Animation wip update- and a dive into how badly I've messed all of this (and more) up (Patreon)

Going to be a text heavy post so I can explain myself. I'll give the quick and simple of whats important upfront and split the rest into little bold titled "sections" or something. Honestly this is all being written up as I go, because I have a lot I need to talk about and not a lot of brain power left tonight to do so concisely.

This is a WIP post but I'm going to have it available for every tier because I think insight into how easily I overcomplicate simple ideas with messy execution important to understanding my shortcomings the past few months.

TL;DR - I tried something different with putting this animation together.
As a sketch, it worked great and was rather speedy!
As I've been working on putting everything together, it has been an absolute grind, mistake, and learning experience. Whats happened here is just a grander scale example of what I manage to do with all of my projects. Doing things because I can to prove that I can, and not considering what makes sense to do.

I can animate... sort of!

So I have a weird relationship with making animations, because all of my best work is stuff I've gone through and animated, but I also have no idea what im doing in the slightest. Ok thats a lie, I know a little bit as far as principals and such go- but I have no formal experience, training, practice, research, anything for how to properly handle animated projects. I'm just capable of relying on my eye for things to put a few frames together for simple loops.

What about the last big animated YCH I did? Why not just do that again?

The last big animated project I did was the bunny batter YCH. That project had its own slew of issues (Promising too much as a YCH incentive, and overscoping the anim's size) but it was also deceptively simple. A lot of the delay on it was figuring out how to manage some transitions into poses I never originally planned to add, but once I had those down I just had to go frame by frame and polish them up. It made a great end product, but If I want to repeat that I need to open up my schedule and charge a fuck ton more than im comfy doing to match the time investment. I wanted to avoid doing that to myself again, I wanted to experiment with some different ways of piecing together animations

...so whats gone wrong this time?

So if I want to animate, but cant reasonably repeat what I did last time, I need to find a new strategy for doing animations. If you're familliar with the artist VT of Star-Struck Studios (https://www.furaffinity.net/user/starstruck-studios/ - they're a genuinely inspiring and outstanding artist) they've done quite a few pieces that make stellar use of limited animations. Things like, little idle breathing, eye motions, talking, tails flicking around. I wanted to try and steer myself closer to that- surely if I just focus on strong poses and animating smaller portions as little highlights adding character, it'll be a winning formula! Of course, I went in blind, without asking for help, and with years less experience- like I usually do. I managed the concept- but completely fucked up its execution and failed to actually get any of the advantages I should have out of it.

Now, the results are fine. Like, I like it, I think it'll be a nice piece when its done, but fine is far below the bar I need to set for the scale of this fucking thing. I attatched a 2nd image to sort of showcase where the issue is. I split apart both characters into different body parts to animate and control seperately. For a large chunk of both Flip and Hyperion (the YCH winner), each section animates on the same frame timings. For these sections, being split doesent accomplish anything besides clutter. However for other bits like the eyes blinking, tail swishing, and the characters resting a paw on eachother- the split nature is what lets me animate them independently without having to redraw everything like in my last animation.

Sort of. See, I gave flip a faster frame timing for her breathing to really sell the emotions she's feeling. But both her and Hyperion are directly resting paws on eachother, and those pieces need to react to how both characters are moving. This turns simple 4 frames animations for each part into ??? frames needed to avoid things no longer lining up between the two. In some cases I can get away with improper lineups and clipping, but in general I need to throw in the extra frames to handle small differences.
As a sketch? Easy and manageable, its how the original idea came out overnight
As a finished piece? Every new frame is more to line / color / consider later.

Ok so, whats the takeaway? Why write the words? Ill be honest I dont really know how to title or section this I kind of just want to discuss that I've been failing to meet expectations through this post.

I've been fighting a few mental hurdles the past months and having a project like this sitting on queue and staring me down just, doesent help. No matter how much I put into it, I know I won't get the same return out of finishing it, but I need to get it done. The past week or so has been a lot of fixing it and chipping away at it- and its meant I have basically nothing to upload! I hate that! Theres not a lot of days in a month and I swear time only bleeds away faster as I grow older. I cant grow or sustain any of my art if I keep tumbling into projects like this one that fester in queue, rotting away at my self esteem as I try to decide if burning another day on getting as much as I can done is worth pushing back every other project and commissioner. And if I ignore it, it just makes the payoff feel that much more unrewarding, because I know what I have here isnt better than what I've shown in the past.

This is also just, a full transparency vent of my frustrations over making promises and goals, then failing to meet them when I get stuck in my own head. I've been telling myself that I can just segway into animated YCH's or comics, less projects but at a bigger scale. But I'm recognising the patterns here and I think I'm setting myself up to fail again if I commit to those ideas right now. Stuff like the emote commissions are highlighting where my strengths are, small little punchy things full of character. I can still animate ofc, but they need to stick to being simple and achievable. I need to leave commission works or YCH's as things that have well defined starts and ends I can work around. I still have a few ~grandiose~ ideas to try instead, but they're all being planned out carefully ahead of time so that I don't create anymore monsters in my queue.

I'm still working on art. Even through the quieter periods. I'm making a lot of mistakes along the way and I'm beyond grateful for the continued support while I make these mistakes. I don't want to end off with any grandiose promises that'll haunt me, but I know I'll eventually figure out what works.

I'm probably going to take a break from working on this piece specifically the next few days, and get as many sketches / emotes as I can done before the month ends. Ya'll deserve better than just this, and I'm going to push myself to deliver more before March is over.