smgvn
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My animation journey, new Patreon tiers, animation workshop, supporter artwork.
🕑 Added 2023-03-06 20:07:30 +0000 UTCDo you know what's cool? Finishing an animation. Do you know what's not cool? Looking at that same animation a while later.
I often finish them thinking I made the hardest-hitting shit to ever exist in 3D, only to catch myself wanting to rework it all three days after release.
But... this time, this hasn't happened. I'm pretty damn happy with where my animations are going. I'm pretty satisfied with how every one of my skills has developed but -- this post is specifically about animations, so we'll talk about that.
My animation journey.
Warning: Very in-depth nerdy stuff. I hope it's concise. You might want to jump to the next topic.
In 2022, I got pretty burned out from working on MW not once, not twice, but several times. I swear -- you underestimate what getting "burned out" means until it happens to you. I didn't even want to stop working, I just didn't want to look at MW anymore. Yes, I am completely ashamed of the previous statement.
To prevent myself from doing nothing in 3D or AVNs in general, I went to work a little bit on side projects I have laying around. I have maybe three or four well-developed game ideas to pick from, so I worked on them. I wrote some stuff, made some animations, and I can say for sure that taking that time to work on different stuff really helped in honing my skills as an animator.
For anyone here who played the very first version of Mad World, you may remember how my "animations" first came to be. To sum it up, it was two frames that, while connected, simulated a thrusting motion. They hardly qualified as an animation, but that's what I knew, was equipped, and was willing to do.
Then, those two-frame animations became seven. They still didn't look so good, but it was a start. I think at that stage, I peaked at Tori's scene. After that, those seven frames weren't doing it for me anymore, and I decided to double it and go with fifteen from then on, which basically, is what I was doing up until the end of 4.0.0.
With all the knowledge and experience I gained while working on lots and lots of animations, I believe I reached the limit of everything I can do with 15 frames.
>To illustrate some of what I've learned while animating, let's observe this animation right here.
̶T̶h̶e̶s̶e̶ ̶p̶r̶e̶v̶i̶e̶w̶ ̶a̶n̶i̶m̶a̶t̶i̶o̶n̶s̶ ̶d̶o̶ ̶n̶o̶t̶ ̶r̶e̶p̶r̶e̶s̶e̶n̶t̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶i̶r̶ ̶f̶i̶n̶a̶l̶ ̶v̶e̶r̶s̶i̶o̶n̶.̶ ̶Y̶o̶u̶ ̶c̶a̶n̶ ̶t̶e̶l̶l̶ ̶b̶y̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶w̶a̶y̶ ̶s̶o̶m̶e̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶i̶t̶ ̶g̶l̶i̶t̶c̶h̶e̶s̶ ̶o̶u̶t̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶o̶n̶e̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶m̶ ̶i̶s̶ ̶c̶o̶m̶p̶l̶e̶t̶e̶l̶y̶ ̶m̶i̶s̶s̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶a̶n̶y̶ ̶k̶i̶n̶d̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶c̶o̶h̶e̶r̶e̶n̶t̶ ̶b̶a̶c̶k̶g̶r̶o̶u̶n̶d̶/̶l̶i̶g̶h̶t̶i̶n̶g. They're both WIP.
I don't remember how in-depth I was on the deleted scenes/animations I made for 4.0.0., but to refresh everyone's memories, I completely scrapped a lot of scenes and made completely new ones at the last minute. This Eva animation right here was one of the scrapped bunch. This one, although not very good, is a pretty special animation for two reasons: One, this animation featured an anal variant, which would be the first anal scene featured in-game. Two, this animation completely changed how I go about animating this kind of motion.
The way I used to animate usually went like this;
In the first frame, pose the two participating characters with their bodies all the way back; Jump to the halfway point of the animation (which for 15-frame animations, means frame 7) and close in the gap, fully connecting both; Copy the first frame to the last frame, creating the basic motion; Adding details in between like hip movements and facial expressions; Profit.
What I failed to account for in these loops, was the movement that happens AFTER the last frame of the animation ends. There's this little thing called inertia that was thoroughly missing in my animations. Actors would just stop between loops and return to their basic poses like there was no gravity to their bodies at all -- it just felt stiff and lacked the actual power of two bodies bumping each other and throwing their weight around. While making this scene for Eva, I perfected something I had only practiced before.
So, doing this sitting motion, I did it how I would do any other motion, only this time, I added a little something on the fourth frame.
The first frame is the basic pose (with both actors apart), but instead of letting that frame flow uninterrupted into frame seven (the loop's halfway point), I instead pushed the bodies even farther away in frame 4. What that does, is create a quicker, more sudden motion when frame 4 goes into frame 7 (because the fewer frames you use, the quicker the motion), generating a better thrusting effect. Not only that, but that one small change adds to the inertia of the (in the example below) male's body backing away from the female and thrusting forward again.
>In this animation, you can see how I used the experience I gained from its deleted counterpart.
I am 150% sure that if you put this animation against any of my older ones, the difference will be clear as water. This one actually seems like it has impact. Sure, it's nothing professional, but it looks good and has all the personality its 15 frames allow it to have.
Now, for every animation I make, I always account for the inertia: the flowing movement of the last few frames, but in the first few frames.
In my personal and very ignorant opinion, I despise overly realistic graphics and high-frame animations in visual novels. Nine times out of ten, they just look uncanny to me. I feel like if I want to go high-frame (which for the equipment I work with, would be pretty stupid), I need to have the expertise, detail, and purpose to back it up. I feel like making a bad animation a high-frame one for no other purpose other than to look "good" would just highlight everything that makes it unrealistic, making it the definition of uncanny. So, unless I feel like a certain frame range won't cut it for me anymore, I won't ever try to go "higher" and "better". That counts for my still renders, too.
In this case, I feel like whatever new technique I decide to use, 15 frames won't do. So, I'll slowly transition into 30-frame animations, which takes us to the Elena scene that kicked off this post. That's a 30-frame animation that will be among the ones I use for some scene reworks. Is there anything special about it that justifies it having thirty frames? Not really... but I gotta transition somehow. I peaked at fifteen, now I need some room to grow. A testament to that is how this Elena animation was the quickest one I've ever done, taking me less than two hours on a good morning to iron out its motion. I used to spend two days making something that looked nowhere near this good.
New Patreon tiers.
If you take a look at my page, you'll see I've finished up with some long-due restructuring of my tiers. I added a new one and removed another. The benefits system has always felt a bit janky to me, but I think they'll look a little better going forward. If I'm not mistaken, I think that the whole system exists to dictate how much sales tax any potential supporters might pay. I would love to hear from you guys on this -- did the restructure make it better? Worse? Do let me know. I'm not the government, I'm really not out to make anyone pay more taxes than they should.
Also, all supporters may be getting a little more bang for their buck going forward. So, read below and consider some options.
Animation workshop.
Again, I don't remember how in-depth I was last time I talked about this, but I'm gonna be taking some of the animations I made in 2022 out of the vault. I'm also going to be posting previews of new animations I make for the game or the gallery in "Animation Workshops". A series of posts focused on my complete animations.
Exclusive supporter artwork.
In the next few days, you'll see some new exclusive artwork here on Patreon. They're part of the special gallery section that will be featured on the supporter build of Mad World. Those are some of my best renders that have a little extra care put into them. Yes, most of them are very NSFW.
However, since those are meant for the Itch.io build, they'll likely be available only for the new "Warlock" tier and above. An alternative way to access them would be to own a copy of MW on Itch.io.
I might post some "canon artwork" too. Some one-shots of stuff that happens in-between scenes/chapters that you don't see, and also some of the gallery's one-shots. That's a lot of artwork that will be seen here first way before anywhere else. Not all of them are locked behind the Warlock tier, but a lot of them will. Anyway, stay tuned!
I'm still here, and thanks to you all, I'm still happily at it.
