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chielo

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so a while ago i made this:
  early morning by chielo
my main interest was to create something with matching colors, and to draw a chicken/rooster (dunno where that came from tbh). while i paid a lot of attention to how it looks in general, i didn't notice how, well, incomplete it looks. 64x64 pixels (original size) are not that huge, but i left most of the available space pretty empty.
and more important, the rooster doesn't really move somehow. his neck does, but the rest ist just a fancy still image. if you take a while to look at the animation (like, four or five loops), you'll notice that you're pretty much just watching the left-middle side of the thing, because that's the only portion where something happens.
i've highlighted the area in which the animation happens here:
animated area pointed out by chielo
super small, right? there's not much to look at in there, too.
while it's completely fine to keep animations minimalistic, in this case, it's just boring. i don't have a super awesome background you can look at. there are no cool details hidden somewhere. hell, the rooster doesn't even have shading (okay, one leg is a bit darker than the other, but that's it. and lol, i noticed i didn't correct the lighting... well, whatever). if you think about it, it looks like i gave up in the middle of making this.

correction 1: a more dynamic animation for the rooster


the neck animation looks kind of ridiculous (aka exaggerated), but that gets lost because the movement doesn't affect the whole rooster (aka, our character). i wanted to make the guy look like he was taking a deep breath and throwing himself forward to release a very loud noise (roosters are super loud btw).
the neck already does the "bend backwards slowly -> go forwards really fast" thing, but the body doesn't. i left out the "backwards" movement for the body (when i tried it out, it kind of moved the focus around in a weird way; i didn't like it) and just moved it down a bit, frame by frame, following the existing animation.
the second part of the animation got both forward and up movement. the neck already stretches out pretty far, so i decided to add to that movement. the rooster even stands on his toes!
early morning impro 1: more character movement! by chielo
neat, huh? if you compare this one with the original animation, the guy suddenly looks more energetic and even louder. the whole middle part of the image is moving now, not just the left side. also, the rooster's neck doesn't seem to be separated from his body anymore. but for some reason, the rooster looks separated from the background (especially from the hay stack he's standing on).
[NOTE: i wrote a ton of additional stuff in the description of this thing on sta.sh; if you're interested, check it out by clicking on the gif :3 it's pretty unformatted though ._.']

correction 2: un-separate rooster and environment


the rooster is doing a lot of movement now, but his environment doesn't give a damn about it. so, is he a ghost rooster..? he shouldn't be, but it kind of looks like it.
luckily, i decided to put him onto a hay stack. hay is pretty light stuff if it's dry, and little pieces go flying very easily. the rooster's movement should be enough to set a few pieces off, so i added some:
early morning impro 2: environment interaction by chielo
there's also a bonus coming from this i didn't expect: the lame one-frame-still at the end got some (tiny) action! so even if the rooster isn't moving anymore, there's something else going on.
[NOTE: this one also has additional text in the description. most of the text is me writing away though, so i don't know if it's useful or not ._.]

correction 3: audio to visual


my roommate suggested something nice when i showed him the animation from correction 2 (i thought i was finished by then): visualize the noise and loudness of the rooster. since the rooster wasn't moving anyway at the end, and the timing of the straw pieces falling was more even than the rest of the frames, i gave it a shot by moving the head a little around and got this:
early morning [revised] by chielo
the head only moves by one pixel, but 64x64 is small, so moving something even a tiny bit has a bigger effect than on larger canvases. my first try (moving the head down by one pixels and left by two pixels) made the dude go all over the place. adjusting the neck (i tried moving it, it looked... weird) took a while because some pixels were just wrong. if you pixel small things, a single "wrong" pixel sticks out a lot and turns everything into a mess. the left edge of the neck still flickers, but i'm too lazy to fix that up (anti aliasing is a nice technique for such things though!).

corrections/improvements i didn't do (and the reasons)


aside from the flickering neck, i could fix some more stuff like:
animating the background: the sun is rising so some light effects would be cool. i didn't do this because the timing of the animation is all over the place. i'd have to split some of the 200ms frames and figure out how to connect that one 80ms frame with the ones that follow. this would take some time, and i don't think it's worth the result.
shading (and correcting the lighting): one funny thing that happens a lot to me when i do the foreground before the background: i mess up the lighting. the smaller hay stacks could use some light borders, and the rooster's leg closer to the sun is darker than the other one. the rooster's body has no shading at all, but the background has (because it looked super flat). while fixing the non-animated stuff is easy (i merged all the background layers when i was satisfied with the them, and the resulting layer will change throughout the animation if i change it), i'd have to edit (almost) every single frame for the rooster's shading. another time consuming task i don't want to do.
additional characters: wouldn't it be cool if some hens in the background raised their heads at the rooster's scream? ...probably, but that'd be a lot of work. if the timing is off, it'd look strange. if they'd all look the same, it'd look boring (copy-paste sticks out a lot). if they'd look more interesting than the main character, they'd distract the viewer. if they'd look boring, what's the point of even including them? there's also a point where an animation becomes overcrowded.
all in all, i'm pretty happy with the gif from correction 3, so i left it like that :3

so, uh, well, that was my process of correcting that animation ^_^
since my explanations tend to be weird and hard to understand sometimes: if you have questions or want to correct something i said (my english skills crap out sometimes, ugh), don't hesitate to comment ^_^
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meh

1 min read
apparently there's a problem with sta.sh (doesn't want to log in for some reason) so i can't upload anything :/ i hope this thing will fix itself soon ._.
now i'm basically just checking if journals work ^_^'
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It's been a while since I've uploaded or wrote something. I'm pretty busy now, university started (sooo awesome!) and on fridays I'm at work until 8 p.m. (still cool stuff to do, though).

Theoretically, I could upload a ton of sketches, since we've got to keep a sketchbook "diary", so I draw something silly every day :3 On the other hand, the damn book is so small my scanner practically eats it and tries to destroy the cover -.-'

I got more into designing mechanics for games (still my own shit only) than drawing stuff lately, and I doubt anyone would like to read long texts about battle systems and how the weather, the current party members (their stats, weapons, mood, ...) and even the whole area can influence the enemies, the characters and the dropped items/XP (and probably the player when they shout at the screen because I suck at balancing). Sadly, the whole thing isn't as complex as it sounds, and it might just be logical to leave the fire mage at home if it rains.
The world surrounding that pile of written down formulas might be more interesting >:3 It has the shape of a wine glass and a huge lamp as a sun that got stuck on "day" when the player character drops into the world. The story is pretty default (re-balance the world's magic (wind magic got lost), "repair" the fake sun, get back home with the help of the other party characters, everyone's happy), but for an exercise in game design it's good enough.


Other:
- The whole game idea thing came to life because I realized how much I hate tutorials for obvious shit like "Press A to jump", "Earth attacks are not effective against flying enemies" or "You might gather information if you talk to people" (Like, really?! They're not just dead statues standing around because the map was empty??).
Apropos talking to NPCs... In recent games every NPC hints at where the player has to go next. No one tells you why they built their town on the mountain in the first place, but everyone tells the player that it looks suspicious somehow. The player can't tell, because they never saw the damn thing before, so the mountain either shakes like mad or turns out to be a volcano, giving the player another huge "hint" to go look what the hell is going on there. This also happens in games so linear that the player has literally no other choice than to go to the next dungeon to proceed (bonus: the player can't even go back to the last town/dungeon/whatever and is trapped there).
So... I wanted to make (well, at the moment "plan" is a better word) a game that doesn't do stuff like that and makes the player explore shit on their own, aka "you know you shouldn't go into there if you get killed in the first battle". Also, no supercool rewards for simple go-fetch-stuff quests, save points (if the player wants to save anywhere else, they've got to sacrifice equipment (no potions or other worthless things)), no retries for lost boss fights and shops that are closed during certain days (just like in real life). No time pressure shit, though, since I don't know anyone who loves that crap.

- I still work on that underground city thing. Since I have a course for 3D modeling with Maya at the uni, I might be able to finally build some stuff! :D It's mostly tunnels, so it shouldn't be too difficult >:3 If I succeed, I'll upload some screenshots :3
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Yay :D

2 min read
Got the confirmation letter from the university that I'll be able to study Animation&Game! :D No more worrying, no more guessing what to do if I'd have to wait a whole year! :)

Other:
:bulletblack: My job is still awesome :) Also, I didn't break anything recently :XD:
:bulletblack: A rough character design made during lunch break resulted in a whole underground city and a small weird culture (including a "demon" in the automated garbage system and the intensely discussed myth that the Above has only one big lamp which breaks and needs to be repaired every twelve hours). If I have time to make some clean sketches of that stuff, I'll upload them :)
:bulletblack: My sister gave me a ton of pens she bought for school a while ago and then realized she doesn't need that much colors. Now I can highlight stuff in inked drawings with the weirdest colors of the universe :XD:
:bulletblack: Still reading the fourth book of "A Song of Ice and Fire" (~300 pages left). Sansa's chapters aren't so boring anymore O_o
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Didn't have much time to draw lately, since I've got a full-time internship at a game company! :D My tasks there focus on programming, so I don't do much design (except some GUI stuff), but still... it's just awesome! And I learn new stuff everyday (especially because all my colleagues are extremely helpful and willing to answer my questions)! :D I really hope that I've got enough free time while studying to continue working there..!

Apropos... Seems like the application and the sample work I sent the university was good enough to get me in! :3 I've got to wait another week until I get the final result, but my interview went very well (although I was so nervous that I needed to look twice to find the USB on the front of the computer there), so I guess I'll be accepted :)

Other stuff:
- My style is changing once again O_o I wonder if I ever find one I can stick with...
- Two weeks ago I panicked when I accidentally turned the camera a bit around while moving some buttons. Most ridiculous work moment ever -_- ...and GUI stuff looks awkward when you look at it from the wrong angle.
- Some of my colleagues play Magic: The Gathering on fridays. I bought myself a new deck (well, two...). Don't know if my old cards are shit or if I just suck at deck building :/
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