Just thought I'd get that out of the way up front...
I've really covered all the
how I can think of w/o going into how to draw, but perhaps it will be instructive to show the individual frames that went into the above w/ commentary. If you're following along seriously at home, save the .gif and open it in GIMP, so you can switch between this and having a closer look for yourself.
Stage one, the opening hip-wiggle, is these three over and over for 13 frames:
That's (
A B A C A B A C A B A C) for three shakes. The neutral
A is somewhat superfluous between the opposing
B and
C, but is left in this overlong [42 frames is pretty excessive] animation 1.) for instructional purposes, and 2.) because quick intermediate frames
do make for a smoother animation.
To begin the transition to the next part of the dance, Teddy extends his paws and scrunches down two pixels (to emphasize difference in height to make the leap more visible w/o making the frame borders any taller than absolutely needed - tall smilies break up line spacing, so shorter is better) in preparation to leap.
Now in the air and turning
Frames that are going to be up for a tenth-second (100ms) or less don’t need to look as good.
Sticks the landing
Now in full profile, still contracted.
Full height, drawn back for pelvic thrust
And it’s the pelvic thrust that drives Asher insa-yay-yay-yayane
And frames (
G H) to do it again, then back to (
F E) to turn to other way then use the same frames, flipped, to do it twice more in the other direction.
(
I J K L K L)
-Ending in a full-height profile to transition to the concluding spin
(
J I N)
N being
D moved up two pixels in the frame -
always emphasizing the height difference in jumps, the alternative being taking up a lot more space for the hops to be visible.
(
D)
-These are all alterations of frames already shown, different in placement, height and foot-positioning for realism, and the differences in the feet of the reflections of
R Q P and
O that bring us back around are too trivial to be worth making the screenies.
S, like
O, is just an alteration of
D. The 19 different figures I’ve portrayed are close to being the same six repeated endlessly - far more work went into figuring out how to animate the next move and tweaking the timing through trial and error than drawing the variations.
Here’s the entire arrangement of frames and timing from the Layers Menu
…
I had no idea that I had much artistic talent when I began modding SMACX faction art -which is how I got started with this, forums and everything- I did alterations of other peoples’ work, and kept at it and learned new things until it turned out that I was good at a lot of stuff.
The first step is to take on modest projects - shamelessly modifying pre-existing works a little until you gain mastery and move up in originality, according to your developing talent. I’ve been doing this for years to get this good, so don’t let that intimidate you from trying as a beginner. I didn’t have any tutorials to smooth out the bumps.
Here’s an alteration I made Valka of an earlier Teddy dance into a black kitteh
(I then posted it at 'poly for Slowwhand; he's a crazy cat lady)
My challenge/homework assignment to you is take the same animation and turn it into a different animal. Then post, that I may praise your industry.
Questions and such are welcome. I will be delighted to be of whatever help I can be.
Good hunting.
