Trying Out a New Animation Program (P.2)

                                    Click here to read part one if you haven't already 

 

Having had used a bouncing ball as a test, I decided to apply what I learned by trying out layers for the first time in Adobe Animate. The program allows you to have a lot of layers. 

In this project I ended up using four different layers: one layer for one of the figures, one for the other figure, another for the background, and the last one for color. 

A lot of the animations I made prior to this were not colored. I only used one layer and redrew the background each time I drew a frame, which was very tedious and at the end didn't make it look very good.  Which is why I'm glad this program allows you to have more than one layer. 

I also did an animation of Elm and animated her hair moving in the wind: 

I really like how it turned out. I used four layers for this one: one for the color, one for the hair, one of the figure, and one for the background. 

In the future I plan to post animations that are longer than a few seconds. For now doing animation consistently and doing short animations like this, helps me get back into the habit of animating.    

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Of the two animations I made which one is your favorite? 

-Quinley

Figure Drawings & Fan Art

Hello everyone, 

I thought I'd share some figure drawings of my characters I did along with my other drawings, since I recently have been working on drawing human figures. 

Let's begin:  

This is a full body drawing of Oak, I really like how it turned out in the end.

She doesn't have her scars in this drawing, because this is long before she joined the Hunters of Artemis. 

This is a drawing I did of Ginny Di's D&D character, Aisling. I really like how her hair and ears turned out. (And after drawing I realized I forgot her freckles, so I decided to edit them in.)

This is a figure drawing of Elm, it was really fun to draw her dress and hair. 

A drawing of Ginny Di's Tiefling bard, Clio. I decided to draw her because I thought the horns, and the freckles looked so cool on this particular character. 

A figure drawing of Chirara, I really liked drawing her dress. 

A figure drawing of Phoenix, it was fun to draw his wings. 

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Which drawing is your favorite? Have you done figure drawing  before? If so, who or what did you draw? 

-Quinley 

Announcing My April 2021 Project: Dolls of Wax, Eyes of Glass.

Hello Adventurers, 

 For this Camp NaNoWriMo I am going to be writing my novel, Dolls of Wax, Eyes of Glass. And this is my goal for it: 

At the moment I only know one narrator's telling of the story (that being Matilda), but in the future I know I will know more about Felix's. As for what I am going to do in July, I have plans to do my other project: The Mystery of the Body Thief, and work mostly on editing it and writing the second draft. 

As for my inspiration for  Dolls of Wax, Eyes of Glass, it came from a very detailed nightmare I had about wax dolls, which I decided would be a perfect starting point for a novel. And from there I just built on from it...

                                           Synopsis 

Genre: Gothic Horror | Historical Fiction Series: it's a stand alone. 

Maltida Moore was found dead at the castle, her brother, Felix, is missing. No trace of him was found except an eyeless wax doll made in his likeness.  What happened at the castle is unknown, but it is as if something evil is lurking within it...something evil is causing these terrible events to happen. 

                                   The Narrators 

There is a third narrator, but they only narrate a small portion of the story. And instead of including all the characters (some of which may or may not even exist), I thought I'd show who is going to be telling the story to you, and who may not always be reliable in their telling of their story to you: 

Matilda Moore 

Matilda, is a rather quiet person. She tends to sit and read books, and does not enjoy social situations all that much. She would much prefer reading books, than talking to other ladies of high class. 

                                                       Felix Moore 

Felix is a very social person, and thrives in social interactions. He also dreams (silently) of being a romantic hero, and also has a hobby he spends some of his time doing: hunting. 

                      The Soundtrack 

You can also listen to it here 

Here are some songs that I will listen to when I am writing, and I have listened to them lot when I have been plotting the story. 

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------What is your favorite Gothic Horror or ghost story? What are you writing for April's Camp NaNoWriMo? 

-Quinley 

Trying Out a New Animation Program (P.1)

Since people gave me positive feedback about my post  describing plans for my future animated short film. I thought I'd tell you more about the animations I am working on, and how it is has been going. I am trying a new program (Adobe Animate) for animation. The animation program I was using before (SketchBook) wasn't working for me (if it works for you that's awesome). 

Since I am trying out the new program, I have had to play around with it, so here is what I did: 

                                          Step 1- Getting it to work/Trying it out  

I decided as a test to do a simple animation technique, the bouncing ball.  From here on, these are my notes that I captured as I was animating: 

Given that I don't fully know how the program works, I thought I should start with something simple and move on from there. I figured out that Adobe Animate can in fact be used for 2D hand-drawn animation, and not just puppet animation, by doing this simple test. Though I did run into things that were bother-some.

This was very annoying to deal with

 Adobe Animate makes it difficult to add a frame for some reason, and I had to draw and then press delete in order for the program to understand that it was a new frame. This made it very tedious over time: to press add frame and then delete over and over. 

Why is it selecting this? 

When I first started using the program, it would just highlight what I was drawing but it didn't do that when I moved to advanced mode instead. These are just some annoying starting points, which is  what happens with every software when you do it for the first time. 

                               

                                                 Step 2- Making a coherent animation 

Now that I know how it works I decided to make a short bouncing ball animation (which is also a thing that you do when you're a beginner animator): 

This is definitely not an animation I'd upload to my YouTube channel or one that I feel super proud of, but it is a very good starting point for animating something simple when you don't know the program that well and are trying out a new animation program. 

Step 3- Color! and a Background!

One thing I wanted to do, that my other animation program made difficult, was to do color and a background. I figured I'd try it out with Adobe Animate (as a test, like before), so I used the same bouncing ball animation I made and this time added color: 

It worked really well, so then I added a new layer (it allows you to have many layers) and created a background (though I did have to move the layer down and copy it in order to do so): 

And it worked. 

Since this is going to be a series, the future posts you will see regarding it will not be test animations (though there will be a few here and there). Instead I will show you what animations I make with the program. 

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Have you animated before? If so, what animation program(s) did you use? 

-Quinley 

It's My Blog's Anniversary! (+ Drawings)

Greetings Travelers, 

Yesterday (March 9th) was my blog's anniversary, and while I will be doing more posts like this (videos of me drawing digitally) in the future, I thought I'd introduce this new style of post through my blog's anniversary. 

You can also watch it here 

In the last post I shared a drawing of Phoenix that I was thinking of turning into a water color. I ended up not doing that, because I was worried I'd mess up the drawing. 

So I instead decided to color it digitally. 

You can also watch it here 

While I didn't include this drawing in the last post, I thought I would recolor the drawing of Annabelle (above) that I thankfully had taken a picture of because the drawing got messed up. 

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Which of the two drawings are your favorite? Have you done drawing digitally before? If so what software did you use? 

-Quinley 

Phoenix and Annabelle Get Interviewed For a Villainous Job

Hello everyone,  

I didn't make a post for the holiday season last year (2020), but that was because I had this post planned which took a little longer than I intended for it to take. Instead of one video I planned to post two. And with filming and video editing, uploading and everything, it took a lot longer than oringally I assumed it would. 

Ginny Di has done three POV videos  for Dungeons and Dragons character development: one that is a healer, one that is a matchmaker and one that is a villain. The videos are fun to watch, because they make you be in character and answer the questions in character, rather than answering the questions for your character. While these were originally intended for Dungeons and Dragons characters, I thought they would also work for the characters from my novels. Even though the villain video does mention a few Dungeons and Dragons terms it can still work really well in a Fantasy setting. So, I decided to use my two characters, Phoenix (from All is Not Lost For All Will Begin Again) and Annabelle (The Lady Annabelle mystery series), and make them react separately to being interviewed by a villain. 

Let's begin: 

You can also watch it here

In Annabelle's interview, the events that she mentions happen in book two (the death of her fiance, etc.) 

You can also watch it here

In Phoenix's interview, this is long before he is working for Reyvon, so he has no job and is desperate at this point. 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Who should get the job? (Annabelle or Phoenix) and why? And of the two of them, which do you think would be a better villain? 

-Quinley 

Watercolor Paintings and Pencil Sketches

 

Hi everyone,

 I have two acting videos that I am in the middle of editing, which I hope to post sometime soon. In the meantime, since editing for those kinds of things takes so long (and since some of the footage got messed up), I am going to present for you my most recent drawings instead: 

A water color painting of Merricat from We've Always Lived in the Castle. 

I really like how her hair turned out. 

I had intended to turn this drawing of Phoenix into a water-color painting, however, I really liked how it turned out as a pencil sketch so I didn't want to paint it and mess it up. 

 I was thinking it would be neat to paint it digitally in the future.

I am not going to give out all the information for this yet (because this is something for a gothic story that I am plotting at the moment), but I used this doodle as a way to illustrate my character, Matilda's point of view. This doodle shows what happened in the story from her perspective, at least at the moment what I know of it. 

And this follows the same theme. But this time illustrating her brother, Felix's point of view. 

A painting of Chirara, I really like how it turned out, especially her hair. 

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Which sketch or painting is your favorite? And would you like to see me digitally paint my drawing of Phoenix? 

-Quinley