Progress report for August 2022. (Patreon)
Content
Thanks to video editing and discussion on 4chan about that my pony dolls being a far from canon looks. I got a link to the official archive leaked files ponies Flash dolls.
Thanks to that, I now have all 100% accurate references, of all the characters. Which I will use to build my super pony doll.
Honestly, Before that, I myself was always troubled by the feeling that something was wrong with my rigs. Something is missing. And thanks to this last bit, that feeling is gone. I finally feel like I have everything I need to start building.
I already used these refrences to make a new head for Fluttershy, which you saw in my last animation.
There are still a lot of logical construction puppet problems to solve.
(babbling about my problems in animation, you can skip)
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The problem is that I need to build a puppet with ready logic, so that all its movements and turns are 100% ready and function together normally. So that this doll can later be used for all other characters. And I wouldn't have to go back and fix them all separately, when I made the next fix or discovery. So, I have to study and try everything before I start seriously.
And do this in 2D is very problimeotic. For example, the eyelashes on the characters' eyes alone, give me so many problems.
The character's eyes already have a bunch of different blink animations and pupil movements. But also, when the character turns his head, the entire eye should shrink and go behind the face, being lost from visibility when the character turns his face away.
If I change the shape of the eye with an animation, it will break all the blink animations inside. As they work with a normal shaped eye. So this idea doesn't work, but I can resize the whole eye layer together, which doesn't break the blink animation. But along with the eye, his eyelashes shrink too, making them...flat, which, is not supposed to happen. This problem has been bothering me for so long that I've already tried about 30-40 different methods to solve it, even did a separate eyelashes 3D model that I imported into my 2D model. So I can change the shape of the eye, the lashes don't become flat, and the animations don't break.
To this day, the problem has not been solved so far and was just fixed with patches.
And no, if you say, why not just make separate eyes for different head angles as in the official Flash ponies dolls.
That would mean for me that I would have to make separate eyes for each character for each angles of the head. And since each character's eyes are unique. I will have to make a unique blink animation for each eyes, and for each eyes angles of the head.
The official Flash ponies dolls have 5 different head angles, еach with her own eye. So I have to make 5 different versions of the same blink animation. For 6 characters, that's 30 animations of one version of the blink. But the eyes have many different emotions and blink options in MLP. How many things do I have to do, just for eyes blink animation? I'm just 1 person, I do not have a team of animators as MLP team.
Of course this "work harder" solution is not for me, and using scripts and tricks I have to find a better and simpler solution for 1 person. Or otherwise, I'll never be able to do any of the big projects I'd like to do in a reasonable amount of time.
Such problems take a lot of time just to think for a solution and try them out.
And sometimes I just have to solve stupid problems, like one time my character vector lines twitching when he bent his leg, and I couldn't figure out why. And spent a whole day just to figure out what was causing this weird bug.
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This complaining about my problem because I understand that you came here to support me in exchange for animations. At the moment, my energy is only enough for one animation a month. The rest of the time I spend banging my head against the wall to come up with solutions for problems.
I apologize for that. And I honestly can't tell you how much more time will it take before I finally make this doll and go into turbo mode.
All I can say is, that I am definitely on the right direction.
Also /mlp/ AI REDUB 4 It finally came out. I participated in this collective retarded work. It was fun.
Have a good month, my fans.