#i had to learn to use the animation timeline in krita for this post

[goffilolo]

Not Dante, not Vanica, not Lucius, but a fourth bonus sibling.

[frindoka]

my art timeline :-)

hi! i’m making this because i was inspired by maxpawb’s post i saw on toyhouse , which then led me to look at all my own art that is still somehow intact in my storage. this only details stuff from when i started posting online, not from when i started drawing traditionally as a wee lad. partially because my sketchbooks are lost and partially because i never really wrote down dates on my art to begin with.

a lot of dates are lost, due to the aforementioned problem of me not writing things down.. and also i have awful dissociative memory problems so there’s way too many gaps in my life. but i really did want to do this to see how much i could find & how much i could recollect.

content warning for VERY brief mentions of grooming, as well as minor mentions of real shitty friends

everything is under the cut! there might be another rb if or when i hit the image limit. curse you, tumblr.

date: ??? , i had to be around like. 11 at the time

this was when i joined warriors amino and i deleted my account because i got in trouble for having social media, LMAO. i eventually came back with a new one though. this is probably one of the only surviving art pieces from when i was THIS YOUNG, everything’s on an ipad that’s so broken it won’t even charge

i learned how to use the smudge tool on ibispaint at this time and thought i was the coolest bitch on the block for my blending

may 2019, i was like 12

my return to amino (and brief period on deviantart, which i never used again lmao) i was specifically on wings of fire amino + warriors amino. i was obsessed with airbrush shading.

this is one of my first fursonas which was a wings of fire fanflight called kitsunewings or smth. and also my first species character (he predated the dragon), a bayfox, which was drawn in krita. i never used krita again after this. coincidentally, i was also never active in bayfoxes after submitting him.

i crawled back to ibispaint no matter how many new free programs i tried.. (also tried firealpaca once. i couldn’t even figure out how to draw a line…)

may 2019, 12

the rise of my longest lasting fursona. she got stolen on a shitty app called anime maker once. i can’t remember if she’s older than the dragon, andromeda, but her older iterations definitelt are. this character was just the FIRST first fursona that i actually called that, since i didn’t even really know what a furry was at first

june 2019, 12

my first commission that i sold for like 30 deviantart points (i only used the site for commission purposes, as mentioned before i never really used it lmao)

also i tried to make a closed species on wings of fire amino. second image. it was terribly stressful ; this was around the time i met my longest lasting group of friends (hi freak bin! 5 years <3) and.. some of the worst people i’ve ever met in my life at the same time, LMAOOO

also here’s this kokichi ouma dog i made before i even knew what danganronpa was. i would find out much later, unfortunately

march 2020, still 12 (cause of my august birthday 😒)

there’s a really big gap in my files here. sad! my art kicks into gear at this point tbh, i like how i did the lines. wish i had the energy for such clean lineart still :-(

i think around this time i lost contact with the people who were my groomers (which i would realize later) and i’m thankful that i don’t even remember what their names are.

april 2020 - july 2020, 12

okay these aren’t awful actually. HOW WAS MY ART SO DETAILED. i admire baby frets power, jesus christ

i also did a design raffle when i hit 500 amino followers which is still the most i’ve ever gotten as a following. pretty crazy, i wonder who owns this dude now, i still think they’re cute

august 2020, 13

wow i’m 13 now look at that. i had to go digging for this one, only one i could find that was remotely close to my birthday (it’s the 25th!) this was a drawing for my friend bea lol

was still friends with some pretty shitty people from wings of fire amino, and it was really taking a toll on me. i don’t remember drawing as often as i used to during that time because of all of that.

december 2020, 13

i wish i could still draw backgrounds.. i need more practice

january 2021, 13

okay honestly these are really cute. i don’t know wtf kind of motivation i had for this much detail. the shading is pretty damn good

april 2021, 13

still going strong with the shading and backgrounds. not much to say around this time either lol. the first one is an older design of mine, but they’re pretty damn cute.. i wonder what happens to the desgins i lose track of? but ik this guy has a toyhouse profile i just refuse to look through my like. 200 pages of character designs on there…

july 2021, 13

PUDDLE! PUDDLE OH HOW I MISS YOU. my original favorite oc, i got so much art of him & drew him so much he reached 100 pieces in less than a month. i also met my best friend through this dude.

my art got.. blocky? here? idk what i was doing with all of that but it lasts for a while. lol

october 2021, 14

one year older and i got neo twewy for my birthday and it changed my life permanently. in several ways. anyhow, here’s frindoka furries.. they live in my files forever and will never b drawn again because they got redesigned several more times LOLLLLL

this is the month after i broke off permanently from my shitty old friends, with support of some other friends of mine. thank you guys… i did proceed to get harassed and made paranoid over my text messages by the shitty friends cause they were mad i got one of them banned from a furry adopts server for being literally dangerous. i do know it was them bc it was admitted to & they were some of the only people i gave my phone number to. i was kind of dumb for that

i was happy after my birthday because 13 was one of the worst years of my life. literal constant spirals and breakdowns because this is when i realize i was, in fact, groomed. i’m well and handling it better now.

january 2022, 14

my first d&d character, the mark of my eventual spiral into heath insanity… shadow how i miss you. i ended up redesigning them later on

march 2022, 14

i got into a pokemon arpg around this time and it took over my life for MONTHSSSS. kind of a shitty community in it though, but i appreciate how it improved my artwork. i’m back at the backgrounds! it’s shut down indefinitely now. rip eeveemporium

april 2022, 14

I FOT BACK INTO WAKFUUUU😭😭😭 also got pretty comfortable in my identity as a transgender nonbinary person, but i would get MORE comfortable about my identity later on :-)

this is going to be continued in a reblog because i did, in fact, hit the image limit. oopsie daisies

[under-omit]

Monday announcement that is hella late lmao

OK ok I have a good reason for my ghosting! 1) FINALLy figured out how to do some small animations and how to actually export those! In fact, you all get to see one come out soon. It is small, and isnt a lot, but it really looks cool.  2) Program changed! So I had to learn a new program as I am trying to mature away from gimp. The new program I am trying, is called Krita. It has an animation feature but was MADE to do art, unlike pencil2d or whatever else there is, so I can do both art and animation. It has instantly improved my art style, because it has the brushes I like to use FOR my art style... If that makes any sense. Outside of the benefits, there are some downfalls that I miss in Gimp. Simple things I am sure I will get over in time, or perhaps I just haven't found in Krita. Regardless, for this purpose only, backgrounds will have a quality drop. I enjoy Krita for my figures, but definitely not for my backgrounds. Unfortunately, thanks to how I like to layer things, I cannot switch between programs. But I think Krita will be a keeper... (until college).  3) On that note, warning for the next upcoming pages, when I finish them (as none are finished. The animation took a lot of dedication and these past few days, I have given myself a break,) the animated panel is super top quality, and can be expected to see such art more frequently. BUT, (this is the warning part) the surrounding art for the other pages and panels is a little... lacking. I didn't take my time on the figures and didn’t do any advanced art-ing on it. So, yeah.  4) Completely slowing down my posting timeline. Now, I KNOW, I have had a lot of changes, and schedules, quite honestly, are hard for me. But I know for a fact now that I will probably only post 2-4 pages every 2 weeks, even though I can make a lot more than that. I want to have plenty of time to experiment and learn Krita, as well as plenty of time for some afterschool activities I got involved in. 

5) Don’t be surprised if I go on another hiatus as well. I am eager about a lot of things right now, and am thinking about making a new au. Won’t put much detail into it here, but I kind of want to do a “DanceTale Reimagined” Au, where I just make Dancetale more... different. I am an ambitious person and its hard to focus on one thing for long periods of time. Hard mix lol. 

I am super excited to advance my artistic knowledge and hope everyone understands! I also want to make original content, as I am a story teller. Least, I try to be lol. Ill see you guys when I get around to finishing the pages, might be another week simply because I am trying to design some stuff. 

Thanks!

-2k

[natashawithers]

Making Animated GIFs

Someone asked how I make GIF animations after I posted the Sanders Sides animation I did for @thatsthat24 and I wanted to share my answer with others!

This will be a pretty in-depth answer, so I’m sorry in advance for the length!

To start, for me, the best way to make gifs is first to just think of them as animations (don’t think about it being a gif). There's plenty of programs you can use to make gifs, and some of them (especially the ones you have to pay for) make the process much easier. But while it might take a little leg work to find a process you can afford that works best for you, don't get too bogged down trying to find the best program -- that's kind of what I did after I had to cancel my Photoshop subscription and it just made me waste time that I could've spent animating. 

Animation is simply the art of tricking people into thinking that a well-timed sequence of still drawings is actually showing movement -- it’s all a big illusion~ So any program you use to draw could potentially help you make gifs. In Photoshop, I made simple animations using the frame animation tool as shown in this helpful tutorial by @everydaylouie: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUJe8Bil7Sw

But for the Sanders Sides animation, I used a combination of FireAlpaca and Krita, both of which are free programs. I did frame-by-frame animation in FireAlpaca first, starting with an incredibly, roughly drawn animation for the first pass to get the initial timing down. 

At this stage, you start with keyframes and then just keep drawing inbetween frames until you get the movement you want. Here's a tutorial on Inbetweening by @howardwimshurst:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAYS94xAAc4

On the next pass, I refined the lineart, shapes and expressions a bit on each frame. 

On the next pass, I cleaned up the lineart. Then finally, I went back and added color -- this is the final result.

Here are two pretty good tutorials on animating using FireAlpaca: 

By @leslielumarie:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDF-DaVi0qU

By @scotchtapeofficial:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpN5QD9aM4g&t=193s

For shorter animations, I draw less frames and animate at around 8-12fps (sometimes up to 30 frames). For the Sanders Sides animation, I drew it on 2′s at 24 fps for a smoother, more cinematic looking animation -- but that also means drawing MUCH more frames to get the look you want (The Sanders Sides animation ended up being 211 frames, including duplicates for the timing TTwTT;). I rendered out the animation as a PNG Sequence (usually I would just do it as a gif using FireAlpaca, but I wanted to do a bit more tweaking with the timing) and imported it into Krita that, for me, has an easier timeline to work with. 

In Krita, I just extended a few of the frames to make the mouth movement easier to read and put together the three different shots. Animating something this long on ONE file project in FireAlpaca would've eaten up my computer’s memory, so I had to separate each shot into a different file to work under -- after rendering out the three shots as three separate PNG Sequences, like I said earlier, I put them together in Krita, tweaked the timing, and rendered it all out as one single animated GIF. Here's how to animate using Krita by @marts-struggle-with-drawing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1EhWydbdVk&t=1s

I know this seems long and complicated, but most of this stuff is just the technical part of finding programs you can use and afford to render out PNG Sequences as animated GIF files. This is only the method I used in this instance; chances are, I'll find a much easier one in the future, especially if I can get a faster computer or can pay for animation programs. The thing to remember is that no matter what program you use, it's just a tool -- like a pencil or a pen or a crayon -- the tool itself might change, but in the end, you're still just animating. So even if you can't afford expensive programs, you can still animate using the many free programs online that amazingly awesome people have created for artists and animators. In order to animate well (whether for a simple 10-frame gif or a fully rendered 24fps animation), watch a lot of animations, figure out the style you like, see what you can do with what you have available, and learn the 12 basic principles of animation; here’s a playlist you can knock out pretty quickly by AlanBeckerTutorials on the 12 principles:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=haa7n3UGyDc&list=PL-bOh8btec4CXd2ya1NmSKpi92U_l6ZJd

Also study/observe how things and people move so that you can use all you've learned to either copy this movement or exaggerate it for extra effect.

I hope this doesn't scare you away from wanting to animate! It can seem like a very daunting venture and in many cases, it is, especially if you attempt to make something ridiculously advanced and complex on your first try and end up discouraged when it doesn’t look perfect. But the results can be very rewarding if you've taken the time to learn all that you need to in order to achieve the kind of animation you want. So start small...

...and work your way up. With practice and dedication, you’ll get there!

Good luck and happy animating! :D

Free drawing/animation programs:

FireAlpaca: http://firealpaca.com/

Krita: https://krita.org/en/