Sauntermations (Patreon): Pauline's Spicy Sring Bunny Sprint! (Patreon)

Edit: 

• Got a rant with lots of goodies! Enjoy!

Synopsis/Description: 

 Sadly, Pauline finds out the hard way that the "Spicy bunny" and "spring" powers were totally NOT meant to mix-and-match! 

Process Gif/Alt. versions:

Spring/Bunny combo:

"Spicy Bunny" Pauline:

Reverse Spicy Bunny Pauline:

The Rant: 

So, this was fun! Lets dive in.

So, I was chatting with False Alias over Discord, and I asked them about the possibility of their elf girls appearing in bunny suits, since I was planning on doing the same to Abby: 

Something that came to mind as we were chatting was Princess Rosalina: 

And the Bunny Mario power-up from Super Mario Land: 

Rosalina came up because False reeeaaally loves the character, and making fanart of her, and I suggested that they find a way to imperil her similar to this image they'd done of a "powered-down" Rosalina they'd done in the past: 

While nothing came of it in regards to Rosalina (they did do a cute reverse bun suit of their own elf Katorina, which you should check out) It did get me thinking about my own fan-attached character, Pauline... 

Why Pauline?Well, in certain kink circles there're a group of bondage/DiD artists who have latched on to and become known for being associated with the Nintendo princesses.

ImaDeej and Princess Peach: 

 Shaxbert and Princess Daisy:  

False Alias and Rosalina:  

And, of course, yours truly and Pauline: 

So, why Pauline? Well, around the time I started getting serious about kink doodling, Super Mario Odyssey was just dropping, and I tried to persuade False into taking Rosalina on a tour of the SMO world. That didn't pan out, but I decided to then do it with Pauline instead, in Pauline's Super Peril Odyssey!  

I picked Pauline because:

• She's actually in the game
• The others were "taken," and I wanted to stand out with someone who doesn't see a lot of usage. 

From there, in completing the series, I became the "Pauline" perv, to match the other three.  Though, I haven't done much more with her because I like it when my fanart feels like an organic part of the world and... well, Pauline neither associates with the larger Mario cast very much (Peach/Daisy), has a dedicated relationship linking her to the extended Mario world (Peach with Mario, and Daisy with Luigi and, implicitly, Waluigi. Donkey Kong is so far spun off that the connection feels tenuous at best), nor is implied to travel or socialize very much (Rosalina and her space home). So finding situations to place her in outside of Mario Odyssey, Donkey Kong and the multiplayer games feels very stretched, and I'd rather focus on what makes her (and my usage of her) unique, rather than shoehorning her in like a toy.

So, why this?

well, with the aforementioned bunny (and the current month of bunnygirls), it felt "organic," to have a power up that implicitly tied to the lore of the world (Mario has used animal power ups before, and there is explicitly a bunny power up), and the spring power has always had kink potential:

It helps that I have had practice in the area of malfunctioning "power ups": 

And more relevantly: 

The thing is, I was NOT looking to repeat the Rosalina loop, and not just in terms of aesthetics either.

My rendering style can be boiled down to five major layors:

• Line art
• Color Flats
• Shadows
• Highlights
• Specular Highlights (the really shiny bits)

So for a traditional, hand-drawn/painted, frame-by frame animation? Multiply every pose-frame by x5, and you get your result. With exponential complications for drawing a character with a complex fashion design or multiple colors.

(sidebar: this is part of why Abby is so simply designed, and why she tends to end up naked a lot, where I only have to fill in one color. Its also part of why a lot of characters are very simply designed, like the Mario cast. Simpler designs mean more prominent focal points, and less work overall)

Either way, no thanks. I was doing this with assets.

First stop? Story poses:

 Pretty simple, and pretty easy to see where things needed to break down (head, hair, torso, boobs arms, thighs, calves) The cool thing was actually getting to reuse the major upper body assets (head, torso, boobs, and arms), as opposed to having to redraw them from scratch, like the calves and hair. The main surprise there was having to break the arm into shoulder and armbinder, because the shoulder needed to sit above the torso (and overlap it in motion), while the arms obviously had to be behind it.

You might also notice that I don't have the coil or ears in this rough. With the ears, I was just being very lazy, and putting off doing them. This is a bad idea, because you want all your planning done before you begin animating, in case something goes wrong that coulda-shoulda been caught during planning. However, having just come off of Abby...

...I was confident I could recreate what I needed to.

As for the coil, while I was confident I could attach it to the current animation after the fact like the ears, it boiled down to not really being sure I wanted to include the spring coil. That's why there's a variant without it.

On the one hand, the spring is more accurate to the games, looks like a restraint, and gives Pauline added incentive to be hopping

.On the other, the goofiness could detract from the sexiness, and it does cover up her gorgeous bunny outfit.

In the end, I decided to make the uncovered and reverse bunny versions Patreon exclusive, something I don't do enough, but I put off the spring 'till the end.

Its funny that I mention breakdowns, because that's not actually what I do next. The first thing to do, after roughing out the story poses, is to smooth out the animation. 

The reason for this is because, despite the usage of symbols and motion tweens, you want to trust the computer as little as possible and your eyes/heart/experience as MUCH as possible. In this case, this meant making sure that the inbetweens between story poses flowed as accurately as possible, with the the appropriate arcs and timing. So I had to fill in those blanks as best as possible. Now, despite that, I did as little redrawing as possible. Not out of laziness, but partially for consistency, and also partially for efficiency, so I could spend less time refining a single drawing, and more time making the animation smooth.

After that, I THEN broke down the story poses into assets to turn into puppet symbols. 

However, I did NOT smooth out the animation. This was to make sure that the animation story poses were as clear as possible, and that I could focus on making the right parts, rather than doing parts for every frame, which isn't very efficient. However, once I had the loop above, I could then go about filling in the blanks.

A lot smoother, yeah?

From there, cleanup....

...which included a  lot of spot blacks to imply "shininess," as well alternate frames for the boobs and torso for the "reverse bunny" look:

(no grayscale version because I never saved a composition of that particular loop)

I toyed with the idea of a pasty-less version of the reverse bun, but it felt a little out of character for the character, so I decided to exercise some restraint for once and not go that route. Its also why Pauline is OTM gagged in the bunny suit version, but ballgagged in the "reverse bun" suit; OTM feels truer to the cuter, more innocent version of Mario, while a ballgag matches the sexy aesthetic of the "reverse bun" style.

From there, it was lighting, shading and coloring as usual!

As for the coil and the ears, they basically just had to match the overlap and follow-through motions of the body pieces they were attached to. Not as hard as it looks, but still worth doing carefully:

From there, I compiled a version that had all three different versions of the animation in it. I'm actually super proud of this one, guys. Between this and Abby, I'm taking some new steps forward in my animations, and I can't wait to see where this journey takes me!

 What do you think? Let me know in the comments! Your feedback lets me know how I'm doing! Thank you for your continued support and patronage, and I'll catcha over yonder! 

-Saunter!