Recently, I’ve been hard at work animating a bunch of characters for a passion project dedicated to my partner’s really cool story. You can view all of the work that I’ve done below. My commentary on each piece comes from a private server that we share with the project’s voice cast.

(Note: these are all WIP animations.)

Vestia

With Vestia, I wanted to convey her silliness as much as I could while maintaining her angular shape language. Turns out she's quite annoying to work with at such a low resolution... but I think I managed to make it work.

I don’t think she has a single thought in her head.

Scavendor

I really wanted to drive home how awkward he was, so in addition to his constant foot shuffling - his "react" animation is just this strange hand motion. I like to think that it's his special way of showing excitement while trying to appear nonchalant about it. His beak also sort of scrunches up in this odd, unnatural looking way... I dunno why he does that. [Laughs]

I think he’s one of my favorite birds.

Diborane

I had quite a lot of fun working on these. My ultimate goal was to push her cheery, bubbly personality with her movements. So, fittingly, her "cheer" animation has her jumping and striking a silly pose in place. Her idle stance is also quite energetic. I don't think she's capable of standing still…

“BLEH” is probably her third catchphrase.

Varanus

These were very simple to make, and I'm honestly really satisfied with the results. I'm especially proud of how flowy his cloak and tail are. Not to mention, the subpixelling on the mask when he nods appears extra smooth...

Such a calm breeze for a calm guy... I can feel the gentleness through the pixels!!!

I didn’t think komodo dragons could be that muscular.

Akira

I had a lot of fun working on these, particularly with her goopy VFX and "cheer" sprites. Something that I think is really fun about her design is that she loosely gives off cliche princess vibes... but as a character, she's got a lot more going on. So you could imagine that it was really fun to play into that trope while also eventually making her sinister "cheer" animation.

I think that tropes are fun to take advantage of in both character design and writing. Obviously, just having a character who only possesses tropes and nothing more is bad... but using them as a base to go off of can lead to really unique results if you play your cards right. I think that's what makes Akira so fun.

She seems nice, until you realize that she’d probably give you a hard time if you’re working retail.

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