Mitsuki - Art School Journey (+ Animations)

[mitsuki-youko]

though the leters and logo really seem to fit an owl more due to the head shape.

Hmmm I see ur point @daceronine...

It does kinda look better on that owl's face XD

looks like a cute cat bat

hehe thanks! I may make it a bird cat.. aka a griffin but like a cute baby griffin

[daceronine]

With some adjustments I could see it fitting a cat and a bat as well though. Now it kinda reminds me of Wanda's mask.

[gregorya]

I like the owl logo. I guess you can make a combination owl and cat logo. The Griffin idea sounds good.

[JimSt]

the overlay on the cat screamed "Scarlet Witch" adorably

[mitsuki-youko]

Can't say I've done much in terms of art recently.. I have been drawing some of my flowers/plants for worldbuilding but not doing it as much as I should..

I think I tend to overthink things.. I wanted to animate.. but was like oh its gotta be cool.. but if its cool its most likely an action scene.. with a character which is fine and dandy.. but who are they fighting and why (cuz that'd set up the animation) and also where is the bg... and I'm like ah gotta world build more to design the bg.. I could ofc just make a random background and just re-animate in the future if my idea changes... but anyways I'm a perfectionist - and not for the better lol cuz I keep getting analysis paralysis and end up not drawing anything..

so I was thinking back to before I had my story in college.. I loved animating for the sake of it and was like I should go back to that again and looked up some animation exercises... and just picked one that looked easy - for the sake of just animating for fun.

https://animatorartistlife.com/resources/over-150-character-animation-exercises-to-boost-your-skills/

I picked # 15 "Animate an object transforming into another object"

Then I had an idea.. if I wanted to animate a fight but don't wanna bother with the plot deets of it I could just draw my 2 mcs (Hydra and Maxus) sparring.. but it was a bit hard to visualize at first in terms of the angle I'd animate it from so I decided to do a little comic that idk if imma finish..

Basically Hydra swings Sebastian (his hammer thing) at Maxus who jumps up and we don't see it in this page but she ends up just jumping on Sebastian's head/hammer part lol and she's like "Cmon bro you gotta be faster than that to hit me."

(hydra is super fast but maxus is even faster.)

[catsforsnacks]

Worldbuilding is a massive endeavor so I wouldn't stress too much about it. Just take it small bites at a time and enjoy the process. I find it to be a fun way to give you direction with whatever you are practicing at the moment. Practicing landscapes? Draw the environments of your world! Practicing 3d shapes and volumes? Design the vehicles! It always gives you something to draw so you never get stumped there.
I love that animation btw.
Keep up the good work!

[daceronine]

I love animation. I used to do it back in my day a lot more, when I had more spare time for it. When I tried to do it a bit more seriously, I realized it was going to be a huge time commitment. Like, doing 10 seconds where you pour attention to the BG, shading, FX and other points, it can take over a month depending on the amount of frames used. At that point I thought it would take a whole team to do something of what I had in mind and checked out to move into something else. No wonder animation studios can be so hard to work in.

It's still fun to do though, to see stills come to life in any capacity is a whole lot of fun. Once I get some time I hope to dive into it a bit as well (welp, I never get enough time, so who knows).

Love the circle to box animation btw. Just like with art, I believe animators use references when doing their animations. Like dances, choreography or the like.

I'd love to see the spar in animation form, but I can imagine it would take a while.

[gregorya]

The process of world-building Seems like a challenging process. Just looking on YouTube, there are dozens of videos about it. Do you have Campfire writing? I think it's software to keep track of world-building.
The animation looks like a bit of a challenge.

[mitsuki-youko]

Worldbuilding is a massive endeavor so I wouldn't stress too much about it. Just take it small bites at a time and enjoy the process. I find it to be a fun way to give you direction with whatever you are practicing at the moment. Practicing landscapes? Draw the environments of your world! Practicing 3d shapes and volumes? Design the vehicles! It always gives you something to draw so you never get stumped there.

Haha yes its not so much that I don know what to build but more of I feel like by the time I'm "done" I feel like I might have forgotten something so that leads me on a trip to try to note down all the things I need to build - and even then I'm like I must be forgetting some vital worldbuilding thing XD

Like say for one city I created flowers but for another city I completely forgot that I even need to create the flowers. its this kinda stuff that gives me analysis paralysis XD

Like, doing 10 seconds where you pour attention to the BG, shading, FX and other points, it can take over a month depending on the amount of frames used

Haha yes this animation took me 70 hrs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vYqn7Ivn0E

this one took me 64.5 hours (uncomp'd) I think comp'd took about an additional 2 hrs: https://youtu.be/EceDbSYa_l8

Love the circle to box animation btw. Just like with art, I believe animators use references when doing their animations. Like dances, choreography or the like.

Thanks! and yea sometimes I use references tho ill admit I haven't been really, even tho I should I found a cool explosion on reddit that I saved as a ref tho.

I'd love to see the spar in animation form, but I can imagine it would take a while.

ic its uncolored it shouldn't take that long if its just a sketch.. I find that what takes the longest is the lineart.... gotta make it look pretty!

Do you have Campfire writing? I think it's software to keep track of world-building.

No actually, I use Obsidian instead. Someone on the worldbuilding subreddit recommended it and it's the best thing ive ever come across in my life!! I love obsidian and would recommend it to everyone

https://obsidian.md

[daceronine]

Those animations are very neat! I had seen the second one before, but not the first one. But yea, animation takes a lot of time.

[gregorya]

70 hours of animation? That's alot of time. There are youtube videos that take a long time even with a team of animators.

No actually, I use Obsidian instead. Someone on the worldbuilding subreddit recommended it and it's the best thing ive ever come across in my life!!

Interesting. I think this was mentioned before. I'll check it out.

[mitsuki-youko]

thanks @daceronine

@gregorya haha yep in fact for my trailer, I'm hoping they'll run for about 1-3 minutes depending on the trailer. so I plan on allocating 1 year of time for just the trailers (by that I mean any free time I have outside of work) - when I'm ready to start the trailers ofc. still got more plotbuilding and worldbuilding to do before then... after all trailers will have bgs and I need to world build em so I can draw em

there'll be 6 trailers. 1 main one and 5 shorter ones (1 for each main character)

[mitsuki-youko]

made a mech design for term 6 hw..

Redesigned my Assassin bot which used to just be a diamond shaped thing lol

[daceronine]

Nice! Looks pretty dangerous, like the squids from Matrix.

[gregorya]

Interesting design. Does it crawl on its legs?

[mitsuki-youko]

thanks @daceronine and @gregorya!

Interesting design. Does it crawl on its legs?

I imagine it as something that kinda floats in the air... moves kinda like jellyfishes in the air if you will...

its blade tentacles are as fast as its machine guns and are extendable to a meter or so.

It's laser beams are fast too...

some of my mc's (Alis and Mouse probably) will have trouble getting away safely from just one of them, while others will be able to outright destroy a swarm of them without breaking a sweat cus they're that op XD (namely Maxus, Hydra, and Mal)

Any normal people who get targeted by one of these would like just... die lol but my mcs mostly arent just normal everyday people

Luckily they are rarely seen and rarely used.

[jasminerosepowell]

This is super cool! you're brave for tackling the mech design I tried and my brain was just super fried

Also, dissecting the design what are the blade/whips connected to and how?

[mitsuki-youko]

@jasminerosepowell Thank you!! I procrastinated on that for a while (I'm usually a pre crastinator instead but here it was a bit hard so i was like ill wait a bit before i do it XD)

Also, dissecting the design what are the blade/whips connected to and how?

This is a GREAT question!! I havent designed it from the side yet but I totally should do that

Most of the time when I'm designing something its usually not mechs XD

Like I can design weapons fine but Mechs are so big and have so many parts that I usually have a bit of trouble with them and get brain fried too XD

Back in High school i would make replicas of RWBY Rose's Scythe gun thingy and Lightning (FF13)'s gunblade that would fold and everything...

I don't have those anymore but here's a more recentish example (within the past 7 years).

This one is Cy(Maxus)'s Hoversword:

and the animation i never finished for it lolol

Doing stuff like this is pretty fun when I have a very solid idea of how the thing should work and how it moves exactly.. i suppose when designing mechs i first should think about what it does more and how it moves as well

[daceronine]

Yo that animation is so cool!

[mitsuki-youko]

Thanks! I made that back in 2022 but just never finished it XD