isn't it weird how if you get up at 7 or 8, do your work all day, then have free time and go to bed at 11 that's absolutely fine
but if i said i get up at 10, do fun stuff in the morning then work in the evening and go to bed late, i could be called lazy, nevermind that i'm getting just as much or MORE work done as i would in a traditional work day
Okay so. So decomposing executive function problems, and the things people grapple with, is a thing that I've been chewing over lately. We talk a lot on Tumblr about executive dysfunction but that's a pretty broad category of brain no worky good, and I'm honestly really curious: for other folks who struggle with executive dysfunction, which specific function causes the most problems for you day to day?
If you have more than one thing you struggle with, pick the one that causes you the most problems day to day.
HOWDY EVERYONE- so excited to FINALLY be able to show off my piece for this year's Bumbleby Big Bang!
Unfortunately no accompanying story as of yet- but I really hope you guys get to read it someday! The premise involves Yang cursed to be trapped inside a sword, which was an idea I KNEW I had to make move.
Details and development stuff under the cut!
Lots of fun collaboration with the author, Celeste! We worked together to find the look-of-picture, Blake's outfit, how the Grimm look, the style of the sword, the whole shabang! I'm really happy with how it all turned out!
When I first saw all the prompts, even before claims opened, I got to work on a handful of exploration pieces based on some of the summaries, to decide which of the stories I was interested in would be the best fit. Here's the initial idea for this one I put together over a lunch break:
After showing Celeste, we got to work finding the look we wanted! Went back and forth a bit and found this great look for Blake! Also shoutout to Pinterest boards for visdev inspiration I love you Pinterest boards.
Just about everything stayed to final anim, with the simplification of getting rid of that purple cloth hanging from her belt, (since I already had the rope ends to think about working with), and the light purple strap across the chest, since leaving it out would simplify the linework on her chest.
The sword also went through a bit of change! Celeste had the idea of Yang making the sword catch on fire, which I LOVED. I went with a split design so we can see the fire more clearly start from the hilt and grow to cover the whole blade.
And from there we brainstormed animation ideas! I went all over Youtube for video reference of sword work (that would be complex enough to be interesting, but short enough to be manageable). I found something we liked from Motion Actor Inc., a channel I've used LOTS for both personal and professional work (I work in 3D Animation, for those who don't know). I edited this together, to see the action from multiple places at once, which gave me the idea for that camera move that's in the final anim!
Now for the fun part! Make that badboy MOVE. For the cam turn, the first frame she's in the air I'm referencing the top left video, and the frame she lands I'm referencing the bottom left one. While she's airborne I'm just inbetweening that! No reference for the Grimm, just wanted it responding to her attacks, but I end up tweaking the roughs later on to make the block feel stronger.
Then from there we had to actually figure out Grimm designs! Nimona had just released, and Celeste and I loved it, so she asked if I could take some inspiration from Nimona's shadow form! GLADLY. Here's what I came up with!
I was going between how the movies and comic designed Nimona, really loving the almost liquid shadow of the movie, but also how the comics had this broken up/held together rougher form. Celeste liked the second to last one the best! The original plan was to have it leave a wispy shadow trail like the concept art, but to simplify the animation we left it solid instead!
Next up is tiedown! Basically just getting the roughs more on-model, so the lineart comes out nice and clean. I've also transferred the new Grimm design to the base from earlier, and fire's also outlined orange so it reads clearer. (SPOILER- if you look REAL close here, you can see Yang visible in the fire! I liked the idea of Blake's slash also doubling as Yang throwing a punch. The idea is in the concept art earlier but now it's working with the action.)
Next step- final look of picture!! I asked Celeste for sources of inspiration to draw from when thinking about environment design, and we got Nimona, She-Ra, and Owl House! Used each of those as springboards for shading style, colour palettes, and how the fire would look!
From there, we kept the straight trees/bush/lake/foreground greenery from the first one, the blues from the second, and the fire from the third!
Once I had this frame, it was a matter of working backwards and making the background work pre-camera turn (which was ABSOLUTELY the most challenging part of this process). Learned a lot doing this! Procreate isn't quite equipped to make something like this efficient, but I'm pleased to say that Dreams would make something like this easier in the future (keyframing objects instead of hand-drawing/spacing duplicates by hand, for example).
From then on it was just colouring the lineart, adding shading, and finishing up the background! Beginning-to-end this whole process was beginning of July to end of October!
I had an absolute BLAST putting all this together. Here's to next year where I find a way to do something even more ridiculously complicated!! It's fun!!!