I animated it, noice.
The file’s too big, so watch it on the good ol’ Youtube.
Update! There’s two of ’em now, so have a lill’ link to the Vanilla Edition!
This took like 6 weeks to animate, lmao.
Also, don’t ever animate animal limbs without first understanding how they work ’cause damn, making those back legs move was a bane to my entire existence.
Also also happy holidays because this might be the last thing I post here this year.
- The things in my project that worked really well
One thing that really worked for this project is the smart idea to just make a shadow and animate that so I don’t have to worry about anatomy when I cannot see it. Also, I really liked how the animation came out – even though it took me a whole month and a half to make. The glowed eyes will always be my favourite part, along with the stripes on the Vanilla version. Also considering that these cats were inspired from World of Warcraft makes it so much better.
- At least 2 things to add or improve on next time
If I were to add something, I’d add a background. Now technically, the shadowed version does have a background, it’s white, but that’s not what I mean. I’d add trees, some grass, maybe some leaves – That sort of thing. Also, I’d add like a purpose to this – Where is this cat going? What’s it stalking? Is there something that it wants to get? Is it just walking? A purpose to this whole thing other than be maybe 2 seconds for a video.
- At least 1 thing you did not do well
Okay, this took so much time to create along with animate and since I do not have a whole lot of time at the moment, I should have worked on this just a little bit faster, or maybe watched a direct tutorial on how to animate a cat instead of just ‘How To Move Shapes In Adobe After Effects’ but let’s all be honest and say that finding such a video would probably take forever. (Because I did kinda try to find one)
- What was difficult? What was easy? (referencing tools, techniques, styles, etc)
Alright, as always, drawing and design will never not be the easiest part to a piece of work that I do, it’s just kinda a breeze now to draw stuff on Illustrator. Also all the stareing at the screen with a look of hopelessness is pretty easy to do as well.
Some things that were kinda difficult was finding a tutorial that actually explained what they were doing and not just some sped up video with trash music in the background. Also, just doing the animation as a whole was a bane to my entire existence and I’d just prefer to go back to Flip Note Studio to animate.
- What was the most fun vs most frustrating.
Fun? Names. Always the names. Naming is one of my favourite parts of making a piece of work. I find that the more messed up a name is or the more hard it is to read, the more mysterious my works become. For example, the original name for this piece before I added the Vanilla one and flipped their titles was called Val’Sharah. Not very hard to pronounce in my opinion, but what does Val’Sharah mean? That’s the fun part because no one would have guessed that it means Lucid Dream. And shadows are a metaphor for nightmare – You’re watching a nightmare. And that’s a metaphor for that this whole project was an entire nightmare for me to create. I don’t just name my works with no purpose to them, that’d be too boring for this much freedom.
Most frustrating thing about this project? An animation project? I don’t find anything – I’m just jesting, I found the animation to be a real tear at both my hands and my sanity. Dude, animating with this program is like a kick into the face. I’ll animate because it’s whatever for my 5 year experience but like, this program makes me want to break my fingers again just because it’s very touchy and infuriating to just make the shape move a certain way or to bend like a certain object. Seriously, at this point I’m ready to sell my soul off so that this can become easier.
- If I were to do redo this project from scratch I would…
Make the animal a snake. Change our school mascot to a snake. We’ll be called the Sunback Snakes. Sounds better than Wildcats, too. Snakes are easier to draw and animate, it’d be a win/win situation for everything.
Being serious now, I’d make a different animal. Maybe not even an animal, I’d just animate snow or stars twinkling or leaves falling off a tree. Something way more simple that can be drawn out for much longer than a cat prowling.