Sauntermations (Patreon): WiP-Rampage! (Patreon)

Synopsis/Description: 

WIP-a-dee-doo-dah, WIP-a-dee-day!  
My, oh, my, what a wonderful day! 

The Rant: 

I wish art "could" be free.
I really do.

Because otherwise, I'd take requests publicly, rather than privately, and only from friends I've made after months/years of interactions. But the sad reality is that most people on the internet don't appreciate art. Like, when most people tell them they're looking at a minimum $200-300 for one of these loops ($50/hr for about 4-6hrs work, for ONE character. Maybe two, of they're not moving too much) they balk, because they were expecting the $30-$70 they pay for illustration pinup commissions (which, in-and-of-itself, is usually a lowball for the artist). So when someone asks me if I take animation commissions, its usually a sign to me that they have no idea what goes into my animations (even with all the optimizations I've been making to be able to make more, cleaner), and that, even if they can afford it, the ensuing interactions are probably not worth my time.

So how did these happen?

Well, something that I trepidiciously love about the internet love is the growing intertwining of animation, illustration and interactivity, where you start to see more illustrators and comic artists trying their hand at making animation. And the software companies are responding to this as well, by integrating animation functionality into illustration programs, like Clip Studio Paint, Photoshop, and Procreate. Which is cool!

The thing is, the animation mindset, workflow loop and principles are not 1:1, and you see a lot of illustrators struggling to either make their animations how they envisioned them, or make animation with a workflow that doesn't leave them mentally and emotionally exhausted afterwards. After that happens, most illustrators return to what they know. and maybe occasionally return to animation. If they stick around, its because they have an audience base willing to support whatever they make, and make the emotional labor worth the time.

But, you still have a few peeps still trying to make a go at making animations, and for those illustrators who are also my friends, that's where I come in!

Recently, I've been chatting with "OddJuice" and "Howling MadFox Hatter" about doing NSFW animation, and what makes them tick (hint: offset the boobs so they're not bouncing "with" the body). 

In a chat with Hatter, we started talking about how complicated hypnosis animation is, because its a very subtle movement. Subtle and slow movements in animation are really hard because they need to move just enough that you believe the subject is alive (and if it doesn't move, it just looks like a drawing), but not so much that the animation looks "jerky." Add on to this, that for subtle animation, the lines in the current frame need to resemble those of the previous frame so well that they look like the same line, otherwise you get "line boil" where it looks like the lines are having a seizure. For an intentional example, check out any scene in the cartoon, "Ed, Edd, 'n Eddy." There, the characters' shapes boil because they're trying to mimic the asesthetic of drawings by children, and the energy therein. But again, that's an intentional choice; most people try to avoid that.

This is a necessary evil in hypnosis animation, because part of the appeal is the slowing down of the submissive into a passive state. Do it wrong, and you get the line-boil. This gets even more complicated when you throw eye spirals into the mix because now, you not only have to keep the body straight, but also the eye patterns as well! Fuuuuuu~uuuuuun!....

...if you're purely working traditionally, that is....

For me, the workaround is to couch the eyes inside a compilation composition, called a symbol, and then motion tween the rest of the head and body along a carefully planned path and timing, thus allowing me the smoothness of a hypnotic path, while avoiding the line boil of purely traditional animation.

The first gif, where Abby get pinged, is a result of experiments with Hatter, during a Discord chat session. The second (where Abby just loops in a mindwashed state), was the unintentional redo of an old gif that I did for fun in response to a tweet by Medri Fogmatio 

I'm not normally in the habit of "redoing" old stuff, because it tends to set a bad precedent of obsessing with the past rather than moving forward. However, in this case, I genuinely forgot that I had actually made a gif talking about the points we were discussing, so the new one got made! Coincidentally, it has almost been a year, and I think I've gotten a LOT better since then. It helps that I'm intentionally using symbols as part of my workflow, rather than being an alternative to my then default process of traditionally animating things digitally.

From there, Hatter and I chatted some more about some planned animations involving their mouse shortstack, Kyra, getting hypnotized by a snake and gagged by their tail, blowjob style. The idea intrigued me enough to animate it! Kyra's an interesting character because her different artstyle makes her a little more complicated to animate in a lot of ways that highlight why Abby is designed the way she is. 

The most obvious is that Kyra has long hair that falls over her face, while Abby has short hair that doesn't. This means that, when animating Kyra, her bangs have to be animated separate from the rest of her hair in a way that doesn't obscure her eyes, in a way that Abby doesn't really have to deal with (provided Abby's bangs don't fall too far over her face). Also, because Kyra has long hair, there need to be considerations for how that's going to be animated separate from her head as well (where as Abby's curls can be animated as part of her head without disrupting to much, aside from her silhouette fringe that's always in the "back of her head")

Parts breakdown:

Also, because there's something in her mouth, and her cheeks need to distend separately from her head, that also has to be separate as well. That being said, that's not unique to Kyra, that's something you have to do for any character where their jawline has to animate independently of their skull lest you only get a jiggle effect, that feels like the tentacle is shoving against the face, rather than pumping something inside:

Still, it was a lot of fun, and I look forward to cleaning it up and finishing it!

Meanwhile, you might have noticed that I did two snapping animations. That's because when I showed the first snapping gif to Phantom.exe , they wrote up a cute little vignette of Abby (a secretary for Phantom's fictional company, Mirage Inc.) getting called into the boss's office for an impromptu (nude) photoshoot. When I read it, I HAD to animate it.

This one was waaaaay more complicated than it looks. For starters, you have the various cycles of Phantom's boob fondling and Abby's eye spirals. The latter isn't hard, but the former requires some subtle body animations on both Abby and Phantom's part, so it doesn't look like one automated statue fondling a pair of balloons attached to another. Try moving your hand without moving your shoulder, and/or by extension the rest of your torso. It's possible, but not without a concerted effort to do so. As Abby and Phantom have no reason to do so, this means you have to add that subtle body motion. 

Also, as this is happening, Abby needs to:

• shift out of her dopey grin cycle
•  slowly raise her arm in awareness, 
• WHILE her expression changes in her eyes, 
• WHILE her cat smile becomes an empty-headed drool.

And this all needs to happen organically, with no major indicators that the Smile loop has been replaced by an "Awareness" loop.

This was hardest with Abby's eyes and her arm, because you can't really tween something like that smoothly without people noticing. 

For her eyes, I just started with her eyebrows and cheeks (which she uses to emote) being really small (and, in the case of her cheek, transparent) and having them overlap her eyes to create a "confused" look. 

For her arm, that was tough, because, when I tried to just rotate her straight arm, it just didn't look natural. At the same time, I couldn't just tween it like I did with the mouth, because the shape was more complex. So I gave the pinged pose the same curved arm as the raised arm, but pinned it so close to her body that its very hard to tell unless you know what to look for (it helps how much Abby's boobs obscure everything)

Still, I'm proud of the result! 

Also, you might have noticed that there are separation points for things that don't need to be separated, like Abby's legs, and Phantom's head. This is because, while I can add deformations to their torsos, applying the same effect uniformly will cause the separated parts to look deformed, which ruins the look. Its also why Phantom's forearm is separated from her elbow; it makes the snap feel more organic.

So, to come full circle, about doing things for frienz, I was chatting with Medri about the aforementioned doodles with Kyra, and I mentioned that I liked doing things for friends. This got Medri to open up enough about a request for Kass:

Surprisingly, this isn't has hard as it sounds, because a side profile is one of the easiest things you can animate (which is why run cycles and ball bounces are my favorite kind of animation comfort food). This is is even easier because, at its core, Kass's pose never actually changes (which would be harder if she was in a 3/4 front-side perspective). She just jerks on a rod in a circular arc fashion, while her boobs and hair sell the idea that she's not just toy ride impaled on a pole. Give her a machine arm to hang off of, and a dildo to pump her, and boom, you're pretty much done.

Also, because its symbols, it makes it very easy to add Kass's body markings, something that's normally a massive pain in my keister, for consistency reasons, because she has so many, and they're very intricate.

But the other reason I did it, is because I like Medri as a person, and it wasn't very hard to do.

Honestly, in an ideal world, most of this would be free to be free, because people like you guys would value it enough that when artists ask for compensation, peeps like you guys would freely give it. Even now, the reason why I'm free to pursue the content I want is because I both have you guys AND my day job.  

Thank you for that. Hopefully we'll continue to find more people like you guys, so Abby's adventures can go even bigger. In the meantime, look forward to the completed versions of these loops soon!

 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!