid: it’s extremely important to me to get these stories out there and not let them die with me. Listen, I may be a slow writer, but I live and breathe storytelling, it’s the majority of what I think about, and there’s very little that kicks me in the ass like the realization that time is coming for me and all of us, and I don’t have an unlimited amount of it to waste. So what’s important to you, what’s worth spending your time on? Rewatching a TV show you’ve seen all the way through 3 times already? or making something new and sharing it with people, connecting to people through a story that’s important to you?
of course, you can’t and shouldn’t aim to be productive all the time, you’re not made for it, you need to live your life in addition to doing your work. Stephen King says you have to read a lot if you want to write well, and I agree with him. It’s harder to write people if you’re never around people! Some days you are just gonna NEED to veg out in front of the TV (or tumblr) because you don’t have the energy, mental or otherwise, for anything else. you have to read books, watch movies and tv, spend time with people, live your life, have experiences, if only so you’ll have more to draw from when you are working.
Outside of that normal “living life” stuff, I’d focus on trying to trim things that you know are a waste of time, or that drain your energy without reward. Delete the social media you can do without (or outright hate but for some reason haven’t pulled the plug on yet). If you’re sitting down to write, then write, even if you have to use an app to block out the million distractions that are just a click away. If you can, try and make friends that write so you can egg each other on (there are a lot of writing Discords out there that may be helpful). I personally like reading or watching interviews with artists (not even just writers) that inspire me or that I relate to– the richness of David Milch’s mind and the way he seamlessly ties together humanity, community, history, and art makes me want to work harder and be better so that someday I can be a fraction as good as he is, I found out like yesterday that Donna Tartt and I have basically the same process (and take about as long to finish a thing lol), Jack White’s live performances energize me and make me want to create, Tom Waits is a natural born storyteller and funnyman who weaves such a thick atmosphere and mythology for himself with every word that I feel compelled to try and do the same.
and that’s it, that’s the process that consistently results in the most productive work for me: I read or watch other creators I admire until I’m whipped up into a frenzy of needing to do something, then I get in front of a screen and do it. When the excitement runs out, I pretend it hasn’t until it comes back (with mixed success, but really, “fake it till you make it” is an EVERGREEN piece of advice in almost every area). I try not to let too many months slip away without having something finished and semi-polished to show for my time. That’s about the only way I know how to do it anymore.
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