March Animation Update and more! (all patrons) (Patreon)

Update for ALL PATRONS! 

FYI - low-res GIFs attached to this post were already posted for the higher tiers

Hello all and thank you so much for being here and your kind support. Wanted talk about animation and the (early) results of the recent "who do you want me to draw" poll.

Poll

Let's get this one out of the way. It looks like Ochaco Uraraka from My Hero Academia is in the lead. I'll check again tonight to verify. Regardless, look for the final drawing to go up in the next few weeks.

You can help spread the word!

If you are liking the animations, art or anything about the Patreon and you want to help, please spread the word. I've had people post, tweet or otherwise mention the Patreon here and each time it meant more support and ultimately got everyone here more art. 

If you look at the Patreon LAST year this time till TODAY it's pretty indisputable we have grown TREMENDOUSLY. That's due to you! Every time you help, we get more  support and I am able to put more time into the work.

Thank you again and if you can pass along any mention or share (not pirate, haha) my public art and website links then please do so!

Animation Update - 24FPS to 30FPS

So, we are moving the animations to 30FPS. There are a few reasons but the main deal is you will be getting better and smoother animations. Some behind the scenes talk, you can skip all of it if you like.

I animate the Growth Lab at 24FPS and probably draw a couple hundred frames or more across many layers for each clip. There are about 10 - 15 clips in any full animation (more on the multi-week ones). Why do I mention this? Well, it's a LOT of freaking frames. A LOT. 

I draw and export the base movie from Clip Studio I bring it into Premiere for editing. That's where I can put in sounds and other things. This all leads to editing animation timing to work best with the whole animation. In Premiere I sometimes tweak the animation speed, length or other factors. 

Recently I started experimenting with ways to make the animations smoother and found a few tricks to make my edits look a lot better. I think you might have noticed this first with the Luna animation. I'm continuing to refine that technique but I feel it really makes growth sequences a lot more fun to watch and overall look better. 

Going to 30FPS improves that look a little more and it's not much more work so I'm doing it. In the end all you need to know is you are getting the BEST work I can do.

More Sequences and complicated animations

Another thing I am very thankful for from you is the ability to try out new techniques and ideas. These are all about bringing you new looking sequences that have exciting growth as well as vary up the methods. I know not every one of them is a winner but like my art, I always aim to improve and learn from mistakes. I think you might agree the results are getting better all the time and we are looking at the next animation being the LONGEST one by far.

Low Res GIF Previews as a means to bring in NEW PATREON (translation, YOU get more art)

(this part is a repost from an earlier update)

Every time I post an animated GIF preview on deviantArt, my main site, Pixiv, Twitter or ANYWHERE there is a noticeable uptick in Patreon traffic and almost always a few new friends and fans end up joining the Patreon. 

To make a long story short I am going to start making two sets of GIFs for certain previews. A high and a low res version. The High is for the Patreon and generally speaking will be DOUBLE the resolution of the low res preview. So if the low res version is 300x200 then the high will be 600x400 and so on.

WHY DO THIS? More people interested means more people to join our cause to get MORE animated movies. I also want to make sure people pledging get something special for being part of the Patreon, hence the high res GIFs. 

Check out what's been happening this week alone! Since I released the first Interrogation GIF preview publicly we have gotten quite a few more friends here. On top of that, the longer time frame is leading to a better set of animations! I can actually spend a lot more time polishing things up. 

OK - that's the main update and I will be posting more soon!

Thank you for your support and comments or questions are always welcome.

-Ready