#MintMint talking session

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Idk what to put here

Apologies in advance—I like vomiting out rants of every single thought I’ve ever had for the past 19 years so if you don’t wanna mentally narrate out this giant wall of text or if you’re just here for the small doodles of your characters, feel free to just skip down to the small tiny insignificant sketches I made! This is really just a giant newsletter of what I’ve been doing these past 3 months.

(Something I would like to add is pretty please don’t reblog this, I want this to be like only a small circle of people to see, if you have something to say you can leave a comment!!!)

My project. I’ve been working on my project for 3 months. 400 hours.🙂

Okay, so, for these past 3 months I’ve been aggressively relearning how to animate using the most basic animation app to exist. And what I mean by “relearning”, I mean diving headfirst into the animation studio with little to no prior knowledge of animation other than animation memes and some.. other.. stuff. And with that limited information, I managed to crank out a low-quality, crappy, mediocre 10+ minute prologue that I hate and it sucks and I hate I ha. I honestly had no idea what I was doing—I walked into animating with a giant lollipop and a propeller hat, and I came out as a 40 year old man with depression, but now armed with stacks of newfound knowledge about animating, so it wasn’t for nothing!! Seriously, drawing every day for 5+ hours is no joke; I genuinely thought this project would take like 1.5 or 2 months max with how simple I made it… but turns out drawing thousands of rendered individual frames with a bunch of other tiny prickly problems tripping you over is actually pretty time consuming even if it sucks😔.

But at least now that I’ve experienced the gruelling process of animating a several minute video first-hand, I was able to figure out my strengths/weaknesses in art and how I could exploit them, things that take a long time, things to avoid, and things to look out for. Even though I think my added skills in this department can be helpful in the future, it’s still super time consuming, which I think kinda ties nicely in my more major topic!???

I’m doing a MEGA art style change, I’ve rubbernecked at a lot of olden cartoons and decided I wanted to shift towards those art styles with no rendering and the characters are like kinda chibi in a way—you know, that kind of style. But this isn’t just me wanting to copy my favourite cartoon shows though; I looked into the pros and cons of a simpler art style and the pros outweigh the cons by a landslide

I obviously am not a good artist and I’ve struggled with things like consistency, pacing and proportions, if I can just break down all my characters into shapes and add rules to how to draw them + stylized anatomy, I think It’ll help with making characters NOT look like a grown 40 year old women in one scene, a child in the other, and a teenage drunken boy in the next.

I literally can’t imagine drawing fight scenes either with full body anatomy that isn’t simple shapes, drawing a running cycle or a character doing parkour that lasts literally only 2 seconds is hard enough for my skill set. Don’t make me have to draw them engaging in a full-blown battle with each other, it’ll be even worse if the characters start shrinking every frame but I don’t notice till it’s too late.

Plus, I pretty much grew up with cartoons too, so I also just feel more connected and motivated when it comes to characters that look like Steven Universe or chibi-styled in general, it makes me wanna draw them more and reduces burnout a lot. (Seriously though, I hate shading SO MUCH. I wanna draw the next frame already stop making me go back and fix this pixel of value that wasn’t added and somehow you can still see it a mile away💔 and wouldn’t you know it I’ve lost my sanity and begun racing through / deleting scenes to make it go by faster, which ruins the pacing and everything alongside it)

Do you want some concepts? No clothing folds and allat. Sorry I was too exhausted to make full drawings… actually a lot of my actual sketches for these people are all in my sketchbook, got like 19 pages worth of all y’all’s oc’s but it’s too awkward positioning my camera to snap a pic of it

I’m learning how to do fast paced figure drawing. (Trying), and the crew isn’t here because everybody in that crew is getting a redesign and sans is having a identity crisis too

Another thing is; I’m going to be taking a break after this 400 hour grind session, no I’m not being lazy and I really DO wanna go back to dragging my finger across the screen till it bleeds (because it’s an unhealthy addiction at this point) but I NEED planning and practice.

A lot of stuff has changed since I’ve started—plot, character designs, story… I also finally started tackling architecture, designing rooms and the houses based on both the characters logic and practical functionality, cause making a background with just one giant blob of equal paint is a bit… boring. And I’m practicing art too, my art has changed quite a lot ever since I started paying less attention to small details and instead on form and movement within the lines.

I’ve got so many ideas swimming in my head I need to test out and more. I don’t have a teacher and I’m too lazy to find tutorials so I’m doing this the trial and error way. Test literally everything, cancel out the ineffective and keep the best. I need time to figure out stuff and I think it’s working because not only has my entire art kinda improved in a way, I have been able to get a truck ton of plot down and how I want everything to end and everything.

The last thing I wanna add because it’s a problem I also need to fix… holy guacamole, I NEED to improve on my story boarding and pacing—I kinda blame that on myself for cutting out/rushing scenes to get it done but goodness does the plot fly by. Like how the chocolate did the lab/true-lab scene and waterfall scene all fit in 2 minutes?? I chose the opportunity to animate less over the writing and characters itself, literally feel so ashamed after that💔 insanity and mind rot of drawing for hours really does catch up to you eventually though. The results were cringy anyways so

Yeah okay I have like a TON more of stuff to write down here as problems I need to fix, but I’ve been writing for too long and this post is getting stuffed with too much words it’s gonna overflow and shatter. Basically I’ve learned a lot of stuff from this, I’m aiming to improve in every category, even if I don’t, I gotta make some sort of progress.

So uh… that’s it, I guess? I’ll update every once in a while… nah, watch me vanish for another twenty years. That doesn’t mean I’m not still here though, I’m watching every post you guys are making and documenting every fact and detail about your characters. 👀

Sorry for the length and weirdness of this rant

I forgot to mention—I made my very own/first persona. I call them MintMail cause they’re a mailman…I don’t… really know what to do with them.. uh, I’ll probably feed them sometime tomorrow

Ohhhh boy, time to tag the people I sketched. (Guys I promise I’m not tagging you just so you can read this)

Trickster belongs to @yourloveaton !

Nems belongs to @bloobluee !

Virux belongs to @bunrux !

Sanu is mine.

Magi is also mine.

Trans belongs to @ken-tfc / @fivebecomesnone and @youregonnahavetime !

Dionysus belongs to @javaxzun !

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Made it yesterday. Was supposed to be a fun little gif I’d shove in that last post but at last tumblr only have 3 second gifs…😓 mint mail is fun to draw, animation looks a little weird though. I have much more to learn

Okay uhhh!! Hi!! Again—I’m going to be doing some rework on my account which includes purging certain posts!! I’ve already purged a bunch of posts, 20% of spoilers, and 80% because their so cringe and corny I can’t even look at them before burying my head in my face… I’m gonna be taking down the pinned post because stuff has changed and some other random tweaks 😀

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Hah

Dude I’ve spent like almost an entire hour struggling to draw a wall falling down why am I cursed with the inability to draw inanimate objects this sucks I’m throwing it out the window

UGHHGHG…. At least I know my weaknesses in art💔💔

I’m also trying to draw this guys head better, he looks weird in my style cause I’m too used to human heads.

He also kinda looks like if you punch a circle and then caress it. Like, do you get me?? Or is my vision just weird

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I haven’t stepped out my house in so long but somehow have frostbite in every single one of my fingers

I counted them there’s like 11

How did my own room give me frost bite??

It’s swelling

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I hate drawing backgrounds

SO

MUCH.

Also, I might take down the pinned post and probably some other posts too on my page, I’ll leave them be for now but their probably gonna disappear one day for private reasons 😅

Also x2,,, what is underevent..??? I haven’t been in this AU community long enough 😞😞

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………..does anyone happen to know somewhere where I can make music? I am in desperate need for soundtracks………like I’m in a crisis I don’t want empty absence of sound

I also may or may not have gotten the proportions on something horribly wrong but I can’t go back without wasting huge amounts of time so I’m just looking at it now and shaking my head

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I think papyrus would look good in ouji fashion

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Sans height

I just looked back at the undertale sprite sheets and it turns out sans is CHEST HEIGHT.

Like if you put him next to papyrus, undyne or toriel he’s literally the up to the size of their chest even in the newletter art he’s that tall 🙁🙁🙁 this is so revolutionary to me like I always imagined him like how RokoRoko drew him, like leg femur height. I imagined him SO SHORT

This is good though cause I’ve been having a lot of trouble with height proportions in a way that doesn’t make them look childish so I can make them taller now.

Is toriel taller than paps and undyne or shorter, I imagined her taller do I just draw that, is the full body sprites more accurate or is the small ones more accurate, uhh I think I’m gonna go with tall toriel actually it’s too hard imagining papyrus taller than her

Also that last post about replacing sans, everyday I’m inching closer to replacing him with papyrus, I’m pretty sure I will but like…..who knows you know😀

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Possible character replacement???

I’m losing my mind over this idea of replacing sans with papyrus, like in the crew there’s alphys, toriel, flowey and sans. But I just started thinking about what it would be like if I instead made it alphys, toriel, flowey and papyrus instead. Like it would, first of all, be really cool; I could explore concepts and relationships with the rest of the people and papyrus is a cool person in general like who doesn’t adore the great papyrus?? I’m gon be so honest I only liked sans because he was the most popular and was the face of every animation meme, but when I actually watched undertale it was papyrus that I fell in love with💔💔 sans is still awesome though there’s a reason he’s so popular 😆

This isn’t a “I wanna be different” thing, I thought it was, but I genuinely think that papyrus would overall fit the narrative better than sans would, because the things I had planned for sans would actually make a lot more sense if it were papyrus in place of him, cmon dude papyrus fighting and being apart of something is just so cool and stuff🙁🙁 not only would he let me explore new prospectives of things, new concepts and narrative blah blah blah all that stuff I’m too lazy to write it ugh it was better in my head but like he would legit fit the themes a lot more because of his character in general and connections he has with pretty much everybody, angst would go crazy too

I think the only things holding me back is that I already drew sans into the animation and the that papyrus is hard to draw, that animation thing is fine though I’m already planning to reanimate that whole slop of garbage later on. Another thing is that if I replace sans with papyrus I’ll miss on opportunities for alphys and sans moments </3, and I’ve also practically story boarded half the entire series—so if I suddenly jump in and place a tall skeleton in front of the short one, some scenes will no longer make sense… but again I can recreate those scenes sooosooooo…

I’ve been practicing papyrus in my sketchbook too, i think drawing it traditionally without exploiting things like lasso or pen moving thing it helps a bit better when it comes to actually getting used to drawing a character—so I can fix that drawing issue.

There’s also another idea that’s been brewing in my head… I know I haven’t drawn papyrus yet, but I just KNOOWWWWWW if I go with that idea, he’ll be a NIGHTMARE to draw.

I’m crying I’m thinking so rationally about this for some reason

Anyways I’m currently researching a crap ton right now on some things / ideas I had to see if it’s possible to achieve, some more designs and more writing gotta be done 😓😓

I might start turning posts into journal entries at this rate

Sorry no doodles all of my doodle strength went into traditional art and I forgot to bring it back 🙁

Wait I have this