Jockey's Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day (Part 1)
GOD this has been a long time coming. I've finally finished Cradles! An animatic I've been doing for Ladyverse.
Click to viewWatch it right now if you haven't. It's cool.
ANYWAYS this post will be breaking down EVERY. Single. Picture and detail in it. So if you feel like reading walls of text then you will find this post very interesting.
First picture of the animation. I started this entire project at the end of September, September 30th or something. If you're familiar with Zarla's "I've Learnt Too Much; I Have Gone Mad" video you may realize this hallway is the exact same one from that video!
+ the video you need to watch it if you haven't.
Clean version of the image from this post.
Yes of course I have these links all saved why wouldn't I.
Continuing off of the theme of the last one, the backgrounds of these ones are also inspired by the backgrounds of the other video. Most of the Graffiti actually matches but there are some new additions.
It was based off of the left table there. I didn't want to put the full map and papers on it because then it would've been too cluttered. But HEY that bag of chips on the floor is back on the table lol.
First Image on the table I put a vague bag of chips and a corner of a healthpack. Table wasn't very detailed because, well I was going to put characters on it.The first wall says "WE ARE IN HELL, "WE ARE GOING TO DIE", "FIGHT" and... I can't quite make out the Jockey one, it's [something] will be okay <3. Jockey writing in pink text on the wall is fun lol.
This one has a dresser in the bottom left! This wall is based off of this image heree
You can see a lot of similar words here, like "NORTH PLEASE" overwritten with "OVERRUN" next to a heart. Instead of "TINDY WAS HERE" I wrote "Quo is safe as long as she has the gaynote", which is an inside joke I had with Error back in 2016. You can tell the age of this sense I still used she/her pronouns lol. I am they/them nowww
Other text is "GOING TO DIE DIE DIE" with some red skribbles nearby, some green chicken scratch, and finally the Jockey doodles of "Be safe Travis <3 See you soon!" with a bunch of stars around it. + zombie doodle and another doodle I'm not sure what it is. Might be a dog.
These two just use the same background as the first one with additional part of door. That second image originally wasn't supposed to exist, sense in my head I was counting the "dodododo" and I thought there were five not six? So when I edited them all together I was like hey there's a missing bit!! And put it in.
For most of these pictures it zooms just a little bit to give it some movement rather than being a flat image, but it stops on this extra one which stills things and I feel like makes it a bit more intense?
All the same background with different characters on it! Background for this one still based on this
"RUN RUN", "THE AMY IS KILLING EVERYONE" (I wrote it much lighter for whatever reason) "LIAR, "Fight <3" is now crossed out in "NO". + Some additional text
Editing it a bit it says "you can you can't catch me I'm the gingerbread man". Fascinating.Now we're onto the first "animation" of the video! At the point I drew this I was still not super good at drawing profile/front facing so I was trying to practice. I do it a few more times throughout the video and I think I've improved!
One weird thing about these is like. why did I put the poof in the middle that looks weird af.
"Why does Jockey have a poof in the first place?"If you're familiar with me you might be familiar with the Jockey ghost I made back in 2018. Back then I didn't know how to draw people who didn't have bangs so I gave her this massive hair poof.
which helped me be able to draw her hair without it looking weird. Now I can draw people without bangs really easily, but the hair poof stayed because it's cute!
2021 Redraw:
BACK ON TOPIC what I did was have her close in more, raising her shoulders and pulling in the axe more. Her face also gets more exaggerated with every fame, with the eyebrows and wrinkles working it out.
ANYWAYS over this part I have three images on top of it.
These didn't really have any plans for them but were vague silhouettes so that the animation looked cooler. I realized in the initial edit of the scene Jockey tensing up just seemed kind of weird so I put these on top of them. They are obviously not very polished because (as you'll see as a running theme) I didn't think anybody would look at them too hard lol.
ACTUAL first animation.
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/718156205645758504/856254265751109682/foot_walk.mp4
(Livejournal can't preview it for whatever reason so there's a link;;)
This one I was very very proud of at the time. I timed it very well with the music and I liked the smears and how the whole thing seemed to 'bounce' in a way. And, FUN FACT, I don't even really have an animation program. I have a flipbook thing, but it's not. NOT really the best. It just flips through images, so I often sketch it out, put it in flipbook to test it, and then go back to my art program to draw the rest of it.
But HELL I thought it looked nice. As well as the transition to the "pink world" which will be seen a LOT in this video.You may also notice how the flowers sort of 'flick' in. That's because in the file with the walking animation itself I couldn't put the flowers on top of it, so I put the flowers in a different file and put them on top of them in the video editing program itself.
Nice.
ALRIGHT the pink world!! It does not have a better name than that. In the video Jockey walks on every beat in the song and most of what you pay attention to is the text.
OH and the text! The font in the video is "Zambie" and it's the same one in the I've Learnt too Much video! I asked Zar if she still had it and she ended up finding it for me to use :D
Other details about pink world. I spent a while trying to decide on the pastel pallet and ended up keeping her jacket bright pink because I thought it really needed that *pop* or else everything would seem to blend in a little. The lines are the same as the shading on her backpack!
The linart is much cleaner in the pink world in the normal world. It's generally got much cleaner lines meanwhile the normal world I kept sketchy.
Tiny stick person Jockey. In the video I tried to keep her walking to the same beat as the song but it just felt wrong for that part so she seems to flick back and forth more there.
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/718156205645758504/856256911866331156/12_foot_walk.mp4
This one is a recolor of the first one but I tried to put in a LOT of detail and I really like it
This part I was REALLY proud of editing wise. I didn't actually expect much with it? Instead of what I did with the pink world where I swapped between two images, I made the background a slowly scrolling separate image and put Jockey's two frames on top of it. It really had a scary feeling to it and I liked it quite a lot.
SO. Right about now you might be thinking to yourself, how long did it take to do all this! Not too long actually. We're still in pretty early October here. But you'll see why I only released it in June soon enough.
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/718156205645758504/856259198173052958/scream.mp4
THIS THING.
I think this animation is really impressive looking. It took me a few days and it turned out really, REALLY well with such a cool transition. But what did it take to get there you may ask!
First I tried mapping out the skeleton of it using the red circles for the hands, feet, and braid end. With the skeleton I tried to map out basic movements and asked some other people for help with trying to map some of it, like for example I was mostly happy with the walking but I wasn't happy with the braid.
The next file I've saved has some work done to it, mostly surrounding the travel of the braid. In the first one it seemed to be stiff and stayed in a (shape the whole time, but here I made it more airy and accessible to change.
I sketched it out in the art program and imported every single frame individually to test on the flipbook software. It was very sketchy and I had the basic movement down but as is incredibly obvious it was NOT consistent at all and would need heavy work done to it.
Here we can see a lot of improvements. The sketch is still very obviously sketchy, but there are some parts falling into place. Weird thing is that it looks like she's rolling her arms which is weird.
A MUCH cleaner version of it. This one seems to be slowed down. Anyways, here we can see things smoothed out quite a lot. It's more consistent, the braid works, the sweater is ALSO animated. I love how the walking cycle wasn't the hardest part, the braid was. Anyways, this took me days to get here but it was slowly shaping up.
I am still shocked to this day that I somehow made the axe appearing seem natural like that thing came out of thin air and I can't even animate how did this happen.
Smoothed up a bit more...
COLORED. You might be wondering, wow how did you do that! Manually. I took. the normal world pallet and the pink world pallet. And for every single frame. I colored it just a little differently by lowering the opacity of one pallet over another.
Same thing with the background! I manually lowered the opacity of the background juuust a bit, merged them, put it in the animation program, went back the art program, lowered the opacity just a little bit again, for like fifteen fucking times.
BUT THEN, BUT THEN,
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/718156205645758504/856261952036012102/FINISHED_FUCK_YOU.mp4
IT WAS FUCKING GREEEEEEEENI exported the fucking video from the animation software and whenever I rendered it IT WAS GREEEEEEN. FOR NO REASONNNN
It took me quite a while to try and find a solution, and in the end I ended up opening up the animation, recording it with OBS, and then cutting the OBS file in the animation software. CHRIST.Anyways as amazing as this animation was, it took me four days and drained me a bit sense I was initially aiming for a halloween release and the loss of days set me off a bit so I became a little less motivated on the later part. BUT LIKE LOOK AT THIS STELLAR ANIMATION.
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/718156205645758504/856259198173052958/scream.mp4
This one I didn't quite want to put there but I DID because I needed more time from the end of that animation to the next part.
This is the same picture as the beginning image but, like, extended a bit more! Looks like the hallway curves. What's at the end of the hallll
Then the hall itself pink-a-fied. Very lady image but you're supposed to pay attention to the text on it, which says "eyes covered in Pink and Bleach".
So the lyrical version of the song that I saw made a typo. The song actually said 'Ink and Bleach" but the pop of the instrumental made it sound like 'P'ink. And honestly I think that pink and bleach brings much more striking imagery anyways. That's why the pink world is all stylized in its soft pastel pink, sense that's usually 'cute', Jockey likes pink, and 'pink and bleach' is the lyrics I chose to go with.
+ The jockey standing in front of both of those backgrounds. The one time you can see a zipper on her backpack, lol.
HUNTER ZOMBIE APPEARS AND SURPRISES HER OUT OF NOWHERE OH NOOOO anyways yeah so like in the original I've Learnt too Much Hunter was creepin around here! (so funny)
Instead of drawing something new I used the silhouettes from the beginning but FLIPPED. Here it makes sense why Jockey killed Hunter. Because. Well. She snuck up on her and she didn't have time to go "hmm I would rather be killed than live in this world where everybody is zombied" like in ILTM.
Originally this was sort of meant to be a plausible timeline branch from I learnt too much but I dropped the idea later.
Kind of silly 'oop' panel. One of the more sketchy ones sense I usually redraw the faces to be less circely but HEY normal art style.
The original line was "Cross out the ones who heard my cries and watched me weep" but sort of in a sort of vengeful way but here it was more accidental and she meant it more in a "this was my friend!!" sort of way.
Fire was always kind of hard for me at the time. Idk why there's a fire it's just in the lyrics I suppose, and I drew four of the fires to go with the beat of the song. The background looks tilted and I like the way the door is BUT out of all my backgrounds this one is likely one of the more lazy ones sense I didn't put in the text.
There are four clicks in the song but I made the screen go dark for one of them. She dropped the axe around here. She didn't want Hunter's blood on her hands ;~;
This part was done after that whole animation so I had somewhat lost a lot of my confidence! I wasn't super happy with this part but I carried on through it anyways, even if I was never really satisfied with it. I mean I think it's still pretty cool now but at the time my motivation was running pretty low;;
Fire go grrr bite.
It was pointed out to me that the middle one looks much more like a prototype than the other ones and I agree, it doesn't really fit with the first and third but I mean whateverrr.
It's the hallway again but with fire! I remember having issues for a while wondering if fire should even BE in the pink world and. Yeah it's confusing, idk. It's pink so it's fine lol
I remember liking to draw the smoke effects on this one. I bet you can tell now with closer inspection some of the fire is kind of lazy copy paste.
Now, I actually REALLY like this part but mostly how I liked it up with the song. the 'hush' part worked out soooo well for it.
Again, this part is the one in the animation where my motivation was running the LOWEST so there's less effort in it. I took a break from it, and sense this point the project was most of an on and off thing for when I felt like it.
These two pictures loop for the entirety of the intermission and what I did was time it up to the music and put effects on them as it went, this 'bad sync' affect which would play on any wrong note and this other static effect which I kept light on the later half.
Now, personal opinion? I think that's a GREAT IDEA! I could've done extra scenes but I really think this part givers you a rest stop to process things while still keeping up the intrigue. Because, what happened to Jockey! Is she okay? What's going on!? I think it's really cool.
Livejournal told me my post was TOO LONG so I'm cutting it into two posts. I will link the second part HERE