#i tried to be loose with it and focus more on shape language than anatomy

[sun-marie]

sketch bc I realized I have two pirate OCs that are completely different flavors of "Pirate" 🏴‍☠️⚔☠

[the-demon-dm]

FFXV: Promptis College AU

Noctis finds himself falling for a new model at his art class...

The Prince grumbled, trying to focus on his art. Noct ran his hand through dark streaks of black, thick along his scalp. He continued to stroke and paint with his brush, staring intesensly trying to figure out what was wrong exactly.

When all hope faded, the airy words of his menor Ignis made him focus once more, "Your linework is good, but you still need to focus on some of your overall composition prince. As always, excellent job on the shading. Keep up the good work miss Lunafreya. Loqi...please enough placing the oranges between the banana."

This was one of the classes his father had demanded he participate in-fine arts. But after weeks of studying color theory and practicing brush strokes he was in dire need of something fresh. He stared at the other student's works, all had placed focus on things like shape and sizing of the fruit bowl before them. But Noctis was heavily obsessed with the shading, he loved to work with the light and dark.

His closest friend, Lunafreya, peeked over her shoulder at his artwork. Her near-white hair sparkled in the sunlight. She clicked her tongue to get his attention. She smiled gently, "It looks vey good Noctis."

"Thanks Luna." She was always giving him confidence boosts when he needed them the most. He puffed out his chest.

Ignis clapped loudly as the class became quiet again, making them all jump slightly. "Alright class. I have exciting and unexpected news! The King has found us a nude model, a male by the name of Prompto Argentum. He's been hand-picked out of a group, so be sure to treat him nicely. I do not want inappropriate laughter or prodding. He is our guest, understand?"

They all nodded. Beyond Loqi at times, Noct was unsure why Ignis was making a point of something so obvious...but a flare of inspiration caught in his heart. He had heard rumors of classes before him having naked men and women grace their prescence, taking only a few seconds to sketch them in different poses. The latest one from the semester prior had been an extremely busty woman by the name of Aranea, a few of the seniors were snickering about the size of her bust.

Noctis began to clean his supplies as the minutes began to wind down in class, placing a proper sketch pad on his work space. His mind lazily drifted, trying to picture a face with the name Prompto. He had never heard of the man before...he wondered if he was an exchange student. Would he be a big guy with lots of complicated muscles? Lanky? Fat? Black, blonde or brunnette? Tan?

He thoughtful chewed at the end of a pencil, a bell distantly ringing. Luna's touch upon his shoulder brought him back from his mind, "Come on, it's time to go back to the dorms."

Noctis, as he did routinely, walked his friend back to her room. She gave him a tight hug, and the two exchanged snacks (as it had become a routine) she got him one of his favorites: a large salty bag of potato chips and a small can of orange soda. He dragged his feet a few moments away to his regal-appearing suite, watching the school begin to wind down in the evening air. The sound of music, televisions and friends drinking hung about in the air, a common occurance for Thursdays. His mind was swimming with excitment, and having the art class be his only one in the afternoon was a bonus. He slipped from his clothes for the day and slept in only boxers, a blanket loosely covered around his body.

The class began at 1pm sharp, Ignis standing as stiff as a pole. He gazed, unblinking, to the class. They were all silent...the mentor usually did not speak until something important was occuring.

"Class please welcome our gues Prompto." He waved his hand to someone behind a thick curtain. Gingerly, a head popped out.

Noctis could feel himself flush over with heat at the sight of just this man's face, let alone unsure of what he would do once the fuzzy green robe was discarded from his shoulders. He was beautiful, and surely only about 17 years old. Freckles dotted every inch of his pale face, his thick golden hair was simply flowing from his scalp. His smile radiated sunshine, and made the prince's heart hammer. His face was smooth, cheeks lit up with red blush. He waved gently to them with his delicate looking hand, "Hey there! Thanks for letting me be here."

They returned his gesture, each mumbling greetings. Noctis locked eyes with him and sweat and the icy blue orbs that met his own dark spheres.

"Alright class. You have about 1 minute to sketch each pose Prompto will perform."

The model dropped the robe for class, and Noct swore that he could hear Astrals singing in hundreds of different tongues. The light from the window, dangling high in the air for privacy, sprinkled across his lean yet muscular body. Prompto was a work of art...his body was sculpited and Noctis feverishly tried to capture it. But no matter how hard he tried to define it, it was as if a god was in his sights...impossible to describe. His shoulders were small, delicate and the freckles upon his skin there looked like blankets of stars upon the night sky. His chest was fluttering with quick breaths, the excitment of the class sketching the boy made him a bit embarassed but he posed quietly with hands upon his feminine hips. A dainty curve attached his torso to his legs, and Noctis wanted to do nothing more than to reach out and guide his hands along the valley. A trail of golden hairs led from his navel to the unaroused sex organ between his sinewy thighs, the member itself was very impressive even if it was not anywhere near ready to service. When he turned his back to the future king, Noct admired every shadow jutting from his shoulderblade, each bone on his spine seemed to jut out from his stretched skin. And his bottom was a feast, round and tight.

Ignis cocked his eyebrow at the impressive sketches the prince was producing, beaming, "Excellent work Noctis! Your anatomy has improved from our intial sketchings."

Noct only thanked the mentor with a grunt, watching Prompto slump over a couch lazily and his eyelids half-close. He gazed to Noctis...and the prince finally noticed he was watching him as well. The model devilishly pressed a finger to his lips with a smirk and Noctis felt the heat rising around his cheeks once more. He enjoyed the playful nature the man spoke of, even in his silence. His body language was amazing, scuttering about with energy bursting from every pore. He bent in strange ways, and relaxed only for a few seconds.

Something was strange though...a barcode tattoo was placed upon his wrist open for the world to see. Noct focused his gaze to the arm, sketching in in great detail. Someone his age with a tattoo already? This guy was so interesting...and yet they hadn't even shared a word together. A fire set inside him...he had to ask him out for something.

"Luna..." He whispered sharply, "Is Loqi getting you back tonight?"

"Yeah it's Friday..."

"Alright."

"Why?"

"I think I'm gonna ask him out."

"What on a date?"

"Just...to get coffee.." He mumbled.

"You're totally falling for him aren't you?" She snickered, shoving his shoulder lightly. Ignis huffed at the two, and they went back to focusing. Time flew by.

The bell run and Noct's heart sunk as Prompto reached for his robe, placing it around his shoulders. He walked about the room, admiring the pictures that had been sketched of him. Noctis clasped his fist determined. He cleared his throat and smiled, approaching him with a handful of his pencils.

"What an honor..." Prompto told with sincerty in his tone, "Being approached by the Prince of Insomnia. What brings you to me today?"

"You...posed wonderfully..." Noct complimented, trying not to sound too creepy.

The blonde blushed, trying to hide his face a bit with the robe, "You think so? It's taken a lot of work to get to where I am now."

"That's awesome." Noct beamed. The two watched each other, unsure of what to say. Noct rubbed the back of his head, "you uh, doing anything tonight?"

"No..." Prompto urged.

"Wanna go get something out with me?"

"Like a date?" His eyes sparkled, "Sure!"

Noct could feel his heart race. prompto chuckled, "Let's do this when I have my clothes on though. By the way, out of all the sketches I liked yours the most."

He watched the boy skitter away and smirked, searching up the best places for a good bite to eat.

[sleepy-ki-blog]

Evaluation

My focus in animation 102 was always going to be stop motion. Animation 101 helped me realise that Maya and I just don’t click or get along and I’ve still being trying to get a grips on Toon Boom, having left it alone for a period of time meant I’d essentially forgotten how to use it; Intro to the Making Of helped me reintroduce myself though. Kick-starting the module off with looking at posture and body language was definitely interesting – it’s something I enjoy – so it was nice to have a lesson on internal and external displays of emotion depending on if they’re more introverted or extroverted. The drawing exercise was fun too; I want to work more on dynamic poses and silhouettes as a 2D artist so body language is important in that. Because it was for the purpose of an armature exercise the drawings didn’t need to be too anatomically correct as they’d be translated into that and Buckid on Maya.

Using Buckid was a test and a half. As I’m not great at Maya as is, learning rigging was tricky and took explanations from James until I understood how it worked. And it was still a bit of a nightmare even just making still poses of him. Because he has a cartoony and simple silhouette (big head, small body, hands are like mittens so no fingers, big feet) translating the posture drawings I did onto him took a bit of interpretation (especially because his legs were quite limited due to the small length). But it was actually a fun experience and I ended up with some good photos of him and honestly, I was quite proud of them? Animating in Maya may be difficult and if I were to do stills again I’d probably need a reintroduction to how the rigging works but the end results this time around didn’t turn out too horrible. I even managed to slide in a little fun pose before the lesson ended once I’d gotten the hang of it. Classmates helped me out with the rigging and using the programme too which was super helpful, it made the lesson fun and we made Buckid dab and all those good memes which really helped me feel more comfortable in class too?

Regarding the armatures. Using them for the first time was difficult as I wasn’t used to moving something so stiff around. Also the anatomy is very lanky – long legs and arms – so the arms never seemed to sit right on screen. I also couldn’t put it in some of the poses I’d done (like the ‘hopeful’ pose) because it wouldn’t balance on its heels with just the use of the magnets. If I wanted to replicate it properly I’d probably need to use a rig. Armatures seems easy enough to use at this point though, if not a tad fiddly if the joints were too loose or stiff; the ankle joints and wrists were usually floppy and limp so posing them was a bit of a pain. Also I still think they look super weird with just the neck and no head representation so I ended up using the neck stick as a way of improvising where the head would be so they’re not very anatomically correct in the pictures.

 This semester was super bumpy in work motivation. My depression acted up right before strikes (which sucked super bad because unless I have to be in I have no motivation to come into university and since lecturers weren’t in for like three weeks I just had no energy to do any work) and then Easter break followed right after. So for around 8 weeks I just did absolutely nothing which knocked me way back on the module schedule and because Script to Screen was so big and I had to prioritise it over my other modules which meant animation 102 and animation context had to be done very last minute.

Using the poses we originally drew up and translated onto armatures and Buckid, we had to pick opposing emotions (like happy, sad or angry, shy) to do a pose to pose animation. Because Maya is my mortal enemy, I decided to do it in stop motion (I’m still stupid slow in Toon Boom and was running out of time so stop motion was kind of my only option). I picked confident and timid to do. Had my friend Slime be my reference for it (they didn’t know what to do too well so when I animated it was more like taking snippets from the original video). One thing I discovered a lot with this particular animation is that armatures look very different in person compared to on camera. Particularly the breastplates. If the armatures torso is leaning forwards or backwards then the breastplate looks very odd, almost squashed rather than at an angle which means that it can be hard to interpret the angle that it’s actually positioned in. But in person it looks perfectly fine. I’m not sure if it’s the angle it’s positioned at on screen, or the lighting shining off the metal or something else. It would probably look better with a skin or model around it to give it more dimension and shape.

In sit to stand I encountered the same issue of the armature looking different on camera than in person. It was probably the angle I was working at when moving it – since I worked on it from the side rather than in front to avoid knocking the camera. The animation (well all of them) is very clunky and when it sits back down, because it leans forward and is also facing the camera, the armature ends up looking like a complicated clump of metal before it gets to the ground rather than actual limbs and parts. The spine is lost behind the breastplate and you can’t see the neck, the arms aren’t really identifiable nor are the hips. And the breastplate (again) looks very flat when it’s angled. Also, I tried following the reference video as much as possible but soon came to realise that it would be impossible to get the armature to cross its legs due to how they’re shaped and how the joints work. They’re also too short compared to the arms which means that any animating with the arms looks rather strange in comparison to the rest of the body, like when the hands are on the hips they look ridiculously long and stick out too far.

So, walk cycles are more difficult than I anticipated. Again, I tried following the reference video but apparently I don’t have a knack for timing. I was thinking of working it like a 2D animation (my first mistake) so that was more what each frame would look like rather than trying to make it fluid at a 25fps rate. The armature ended up slouching by the end due to me over doing it on the spine movement (you lower your head at certain points when walking) and I forgot to bring the head back up to its original position each time (instead it just ended up getting lower and lower). The animation is clunky and I’d have liked to redo it or maybe try it in Toon Boom but as previously mentioned I was on a rather tight schedule and did all of these animations overnight and the stop motion room is really effective in bringing out my stress what with the hot lights and confined space.

The sneak is possibly the animation I’m most proud of. Just because it fits to the original reference video the best and is actually fairly smooth. I didn’t have to move the arms at all, and only had to make the torso bob down slightly. I did encounter and issue with the legs again (it wasn’t as prominent during the walk cycle) as they aren’t very flexible and don’t allow for any movement above the pelvic plate. So moving a crouched character was a challenge as the legs could only go so high which resulted in shorter steps because the foot couldn’t really get off the ground and move forward very far before it was down again. I tried adding comedy of being caught in at the end to cut it off quicker because it would take very long to finish such a slow moving character all the way across the screen with the restriction posed. I personally think it worked quite well. A rig would have most likely been the best choice for this animation because it would allow me to put the armature on its toes and allow for more leg movement directly below the pelvis.

 To conclude, my time management definitely needs to improve and putting in a reasonable adjustment plan in place would be wise to counteract my depressive episodes and deadline issues. Script to Screen was far too big of a module to just be one semester long (in my opinion) and having all the modules on the same day meant my prioritising was based more on workload and motivation than anything else. I would also like to improve on my stop motion skills and become more acquainted with Toon Boom.