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Description

This is the still frame pull from the full animation file of Standby! You can view it here!

Animation was animated at 2.7k pixels, condensed down to 700, so this is the quality you can’t see in the flash file. Now a bit of background on the process that went into the full animation: As some of you know, Kaius Grey, the main antagonist of the Syron Saga, hadn’t been drawn or updated in about 2.5 years from his cringeworthy FC. I was in the process of updating everyone and sadly he got left behind, mostly because of how complicated he was both thematically and visually, so I spent a lot of time in Standby not only animating his new appearance, but researching what his appearance would be based off and how the mechanics of his gloves would operate. You can see the development of his glove mechanics below:

The gloves he has are giant piston operated machines that derive all of their power from Kaius’ own heat generation in the form of steam. The radial turbines on the wrist of the glove draw in air from around the fuselage and separate the air into two forms: pure oxygen, and the moisture for storage in the inner compartment of the fuselage. The pistons on the top and sides of the glove and in the fingers react to temperature changes and, using the heat directly from Kaius’ crystals, can expand and contract with large amounts of force. The triangle knuckle design was to allow even thermal distribution and thrust while allowing for the 3-axis finger movement as well. On the top and bottom of each knuckle are flame ports that allow for direct flame ventilation from Kaius’ heat. The oxygen stored in the gloves can be used as an oxidizer to increase flame volatility and influence the direction of heat transfer while in use.

The gloves are purely designed to supplement Kaius’ powers by aiding in the strength and direction of the heat he emits, whereas when he removes the gloves and the giant crystals slide out the back, heat is evenly radiated in all directions (due to how thermal radiation works). The gloves are not permanent by any means, and can be untethered, but Kaius’ also loses the ability to conduct heat through his crystals after about 10 meters of separation, so the gloves ensure he is never separated too far. Because of how they operate purely off Kaius’ heat, they are completely unusable to anyone but him unless the user has a substantial and limitless heat source powering them from behind.

As you will also notice, he has a crystal cigarette wand in his mouth. This serves two purposes: 1.) Kaius is addicted to his own smoke/fire and 2.) the small tip made of crystal ensures that even if Kaius is separated from his main Hylex components, he still has a tiny crystal to cause ignition.

In this sketch, you can see how the crystals from Kaius mutation penetrate parts of his upper torso and skin, which is different from Syron as you can see his arms are still attached. Not only that, but the beta variant of the Hylex element is actually a different crystal lattice than that of alpha (Syron) where the Crystals are hexagonal pillars, designed to better channel thermal energy. Kaius has two that follow him, but are often locked into the rear fuselage on his Steamgloves. Kaius’ elemental isotope is also far more unstable than Syron’s and because of that, it causes a lot more collateral damage.

Kaius primary design influence this time around was early cold-war nuclear advancement. The gloves are not compact and streamlined, and are far more bulky and rudimentary than a lot of the tech seen in the Syron Universe. This ‘function over form’ carried a lot into the goggle design of Kaius as well, who has large multifunction welding goggles. Standby as an animation used this further with the ‘Standby’ broadcast screen from early television in the 1950’s as its core theme.

So you can see this was a lot more than just ‘draw a thing’ and the planning was really the largest time consumer in this project. Standby is also a ‘foil’ animation to Metamorphosis not only in its content, but in its core color scheme and feeling. Standby uses orange and red as a core color while Metamorphosis uses its opposite; blues and purples. The emotions from both pieces are different as well. One is a feeling of internal power and struggle (internal conflict yet empowerment) while the other features unease, fear, and intimidation as its central emotive points. Some people will find more relation to one over another depending on mood, and interests. Kinda cool huh?

Also, this was me pushing my limits on digital painting, using one brush for the entire character painting; the watercolor brush in Firealpaca (seriously it kicks so much butt). I was shooting for LoL level color production and I feel I discovered a lot about my own color limits with trying. Looks great animated, but its limited to non-tweened pieces because doing multiple frames at that fidelity is not possible for me.

Hope you like. (thanks for reading)

_________________________

Art © me

Kaius Grey © me
Painted in Firealpaca, supplemented with photoshop cs3
tweens done in photoshop

4 weeks for the entire animation, 4 days to paint what you see here.

Description

This is the still frame pull from the full animation file of Standby! You can view it here!

Animation was animated at 2.7k pixels, condensed down to 700, so this is the quality you can’t see in the flash file. Now a bit of background on the process that went into the full animation: As some of you know, Kaius Grey, the main antagonist of the Syron Saga, hadn’t been drawn or updated in about 2.5 years from his cringeworthy FC. I was in the process of updating everyone and sadly he got left behind, mostly because of how complicated he was both thematically and visually, so I spent a lot of time in Standby not only animating his new appearance, but researching what his appearance would be based off and how the mechanics of his gloves would operate. You can see the development of his glove mechanics below:

The gloves he has are giant piston operated machines that derive all of their power from Kaius’ own heat generation in the form of steam. The radial turbines on the wrist of the glove draw in air from around the fuselage and separate the air into two forms: pure oxygen, and the moisture for storage in the inner compartment of the fuselage. The pistons on the top and sides of the glove and in the fingers react to temperature changes and, using the heat directly from Kaius’ crystals, can expand and contract with large amounts of force. The triangle knuckle design was to allow even thermal distribution and thrust while allowing for the 3-axis finger movement as well. On the top and bottom of each knuckle are flame ports that allow for direct flame ventilation from Kaius’ heat. The oxygen stored in the gloves can be used as an oxidizer to increase flame volatility and influence the direction of heat transfer while in use.

The gloves are purely designed to supplement Kaius’ powers by aiding in the strength and direction of the heat he emits, whereas when he removes the gloves and the giant crystals slide out the back, heat is evenly radiated in all directions (due to how thermal radiation works). The gloves are not permanent by any means, and can be untethered, but Kaius’ also loses the ability to conduct heat through his crystals after about 10 meters of separation, so the gloves ensure he is never separated too far. Because of how they operate purely off Kaius’ heat, they are completely unusable to anyone but him unless the user has a substantial and limitless heat source powering them from behind.

As you will also notice, he has a crystal cigarette wand in his mouth. This serves two purposes: 1.) Kaius is addicted to his own smoke/fire and 2.) the small tip made of crystal ensures that even if Kaius is separated from his main Hylex components, he still has a tiny crystal to cause ignition.

In this sketch, you can see how the crystals from Kaius mutation penetrate parts of his upper torso and skin, which is different from Syron as you can see his arms are still attached. Not only that, but the beta variant of the Hylex element is actually a different crystal lattice than that of alpha (Syron) where the Crystals are hexagonal pillars, designed to better channel thermal energy. Kaius has two that follow him, but are often locked into the rear fuselage on his Steamgloves. Kaius’ elemental isotope is also far more unstable than Syron’s and because of that, it causes a lot more collateral damage.

Kaius primary design influence this time around was early cold-war nuclear advancement. The gloves are not compact and streamlined, and are far more bulky and rudimentary than a lot of the tech seen in the Syron Universe. This ‘function over form’ carried a lot into the goggle design of Kaius as well, who has large multifunction welding goggles. Standby as an animation used this further with the ‘Standby’ broadcast screen from early television in the 1950’s as its core theme.

So you can see this was a lot more than just ‘draw a thing’ and the planning was really the largest time consumer in this project. Standby is also a ‘foil’ animation to Metamorphosis not only in its content, but in its core color scheme and feeling. Standby uses orange and red as a core color while Metamorphosis uses its opposite; blues and purples. The emotions from both pieces are different as well. One is a feeling of internal power and struggle (internal conflict yet empowerment) while the other features unease, fear, and intimidation as its central emotive points. Some people will find more relation to one over another depending on mood, and interests. Kinda cool huh?

Also, this was me pushing my limits on digital painting, using one brush for the entire character painting; the watercolor brush in Firealpaca (seriously it kicks so much butt). I was shooting for LoL level color production and I feel I discovered a lot about my own color limits with trying. Looks great animated, but its limited to non-tweened pieces because doing multiple frames at that fidelity is not possible for me.

Hope you like. (thanks for reading)

_________________________

Art © me

Kaius Grey © me
Painted in Firealpaca, supplemented with photoshop cs3
tweens done in photoshop

4 weeks for the entire animation, 4 days to paint what you see here.