The Things I Do For You People... · 7:59pm Dec 4th, 2016
Here's a sneak peek at the cover art for Tuesday's release:
Obviously, this isn't anywhere near the finished product. I'd hoped to finish it today, but I'll do so tomorrow, and hopefully have enough time to redo the original Flight Camp's cover art so Whimper's appearance is updated for any new audience.
But Cracker, why would you post this? It's ugly, it's awkward, it's obviously not done. Except maybe the armoured kid. He looks familiar 
Do I know that pony?
No, Rainbow Dash, you just think you do.
As for why I'd post this? To test my abilities.
Wait, no, that was Itachi. To gauge and engage with my audience. I'm trying to work out a way to more efficiently pose ponies (and later original characters) in Synfig, the animation program, and I'm thinking of doing a tutorial on the subject some day. It'll be on my New Year's resolutions list for 2017 to make an animation and/or a tutorial in that program. I'm showing you this now so you can see at least one of the steps in this workflow: doing everything with proxies first. I have the girls set up, but anytime I try to do anything on the finished models, render times in the viewport slow down to about a second and a half. That's abysmally slow. With these proxies, which are obviously just simplified Scootaloo models, it stays down to about 0.6 seconds, and that's if all four are on screen at the same time. With Hammer in the background, it's back to one, just below.
It's easier to pose this way, easier to work with. The mouth shapes are sloppy in general, though; I made those a while back and the strokes have too many vertices. Again, because Scootaloo is the base, the snouts are orange. So are the split-up arms. If ever you have felt embarrassed about your art skills, rest assured: it always looks this bad at some point in the development. It'll look better once the actual models are put into place, and the eye poses are done, so you can see who's wincing and who's angry.
So.. yeah, this is what I'm working on, still. I hope you'll pardon me that I'm a little behind on it, it will be up for Saint Nicholas, you will get this on the sixth, and Whimper's new look will be added soon after. I hope you'll enjoy it. Wait 'till you see what I did with the title card.
Cracker out.
