Progress Update (Patreon)

Hi Patrons,

Here is a quick update on how Story 8 is coming along and my goings on'ings. 

Chapter 4 (Battle) is Nearly Complete!

We've made considerable progress on the music-sync'd battle, with roughly a dozen scenes remaining to do. I'm pretty confident we'll be able to wrap it up by the end of the month, which would allow us to proceed into the Chapter 5 (of 7 total).

I'm excited to do a rough cut of the entire animation thus far, which should be clocking at well over 10 minutes done. If this we're a normal sized story, like the previous ones, we would be done by now! 

However, I'm gonna keep going to reach that original goal of a half-hour long episode. So the hype-train is not quite ready to leave the station.

Official Poster?

On the stream's downtime, I've been working on theatrical-style poster for Story 8. It took a while to figure out which story elements to include in a non-spoilery way, but I believe the current draft accomplishes that nicely.

In it, you'll see lots of dragon, gold, fire, and mystery! I plan to release it as a speedpaint once the rendering is complete, and potentially as a signed print(?). Poster shipping in the US has shown to be pretty smooth, but I have yet to test international shipping extensively. If you have a big interest in the poster print, let me know!

Dragon Animation Tips from KAP

KAP, one of our contributing animators, has done several fully-realized action scenes involving the titular dragon. As such, he's picked up some cool techniques along the way. 

One key motion is the walk-cycle, and it turns out our dragon has a horse/dog/cat-like stride. To be honest, the caricature of the walk changes depending on the personality we want to convey in a scene.

- Front legs fore-arm is longer than back legs

- Since the forearm is longer, the leg may not "contract" too much.

- Even though the dragon feet may not be too similar looking to a human one, the front part says in place while the ankle lifts first.

- KAP

I find it useful to think of the leg movement as two separate pairs of legs, that then walk in a slight delay to one another. No two feet make contact with the ground at the same time.

Dragons are one of the most complex creature to draw, let alone animate! An amalgam of reptile, bird, and mammal. I am glad that we're slowly tackling, and understanding, the beast's body mechanics.

- Another doodle by KAP

SHOMEN

I just wanted to share a very cool interactive newsletter that our production team member, Soapy, developed. It's a great update on what's up in the stick figure community ► SHOMEN.art 

Thanks for checking in on this update!