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Ummm... well

For the body movements, I did two different ones. The monky one I made two frames for blinking, the first half shut and the second shut, i noticed that behind the glasses, the second frame looked like a glare, so that took care of my eye animations, the arm just went from down to pointing straight out, but i made one frame of a motion blur behind it, then another frame of the motion blur at half opacity. that made it look like it was moving fast.

For the other two, I simply made about 4 positions of the arm for movement. Like the cyclops one, there are only 4 frames of him lifting his arm, just enough that it doesnt look to abrupt and then 3 animations for the hand moving the glasses. i think the major trick was that since my av was wearing a dark shirt and glove, i didnt have to spent too much time drawing the actual frames, i just focused on position, and speed. the optivc blast was just a bunch of frames of an airbrush tool being clicked, then saved, clicked again, saved, clicked again, saved. so it looked like it was kind.. growing i guess. the smoke on the smoking one was a paintbrush with a spatter property and a low opacity to make it look whispy, and i would erased using an eraser set to a low opacity to so the smoke kind of thickened and faded as it rolled. its pretty easy, if you want, i can show you the frames for the animation itself.

That would be bloody awesome!

Ok here we go, this isnt all the frames but enough to give you an idea of what i did.


Frame 1 is me just holding the cigarette
Frame 2 is my arm lifted slightly, the way i did this in the arm movements was make a new layer, and then color white over the previous arm, so the arm was still there, but i could draw a new one.
frame 3 is the same, arms a little higher, but the direction of the hand and cigarette is different to make it seem as if it is in motion while it lifts. same white out process, but keeping them on seperate layers, youll see why.
frame 4 is the same as before, lifted and turned slightly.


Frames 5-8 were all the same except i started using brighter red colors on the ember of the cigarette, and added a couple more pixels of gray so it looks as though he is taking a drag.


See, here is why i did the seperate layer for each arm previously, all i did for frame 9-11 was use the arms in reverse order so the arm is lowering, however i made another mouth (on another layer) to make it look like he is holding his breath.
Frame 12 is back to the original position but the mouth is now blowing out smoke.


frames 13-16 i began to add smoke, i used less frames of animation for the smoke coming out than i did fading it because the thickest part of the cloud comes out when you first exhale.


frame 17 you see the smoke now starting to dissipate while still moving away
frames 18-20 the mouth is now closed, but the smoke is still there, fading out but moving away still.

Theres more frames of the smoke fading the rest of the way, and then i re used the first frame several times so there would be a pause between each drag.

So you see, it really isnt about the quality, as it is about the ammount of frames. I made only 3 frames for the arm moving, and 2 frames for the mouth moving, the rest was just putting them in the right order. using layers helps alot because i can have everything for the animation in one photoshop file, then put up which parts i want for a frame, copy the image merged, and make it into a jpg or bmp. the smoke i made by using a low opacity paintbrush with varying shades of grey to make it whispy, then using an eraser with paintbrush properties to erase it softly. Hope that helps.

For the monkey animation....

As you can see, I was much less thorough here, I just raised the arm and made two frames of a motion trail fading out, it makes it seem like the arm moves much faster.

Also keep in mind that the delay between each frame signifficantly alters its smoothness.

heh, good luck with that, i have not really tried animation with that kinda detail yet, my av is easy cause only his fingers show, and the rest is just black and some grey shades. doing a bare arm would be hard, it would take me alot longer, these oens i made only took like an hour apiece

Ok , I know I have been lagging severely on my latest giveaway, I have just not felt liek drawing lately, however today I spent a little while on the first one, Ursah as Aeris. I am not done, nor am i sure this will this sketch become the final version, but I thought I should at least put somthing up to let people know I have not forgotten, so here is a sample of the first pic I am doing.



Keep in mind this was just a picture I took with my digital camera, when i actually put it through photoshop I will clean it up alot.

Jeebus, first new edit in like.. I dont even know how long.

LMAO!!