Dungeons & Dragons - Dipping into some animation stuff

Good afternoon folks. I hope you're having a nice weekend.

So over here, having finished that last bullshittery, I took a short weekend break before arriving in the midweek wondering what to edit next. Entirely accidently, I fell into some tinkering on that ancient Dungeons and Dragons bullshittery project.

If it's alright, I'd like to just keep messing with it for the moment? Making some progress whilst I'm sufficient enthused? I don't know if this is going to be the next project, mind you. For the moment I'm just taking advantage of the momentum and having some fun.

So for those not familiar, the Dungeons and Dragons bullshittery is an absurdly difficult project that's been on-and-off of the back burner for years now. Made difficult by the fact that its entirely audio-based with no game to record. Meaning the visuals have to be created by scratch and animation is hella difficult.

Fun! But difficult.

There's a pre-visualisation made here to serve as a guide for later animation work. For those curious as to what this project is. 

Generally, the work involves making 9 "puppets" in After Effects. Complete with moving lips, arms, neck, etc. And then keyframing them to move in sync with the dialogue and each other. Flipping between whatever layer is needed depending on what action is being performed. For example, this is Digby's:

The tricky bit is figuring out precisely what I need, requesting it off the artist I'm commissioning. And then animating it properly to fit the actions on screen. Sorting out the jank scene by scene.

Collectively this should make a composition of several After Effects compositions, working together. Four or five layered on top of each other.

And one area I want to focus on (and an area I personally feel is crucial for any piece of animation) is making sure the characters mouths are moving in time with the spoken dialogue. As such, each puppet has separate compositions for their mouths and eyes. Which I can animate carefully in any given scene. With a batch of pre-made mouth shapes to serve as options.

It's a time consuming process. But one that I think is quite important. For I've seen many excellent animated shows ruined by the characters just flapping their gums aimlessly whilst the dialogue is dubbed in.

Same gif below with audio.

Despite how long this project has been in the freezer, I don't think I've done too badly so far. There are 9 characters in total. And I've finished keyframing 7 of them. There's a lot of jank to be fixed later. And it's all building up. But 7 of 9 isn't bad.

I just need to try and tackle by far the most challenging pair of puppets - myself and Cyanide. Therefore I've sent some requested drawings to the artist and I'm just waiting on their work.

As for this week though, let me show you what I've been doing on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday :)

Our D&D party was given an adventure to protect "a wagonload of provisions". And a realised that it was a bit of a plain looking scene. Moving down the road with a horse and cart, doing very little.

I considered that, one of the first sets of moving images was of a racehorse galloping. And there have been many different sets of photographs since then showing horses walking, running, trotting, etc. 

So I gave myself a bit of evening fun on Wednesday. I broke a similar gif into 20 frames of motion to act as references:

Then I went into photoshop. Took the finished horse asset by the commissioned artist and moved the limbs in approximately the same positions 20 times.

And then I gave the wagon itself a bit more motion. With some overall rattle as it moves down the road:

And whilst it's just a work in progress and it need a lot of finishing work, it suddenly has a lot more life than the pre-vis. This is however the point where I excitedly reached for my graphics tablet, only to find that the pens have died and will not charge. Replacement arrives on Thursday. Rats!

Also frustratingly, it's the sort of project where it's difficult to really sit back and show the whole thing end to end, even as a work in progress. For much of the timeline currently looks like this:

And I very much empathise with something the Youtuber LazyPurple said about his own  animations. In that when a project goes on for this long and gets this big, it starts to become like quicksand. Making progress in one way just pushes back against you in another direction - meaning it feels like you break lots of stuff somewhere else.

What I need to do is try to stay focused in one direction and get both Cyanide and my own characters animated. And then enter a sort of nebulous "finishing and polishing" phase, minute by minute until all 24 are done to my satisfaction. When that will be I cannot say.

For the moment though, I'm just going to chip away at it some more if you'll permit me.

Much love,

Soviet