Merry Christmas Newgrounds!

All I want for Christmas is a happy gathering with the family in a couple of hours...

...and a Silver Whistle on NG wouldn't be bad either...lol

Although I've failed my initial deadline to get ZOA out by now, I anticipated this, and I still have about a week left before 2009. I'm confident I can have it out before then.

Tackling the hardest scenes to animate first...right now it's Jehuty shredding up a Raptor.

2 frames down...46 more to go...

It's all down-hill from here.

Film at Eleven.

EDIT: Huh...it's my 42nd News Post...my favorite number! :D

Also, picture may or may not be shopped. Lol

Remember when I said this was probably the most difficult scene to animate?

After tackling the "Jehuty vs. Raptor" scene, I've been proven wrong.

As you can see, I'm spending a lot of time detailing Jehuty, and not really caring so much for the Raptor (for consistency purposes, of course)

But I decided ahead of time to go ahead and get Jehuty's paint-scheme down. Not only will it serve as a palette for the following frames, but this helps me tremendously for the onion skins. As you saw in my last news post, the animatic of the scene is in black and white. So when I'm in-between frame A and C, when A is in color and C is black, I can gain a better visual on what frame B should look like.

And then I'll just keep working down the line until all of it is done.

The scene with the link above is mostly random debris falling; that should be easy. But this scene requires precision...

...probably why I'm also opting to tackle it when I'm better rested :/

Also, I know somebody is going to ask somewhere down the line, the reason why I'm going for Jehuty's "2nd Runner" paint scheme is simply because it looks better than the awful Teal and Orange, "Miami Dolphins" shit-scheme that it actually had in the first game.

Now that I've had the monotanous task of getting the colors just right (or rather, acceptable) I'm going to get an hour's rest before I'm up with family again.

Film...ahh fuckit, more later.

Thought I'd share this with you.

Highlighted in Red? Pain in my ass. Took me hours.

I haven't slept.

Next I'm doing Jehuty shredding the Raptor...conveniently, also pictured.

ZOA > Sleep.

Film at...yeah...

Halfway done with the animating process. Discluding the touch-up process, where I get rid of the pink-mannequins.

Because I'm learning as I go, I can physically tell it's getting a little easier. So that's awesome, but Lord Almighty, I hope I can get this done in '08.

There are about five scenes of complex frame-by-frames, and about the same amount of simple stills and tweens. I'm relieved that I can just see light at the end of the tunnel.

...But, there is No Rest for the Wicked.

You may wanna breeze back a couple of News posts, seeing as how this is the third installment for just today.

Basically I'm just taking a break while I update...sort-of multitasking.

I am on a roll today! Completed a couple of scenes of lip-syncing, and the bridge to the Raptor fight against Jehuty (probably one of the more complex frame-by-frame scenes in the flash, but also the quickest.)

It's my goal to get a little more than half of what I have to do on the flash done tonight, or the morning of the 24th. Grandma's in town for the holidays, so I won't be able to work this afternoon (or possibly even this evening.)

But family comes first.

Fiiiilm at Elevennnnn.

P.S. I think I got a thing for debris in my depictions of destruction.

Pictured below is possibly the most difficult scene to animate in the whole flash.

I've been wrestling it for about four hours now.

Basically, the white robot is firing his machine gun at a Raptor which will float down preparing to strike. The entire background slowly creeps off to stage right, and zooms over to the door on the right.

While all of this is going on, Leo is coming out from between those two boxes, freaks out, and is running over to the door on stage-right. (The background tweens accordingly, as if the camera is following Leo.)

THEN, as just as he reaches the door, the white robot explodes, with appropriate lights around the area Leo just vanished into, then I got falling, still-smoking debris scattering around all over the place, while the Raptor slowly looms on-screen.

Every once and a while when I get frustrated I skip to something simpler like lip-syncing ADA, which I'm now taking a break from flash to post this News update. But after I post, it's back to the coal-mines.

Film at Eleven.

Piss and Moan, Piss and Moan.

Deadlines Deadline.

Bitch complain rant.

Work work work.

Film at Eleven.

...No really, I'm having fun animating this thing, even if I am stressed about getting this thing submitted while 2008 is still around.

I just thought I'd make fun of my own news-posts for once.

I know for a fact I'm not going to be anywhere near done by Christmas. But expect it as one of my '08 submissions, for sure.

Now I'm going to bundle up...warm up...and keep working.

...Even though Flash is starting a nasty habit of crashing repeatedly...it's gotten me paranoid to Ctrl+S every frame.

It's strange, and I really prefer it wouldn't do that.

Oh well.

Gyahhh, fuck my life I'm tired.

So eventually, I got so fried out that my drawing started to get sloppy, so I put the stylus down and I decided to check to see how much more I had to go.

Playing and stopping through the entire flash on the way, I took note at the seconds it was counting off to me, and jot down the parts that needed special attention; i.e. elaborate motions, lip-syncing, and basically shit that wasn't already done or wasn't basic tweens or stills.

Discluding credits, with a run-time of 162.5 seconds, I have 54.6 seconds left to go.

Then I gotta do the rest.
Then I gotta pretty-up the whole thing...meaning replace Pinky the Mannequin with flesh and clothes.

With six days left to go for my personal deadline, I'm teetering on my confidence scale, but leaning more-so towards "I can do this shit."

You have to keep in mind most of the flash looks like the still below; crude outlines of what's supposed to be going on to the sound, which gets a little funny when you're sitting down watching the thing from the beginning, and it steadily declines, then violently plunges in quality. lol

Ehh...I'll tackle the rest of this beast tomorrow. Now that my sleeping schedule is royally fucked, I'm going to try to balance it with a nap or something.

Psh...yeah right...more like a hibernation.

I'm pulling an all-nighter tonight, fuckit.

Just got done with the complex head-explosion frame-by-frame...playing it back, it's rather quick, and almost insignificant, but little surges of detail every once and a while spaced out through the flash will help keep it bouncing and interesting, so I stand by my efforts.

Now I'm implementing Pinky the Mannequin along with the timeline as I go, for instance right now I'm taking a break from the scene right after the still pictured below, where the larger man in blue (the cop) is intimidating Leo (in blue with the yellow collar)

This is gonna be a loooong week.

One week left until Christmas. One week left until my deadline.

I've concentrated my efforts on the more complex frame-by-frame scene. Today, I finished an elaborate explosion complete with falling debris near the opening scene.

Next, I'm going to do the longest single line spoken (all lip-sync with Pinky the Mannequin, pretty much)

Then the scene where Jehuty fucks some shit up,

Then I gotta do everything else.

There are spots of detailed stills scattered through-out, but since I got a week left, I'm concentrating on the difficult frame-by-frames.

That way, if I have to rush it and churn SOMETHING out in time, it'll be parts of the flash that were never intended to be impressive looking in the first place.

So close, yet so goddamn far...ugh....

I got a little stressed and I stepped out to get a beer. Tried Shiner's Holiday seasonal...it's......different. I should've gone for a Shiner Bock or a Blue Moon.

Oh well. Next time. I gotta work, work, work!