Barbie (pt. 1) (Patreon)

Another fashion animation is in the works! 

I'm so hyped for the Barbie movie, especially the costumes. I really wanted to draw the costumes I liked, and shuffling through them like a dress up game seemed like a fun concept. Like my EEAAO animation, I haven't seen anyone do a concept like this and I want to be the change I wish to see in the world...that said, if you have seen someone do this, please let me know. Twitter's rate limits make it really hard to browse art right now :/

It's really funny that this is the post I have to share with you this week because I've been at a creative crossroads all week. Someone offered me an opportunity to share a table at Fanime next year, and it seems like a great chance to get my name out there and actually sell some stuff, but making a bunch of new merch would mean taking away time from my game development. So I was torn because I'd really like to launch the game and have my own IP, but then who knows if the game is even going to get attention, but then also what if all the time I spend on making merch is gonna be worth it because it's totally likely I won't make enough money to justify the costs, but then...you get the idea. Analysis Paralysis is what they call it, I think.

I wasn't even thinking of considering this Barbie idea as merch (I was thinking more magical girl and anime fashion for Fanime), but this is a much smaller scale project than the EEAAO animation and it would be nice to have a follow-up to my most viral work, so I figure if I can get it done in a few days, I might as well. So when stuck between two options (Fanime merch vs gamedev), I chose the third 🤣 But I told myself if it takes more than a week to finish this, I'm scrapping it.

To keep this small scale, I'm just going to stick with the costumes I like the most. Three of them have the same pink gingham pattern so in my head it should make coloring a breeze. It's still plenty of looks (five outfits + the underwear which is inspired by a Chanel two-piece worn by Margot Robbie outside the movie), and I'm sure there will be even more once the movie is out. There were a few I didn't include because the trailers didn't give a full look of the outfit, so I'm hoping we'll see more of them later. I can add more outfits to this animation easily, but whether I do it will depend on the public reception.

(The original sketch I drew to see if the idea in my head would actually work on screen.)

Less than fun fact: I hate drawing feet with toes. This is because I just don't like looking at toes in general, and it is why almost all of my designs have closed toe shoes. But not only did I have to draw Barbie's feet for this, but I had to look up references because her feet are molded into a distinctive shape so I can't just draw any random feet and call it a day. So imagine my agony as I scrolled through pages of search results for "barbie feet".....

This is a much smoother animation than the frame-by-frame drawing for EEAAO, and that's because I coded it in Godot, the game engine I use for Sugarplum Cafe! You'd think it wouldn't be hard to move an object from Point A to Point B smoothly, but Clip Studio Paint doesn't offer this feature. I was told by friends that After Effects and Blender might have the ability, but I'm not shelling out money for Adobe just for this one thing, and Blender is famously difficult to learn...so I figured I would just use Godot's sliding features and it worked LOL

If anyone's interested, I'm happy to write up a technical explanation in a future WIP post!