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MisterAibo — We Have Liftoff!
Published: 2014-08-23 18:01:46 +0000 UTC; Views: 4031; Favourites: 146; Downloads: 29
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Description
"A by-product of the development was the invention of sixty-two previously unseen curse words and fifteen new ways to destroy a blackboard."
Memory Lane Pictures'Ltd. proudly presents wing flapping animation! Our cinemagraphs can now include flying ponies!
TechnicalI started and failed and scrapped the wing animation about twenty times throughout the year. No matter how I tried, I could not wrap my head around how to simulate the wing's flipping. In comes CaptainSangre , solving the riddle with remarkable ease and showing me the answer that was right in front of my nose the whole time. Of course, the whole thing still took two days of work to get to a stage where I was happy with it. But now I can take the animation and, unlike Flash, slow it down or speed it up without any difficulty or loss of quality whatsoever. Oh yeah, and I made the unfolding/folding animations, too. But those took only about an hour.
The wing flap consists of ten separate keyframes (which are interpolated through throughout the loop). It uses seventeen separate curves to achieve the desired effect; two per each feather (outline & fill), flat color to fill in the gaps and a cheat shape (that comes to aid from time to time when other shapes simply couldn't stretch fast enough without breaking the smoothness of the animation). Also, if my computer could run on rage, I'd be set for five years.
Still image created with inkscape .
The animations were made and exported with aniGen .
Exported with Adasek's SVGRender once again.
You too can make animations with AniGen !
As always, I appreciate any comments, criticisms and discussions in the comments.
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Comments: 27
Wonderful!
I hope those blackboards will be treated with care for a little while now
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My OC would probably be sitting there like, "So what.. You can fly, b-big deal.." and she would just pout the whole time XD
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Looks great! Wonderful job on the animation!
Ill be be getting another one from you now!
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I'll be glad to make it for you.
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Really nice animation as always. Love how she just looks so pleased with herself.
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Oh it looks so smooth and natural. Great job. Something bugs me about the unfolding, but I can simply not put my finger on it. Oh well. Over all its an amazing animation ^^
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Thanks. The show's unfolding goes through another shape - the wing kinda folds upwards, holding at a flat, semi-folded shape for a frame or two and then unfolds completely. My way proceeds from the folded to the unfolded shape directly instead, so it wouldn't feel like the show. The folding is just a byproduct anyway.
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This way of unfolding is kinda wrong, btw. Because the small set of feathers on the inner side of the wing is not the same with the small set in the folded position (at least if mlp pegasi's wings are supposed to be based on a bird wing).
Because the first ones are wing lining, and the second ones are primary coverts.
www.janetemarshall.co.nz/kids/…
Basically, those are two different sides of a wing, but you make it as one (möbius wing, lol)
So, yeah, the unfolding animation in the show kinda makes sense.
But having primary coverts in the folded position and not having them on the outer side of the wing in the unfolded position there kinda doesn't. So, it seems that even the show is kinda weird sometimes in such details, oh well.
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I'll work on the unfolding / folding thing later. I just needed something, and couldn't be bothered with all the details, as you might imagine.
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Yup, of course. That's why I didn't mention it when you showed me this pic in stash - I knew that you were already tired of working on that stuff, and wouldn't have the right mood to fix it at that moment.
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Mhm I see. (Kinda 
So, while they work frame by frame your's is a little more through procedure? Well, I honestly like your's much more ^^
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Yeah, flash is frame based, while SVG is time-based. In SVG, you can calculate the value of any animated object at any given time between any two points. For instance, if you animate a circle to change its diameter from 1 to 2 in a second, you can easily calculate the value in .5 seconds, but just as easily in .25, or .123129573, or any other. This is the big plus of SVG animation, but the downside to that is that attributes comprised of different type of values or different number of values can't be animated smoothly. You can't morph a two-node path into a four-node path, because each node needs its sibling in the other shape to actually change into over time. But Flash can have an animation key (looped) comprised of completely different frames - wing pointing up, wing with only half the feathers shown, etc. - and your worst problem is actually drawing those.
Of course, this means flash can also have problems with complex animations, because of its fixed frame rate. If SVG can't animate quickly enough, it will simply lower the frame rate. If you have a beast of a computer, your SVG will give you 600 fps. (That reminds me; I have to make something interactive again.)
In short, flash's system requires less technical though put into each animation, but its scope is limited. Only thing is, there are editors for flash animation. SVG has AniGen, and that's kinda it.
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My brain:
Sweet baby mew that's complicated owo I might not understand it all
(an interactive thingy would be amazing)
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I wouldn't say school is meaningless, but look at me - I can animate a bit, and I've never been to any kind of art school in my life. It only takes the will to try stuff out. Sure, it's probably not enough to pursue it as a professional career, but it's something.
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Yep. First I gotta get a good animation program. Right now I really just do frame by frame stuf with frames that takes forever to do. Heh. Maybe someday!
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I think you may have more accurate animation than the actual show when it comes to flying. (but they have to save time, so yeah.)
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Well, they use flash and their animations are thus frame-based. The length can vary, but I think the long one has sixteen frames. Flash works with independent frames, of course, whereas syncing SVG to that would be a bit problematic (although not impossible). And so, if I were to export this animation at 120 fps, my wing motion would still be smooth and nice, whereas flash would have to hold each wing shape for four frames before jumping to the next. So, the problem is not saving time, but rather the limitation of flash as technology.
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