Game Over: Abby's Tape-drone Tantrum! (Patreon)

Synopsis/Description:

Merry Christmas! (posted early, Christmas)
So, Tape and Ball tied for the win in the poll, so I decided to combine them! How's Abby feel about that?
You'll have to wait until she gets out!  
Until then, it's...  

GAME. OVER.
(insert a coin/press start to continue?)

The Rant:

So, remember this? 

Well, I also ran a poll. 

By the end of polling both "Tape" and "Ball" tied (no pun intended) for first place, which was good, because those were the two I had the most investment in. 

When I set to work, I always intended for Abby to be rotating around the drone taping her her up. However, I didn't want something so subtle that it looked like I was just skewing her design around (also, those types of animations are notoriously difficult). So I went exaggerated like I normally do!

However, I really didn't like the motion. Abby was rotating sure, but her spine was entirely straight, which made her look like a bobblehead. The other issue was her expression. While comical, the furrowed brows in the centered frames made her look derranged, rather than flabbergasted and stuffed, which was killing the appeal.

So I went back to the drawing board, and redid the thumbnails with those notes in mind:

I think this is a lot stronger, in terms of movement, even if Abby's ragdolling is a little excessive. Also, not putting brows on her eyes also makes her take a lot wilder and less directed, contributing to the surprised nature of the animation.

The other important thing is that I hadn't gotten so far in the animation that I couldn't just start over. Something a lot of illustrators have problems with is optimizing their workflow so  changes aren't catastrophic to their process. As it relates to new animators, they have a tendency to get so far and invested in their current project (or rather, the stage they are working on) that pivoting becomes difficult, if not impossible, and so a hard scale restart (or sometimes, even minor adjustment) is unthinkable. One of the marks of being a pro is being adaptable (within certain constraints, obviously). I thik the new version works way better, but I needed the flexibility to be able make that choice in the first place.

You might also have noticed that I didn't put the drone in the second set of thumbs. 

This is because I knew that whatever I did with the drone, it would be running counter to Abby and I figured I'd get there when I got there. I also was dreading the amount of asset-cleanup I'd be having to do with Abby, and, in thinking about the drone, I realized that, even if I cribbed some of the more popular designs from We-R-Nomad I'd still have to design and create assets for that too. More than Abby because it's rotation would have to be more fluid than hers!

In the end, though, I just maked a series of circles and overlaid them on top of each other for a "flying bondage roomba" effect. Cheap, sure, but the important thing is that it looked the same from all angles, making it much easier to animate. Same thing with the tape, which is just a single strip, rather than emulating the arc of the initial thumbnails. Way easier to animate.

Once I got to cleaning up the assets, I was feeling the animation so much that I decided that a simple loop wasn't enough! It had to be a Game Over! It helps that "Fail-screen" animations (basically, the screen after you have decided not to continue) are fairly muted, since, by nature and design, Abby _can't_ do much, and I knew this going in.  Game Overs are a lot of fun for this reason.

After everything was laid out, it was a simple matter of cleaning things up, making sure lighting was consistent, and picking out colors for Abby's tape and ballgag (black and silver are fine, but pink and red are sublime!). 

Add music and tape effects, and boom! Finished Game Over! I wish I'd corrected the sound just a little bit so the tapey bits match Abby's struggles, but I really wanted to move on, so I didn't bother, and hoped peeps would just match it in their heads.

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!