#vidow animatic

[zarvasace]

Vidow Animatic Thoughts (pt 1)

I shall detail thought process etc. let’s go. It’s long. Under cut. Hit tumblr max image upload so this is three parts.

part 1 // part 2 // part 3

Animatic can be found here

Program: procreate dreams (it’s clunky but it works). This whole video took me something like 8 hours? Over the course of uhhh three days? Pretty quick.

Introduction

This is my first ever animatic, so when I began, I wanted to keep it simple. I chose my favorite pencil brush and like three colors (I later added one for emphasis). I had a couple specific scenes in mind, and I knew how I wanted the progression to go, but I winged most of it, shot by shot. The song does a good job of building up with a sort of three-act structure, so.

I referenced the castle from Breath of the Wild, but I didn’t stress too much about the details. The plan was to make it sketchy and quick. The beginning is mostly just things moving across the screen. I think that works, though, setting up the angsty mood and giving me room to expand later on. The first shot with Vio’s face is sort of meant to be a fake-out: you’re looking at him, but no he’s looking at a mirror, which is obvious when it cracks. Not sure if that came across but the cracks are very cool anyway.

This is also the first time you see white, which sort of represents change/time through the whole thing.

And then we see the first of Shadow, and he has his own color: black. He's a real drawing here (rather than black smoke or something) mostly to establish that black=Shadow.

Not much to say about the next bit, with the door and stuff dropping, I just wanted to make it clear that we’re in Vio’s bedroom at the end of a day.

And then he’s being dramatic about getting in bed. Mostly just to show that he’s tired and Haunted. Also I think it does work in establishing that this isn’t really Shadow’s doing. Whether or not he’s actually there doesn’t matter, because it’s Vio who thinks he does, and we’re seeing this from Vio’s perspective. He’s the one who can’t let Shadow go, so whether Shadow is actually haunting him like a ghost doesn’t matter.

Verse 1

SO first off, Vio is sad and has bad dreams. Well, good dreams. They're good, but they make him sad. Shadow shows up in black again, definitely part of the dream (further blurring the line between reality and delusion). Vio's in white in his dream, which doesn't happen anywhere else. If white represents change, then this is Past Vio, or the Vio That Vio Wishes He Was But Isn't. It's definitely memories of some kind, though, because white Vio's hair is short, where normal Vio has a long braid throughout.

We only see Shadow as more than an influence (by that I mean a shadow, a flash, a feeling) a few times, and this is the first. His presence is stronger in dreams and weaker in the reality that Vio lives in.

But the sun comes up and Vio is actually alone. White is the sun/light a lot here, meaning that time is passing. Vio's still brooding. (I really like that little "in the heat of the day" shot, the glint is in Vio's lower eyes which may hint at tears, but it's definitely not obvious yet.) I don't particularly LOVE that drawing of Vio braiding his hair, but it gets the point across. He can't stop thinking about Shadow, even as he goes about his day.

Chorus 1

This part hammers that in: Vio CAN'T stop thinking about Shadow and wallowing in his memories, it's driving him to distraction and failure. He's not moving on. It's right there in the lyrics: "I can never let you go." There's a reference to evil root beer as he's eating, distracted from Red (hi Red!) right beside him. He feels guilty, and can't shoot arrows without imagining himself hurting Shadow more. He still half-expects Shadow to be there for his discoveries. He feels watched, like Shadow should be there all the time, even when he isn't doing anything. He's brooding. Broody boy.

Interlude

Broody boy continues. Important: when he's walking to his room/the library/wherever books are, he's going right to left. I studied a couple videos of walk cycles to get those feet right, and they still aren't right, but I'm still impressed with myself! Also, apparently I now have a mental library of Gothic Windows. I thought that was a fun shot. Vio sure sighs a lot.

Verse 2

This verse is ramping things up and preparing for the turn.

"Nothing ever changes, so I've learned." I feel like this is quite a Vio statement to make. I don't think it's perfectly applicable—in this post-canon-adjacent AU, clearly the four of them are still separate people, which would be quite a change, but for Vio? I think it means that he's maybe a little upset that nobody else is grieving to the point of distraction. People are going about their lives, but every single step Vio takes is shadowed. (ba dum tish.)

The flower was a spur-of-the-moment decision, since I wanted something in the spot where the book was and didn't really want to just draw vague smoke again. But it ended up being thematic and calling back to a later moment in the video. And maybe it hints that Shadow might be showing his approval that Vio is at least trying to do what he loves (that is, reading books.)

And Vio's back in his room, surrounded by books. He's tried so hard to forget. He doesn't look particularly interested in what he's reading, and we know why. I tried to frame that "to forget" shot in a way that looks like he might be drowning in his own ambition, like he has all these books and he's just desperate that one of them will distract him or be a replacement for Shadow's influence in his life, which is quickly growing to dangerous levels...

Did Vio actually see Shadow here? Well, once again, it doesn't matter, because Vio thinks he did, thinks so hard that he throws himself to the ground. It doesn't injure him, but it doesn't take a fortune-teller to imagine that he might do something truly reckless if this keeps going. And Vio sees that, I think, here. He realizes that what he sees might not be real. He's in the "dark night of the soul" here, and actually cries, which is a big deal for his character. It's just two tears—white, if you'll notice—but it represents his hitting rock-bottom.

"And you've never loved me once" is maybe not the right line for this, I considered changing it to "you only loved me once" but I eventually decided to keep the line as it is in the song so there's minimal dissonance for the viewer. The song's story isn't quite the same as the one I'm pulling out here, but this line is the turning point in the song's story and in mine.

(continued in part 2!)

[cemeterysquids]

lower one's eyes is such a vidow song it's making me a little feral

[layraket]

hi four swords fandom i come here to contribute smth

you see i made a friend of mine a really big fan of vidow and she said that this song fits them very much

the thing is that she's right

[bluury2]

Progress check on the vidow animatic ✨️

@indigoartistqueen

the animatic has been sully storyboarded! I'm cleaning up the the last half of it, then I need to do the final panel overall, then it will just be a case of adding the text and flicker effect!

WE'RE ALMOST THERE

[n3onghost]

i can’t tell you how much i need a four x shadow/ vidow animatic to this

[gust-jar-simulator]

I have not! I need to update my playlist honestly (I have so many playlists, help) but the current vidow things I have on loop are Beautiful Delirium by Blackbriar, Paint It Black done by Ciara, Innocently Annoying by Elysewood specifically in the context of the Mt. Crenel fight, and Rafscrap’s cover of Hey Little Songbird is what I imagine all of my Vaati/Shadow/Vio animatics to that I cannot draw to save my life.

Virginia Woolf, Night and Day/Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath/C.J. Hauser, The Crane Wife: A Memoir in Essays/ Richard Siken, War of the Foxes

[cloudyskies25]

Y’all I was just listening to Haunted by Taylor Swift and you can’t tell me that song wouldn’t make a fantastic vidow animatic

[zarvasace]

Vidow Animatic Thoughts (pt 3)

continued

part 1 // part 2 // part 3

Chorus 3

We're at the moment of truth. Vio hesitates for a moment, then casts his spell. Not much to be said, other than the magic is black. :)

And here is Shadow! He's a flower sprouting from the bowl of stuff, first (remember the flower earlier? This kind of means that he's happy!) Then he forms from smoke and becomes solid. He's actually solid this time, because he blocks out the candle and circle that's behind him. (or is he solid? this could still be hallucination. but by this point we're committed, and mostly hopeful enough to believe it. like Vio must be.)

Vio smiles again. He knows it worked.

Buuut he's tuckered out. The magic exhausted him, or maybe it's blood loss, or maybe it's the natural progression of the spell. Maybe it really does exchange Vio's life for Shadow's. All we know is that he's passing out and seems tired.

And the lyrics might give us an ominous hint, too: like a curse. Now that Shadow is no longer "like" a curse to Vio, what is the curse?

And the last real shots we get are back from Vio's perspective. We're aligned with him, back in his head (kind of literally), and we see what he does. First, it's Shadow opening his eyes, then Shadow coming for him, looking scared and concerned. There's also a hint of red, perhaps recalling the blood spilled earlier. The last eye shapes of Vio's are curved a bit more at the bottom, as if he's smiling even while Shadow is right there and scared for him.

The end!

Except I don't like sad or ambiguous endings, so I gave it a bit extra. Here is Shadow holding Vio, and they're both aware and awake. There's dialogue: "idiot." "you can't argue with results." They're actually holding hands this time, recalling Vio's reckless decision earlier. And, well, maybe it was reckless, but it worked. And now they're happy. :)

[zarvasace]

Vidow Animatic Thoughts (pt 2)

(continued) Still long, so under cut.

part 1 // part 2 // part 3

Chorus 2

Last part mentioned the tears, so I won't go over that again (other than the fact that I like how they move! I think that turned out well.)

We also see Shadow as a whole figure again here, perhaps indicating that Vio's reality is collapsing, that he's entered a sort of dreamlike state. He gets up from kneeling (I like how that flow ended up, by the way) and stands there for a second.

We've been right there with Vio this whole time, but now we face some uncertainty as to what his next move will be: continue to brood and try to move forward (or in the past, he is still facing left...), or do something about it? Is "doing something about it" even a good idea?

We see Shadow again, and this time when he touches real!Vio, Vio touches him back to hold his hand. The white circle is meant to show the moment Vio decides. Vio also smiles for the first time, and we see him from the front, facing right nor left.

And then he stands dramatically with what might be magic or just representations of his emotions coming into play. Really, this shot is just meant to say that hey, Vio's decided something, and he seems happy about it. He's confident in his next step.

The final time we see his face until the end, and it's a liiiiittle ominous. What he's decided may not be good. That's the next narrative question. There's also more white here, showing that change and that he's still really sad despite his manic smile. We don't know his mental state anymore.

Interlude

I love this part. I love that the music picks up a little. These shots are also fun environment shots. Things are really getting more detailed in my art now, which wasn't really intentional but serves to amp up the intensity a bit, I think. We see several items that come into play later: candles, herbs, a dagger, a book, most with little flashes of white. I think this is probably the prettiest sequence in the whole thing.

It's not clear if the candles and herbs are in Vio's room or not, but the book definitely is. That's the post of his bed. He's been studying this, but hasn't actually done it for some unknown reason.

Vio's intentions are pretty obvious at this point to people familiar with fandom interpretation, but it hasn't been outright stated, so it's still a little unclear. I could be trying to fake you out again, who knows? There's still uncertainty as to what he's doing, and definitely uncertainty as to if it's even a good idea. Things are ominous and dark right now. Vio does not look like he's doing well, and a mentally unwell Vio is not uh. Not good.

People familiar with canon and fanon may be even more concerned, because some of you have seen the directions this has gone before: Vio exchanging his life or well-being for Shadow's, Vio burning things down, Vio becoming a villain in his own right... lots of possibilities. We aren't sure exactly what'll happen, even if we might have a good idea (and a hope.)

The music picks up again, and we get some repeated shots, intensity heightened. Vio is walking again, but not for as long. He's in front of the (not bright) window again (with smoke clinging to him.) Notably, he's facing right, this time. He's leaving his room and going elsewhere. He's leaving safety and entering the unknown.

The key sort of parallels him opening his bedroom door earlier but also signifies that he's going somewhere private. The bag falling to the floor means that he's arrived, and is a callback to the bow and quiver falling to the floor early in the video. He's ready.

Bridge

And then the guitar solo picks up!! When I came up with this part, on song listen like five in the car, I laughed out loud because it was glorious. I hope I captured some of that drama here. I'm not perfectly satisfied with the timing of the "drawing the circle" part, I think it went too quickly, but by then I'd already synced up the candles to the music, and I didn't want to take the time to mess with it. You can really tell that I started getting fancier in here, almost every individual frame in this part is edited somehow.

The words in the magic circle are Latin: "obumbratio die bris" means "shadows die twice," which is apparently the name of a video game? I dunno, I just saw it as a suggestion on Google Translate and ran with it, it sounds appropriately fancy. There is also "reduces eum" which is Google Translate Latin for "bring him back." Which gives it away, if you can read Latin that fast. XD

The magic circle is white, and some of the last white period, potentially signifying that the magic circle is the cumulative product of everything trying to get Vio to change, to notice something different, to move on. (I don't think this is moving on, exactly, but it is him taking action to change his circumstances.)

The candle flames are black, mostly for contrast, but also because this whole thing is "lit" by Shadow. He's everything here, not physically but definitely spiritually. Also I really like the way the candles and flames appear on cue with the music. :)

And here we get some payoff with the interlude stuff earlier: there's the book, a candle, some of the herbs and jars we saw. It's just various magic stuff. The book has a visible S and R, though the rest of the title is obscured. It might say "shadow revival" or "shadow resurrection" or "shadow recall" or something like that.

I like the way that plant burns, it looks cool. And all the stuff falling into the bowl took forever, that's probably the most complex sequence of the entire video. But the flowing liquids and shaking powder certainly look quite good! It's very clear now that Vio is doing something complicated and magical, and maybe dangerous (black-burning candles might be some kind of dark magic, right?) The more complicated magic is, the more risk it poses, or maybe the more problems can arise. It's not clear exactly, yet, what this is meant to do, but it's implied. And we still don't know if it's a good thing or not.

At least Vio is determined, and no longer constantly distracted.

I don't really like the way that mortar and pestle bit moves, but I also didn't know how to do it better without rearranging everything, so I decided to just leave it. Gets the point across: he mixed the stuff.

And here's the dagger back, too! At least it's just his hand. (: (also if you haven't noticed, Vio is consistently left-handed! I use my own hands for reference so I did have to flip a couple drawings. oops.) He closes his fingers around the blade, but I faded that out pretty quickly so the viewer knew that I wouldn't show the actual wound. Also I think these hands look pretty good.

The first (and one of only two) appearance of red! It's blood! Dramatic! If you didn't know this was potentially dangerous to begin with, now you do! Blood is involved! Oh no! I made sure to leave the blood until the last shot before the lyrics started up again, since it's the most ominous thing so far, and that red has Consequences.

(continued in part 3!)

[zarvasace]

Sound on! :) I made an animatic! There are a few slight hiccups with the music in the first thirty seconds, but the rest of the five-minute video is fine. slight cw for two drops of blood

there's a happy ending I promise

I wrote a sort-of essay about this here!

[bluury2]

Untitled artwork 3

Angst vidow animatic? 👀👀

[zarvasace]

Zarvasace's Four Swords Stuff

Vampire Lords AU (#fs vampire lords au)

Spaceship AU (#fsa spaceship au)

80s AU (#80s au)

Breath of the Wild AU (#fs botw au)

Hyrule College of Practical Arts (#hcopa)

FS BNHA AU (#fs bnha au)

Blood-Sucker's Guide to High School (#fs dsl au)

Mermay AU (#fs mermay au)

Fairytale AU (#vidow fairytale au)

Misc Vidow arts

1 (cozy)

2 (moonlight kiss)

3 (commission

4 (on the throne)

5 (Disney World vacation)

6 (kiss), 7 (goth)

8 (shadow's return)

9 (cozy again)

10 (makeup lesbians pose)

11 (on the balcony doodle)

12 (Wicked for Winter movie cover)

13 (girls art noveau kiss)

14 (kiss again)

15 (modern au kiss)

16 (mirror angst)

17 (trick or treat)

16 (modern au kiss #2)

17 (original world crossover au)

18 (goth club)

19 (vampire doodle)

20 (mirror selfie)

21 (apothecary doodle)

22 (valentines 24)

23 (red background doodle)

24 (lap doodle)

25 (anime-y)

26 (pretty boy has been found)

27 (top 10 anime betrayals)

28 (teef)

29 (ooh in the forest oooh)

30 (vio's favorite thing is reading doodle)

31 (@/slaingelo dtiys, vidow magical girls)

32 (VtM vidow)

Other Significant FS Things

Fake romance book covers (constant Vidow stuff)

Valentines 2023

Cult AU doodles

My "canon" designs, and some fun doodles for them

Vidow picrew for World Goth Day 2023

Four Swords Sanctuary art

Red AU outfit doodles, Blue AU outfit doodles

Coffee shop gang modern AU art

Vio idle animation

Mini vampire hunter comic, a gift

Vidow animatic

Red vampire/star wars art

All of the FS boys as mermaids, and the designs in various ship doodles

ATLA AU comics

Green/Blue mini-animation based on Soft Glows

Shadow doodle from The Mirror World

VtM5 character sheets

[zarvasace]

Shooooot just found another song that would make a BANGER of a LU animatic but it's five and a half minutes long and I haven't finished that first one (got stuck) and I did technically start another FS one that I haven't told anyone about...

Okay.... I really do want to work on one coming up. So. Poll time. This may or may not actually impact what I work on.

🟥 (Option 1, red square.) Plot: first meeting and general travel/trust montage ending with a neat battle scene. Length: 3 minutes. Song: is pretty, lyrics don't fit super well, but also is in Japanese so you may not be able to tell. Progress: basic story beats decided and half-storyboarded, but on a block because I don't know how to do the next little bit.

🟪 (Option 2, purple square.) Theme: overcoming challenges and trauma, with a strong note of positivity amid reminders of angst. Length: 5.5 minutes. Song: in English, very thematic and rather inspirational. Objectively cooler than the one above. Progress: I have a dream and no work done yet (the Vidow animatic I made in three days of work though sooooo I could do this.)

🟦 (Option 3, blue square.) Exactly the same as above but Shatterproof-themed. May give me motivation to finish during July. XD