GR#223 - Improving my Spooky Ghost - Scenery Process & Animation

[Daimoth]

Consider removing her boob crack. With a gown like that it would either be very unpronounced or taught and not visible at all.

[Hamenopi]

I like your disciple of keeping the variety of pixels down to minimum. The light pole looks a little bit out of place, maybe it's on the thick side for what I'm used to.

[Lakelezz]

So, I did some edits and tried to consider every of all your mentioned points.
However I did not touch the bush - I am just totally unsure about it.

Here is the current version:



I want to fix the water a little bit more and also the right side of the woman's hair. It is a little bit flat due the rotation.

[Mathias]

Suddenly, an edit.



1x


Compare:

[Lakelezz]

Thanks a lot for your comprehensive edit! I tried to orientate by your changes.
However I encountered some problems.

This is the animated version:


Problems with it are quite obvious:
My water is not moving as I want it to be. I really like how your water animation is working - do you have any tips for me to get the same effect?
Though I looked into your GIF but it I would be quite curious about some further information.
The way I did my water was basically removing every second line and erasing some of the left parts. Then I moved it quite a bit and caused this effect.

Do not mind the speed of the switching between light and darkness, that will be fixed in the end / while I increase the frames.

Additionally the fly is being an awesome idea! However I am pretty much reduced on what to do without simply copying the idea.
I could change the fly a bit or rather how it moves - but to be honest this is probably the best not-boring-way possible.
If it would have been my animation, it would probably just move in a boring pattern like a straight line/circle. But your animation shows character in this term.
Thanks for this insight - I value it! However I am still trying to figure out what to do now.

Finally I want to talk about the bushes. They became the worst enemy I could have in pixel art. Nothing was ever as hard as them. They let me struggle since I started with their idea.
I tried to clean them up - however I am really confused about them. Placing randomly pixels is no good idea of course but since nature is kinda "random" it would make sense for a bush.
Also I think there could be a difference between placing randomly and placing random pixels. Your edit was a pretty good base for me to start from but it still did not work

By the way, I thought about some fog-animation moving above the ground or at least where the cobblestones are fading out. I tried to animate fog but it feels really difficult.
In the end I will probably skip this idea.

Closing this up with an alternative design and probably the new version, too:



Just some changes at their eyes and mouth.


I am thankful for coming any help!

[Daimoth]

Big improvement on the lamp post and the face on the doll girl. I like the doll's face better on the unanimated version, though. Those buck teeth aren't really doing it for me.

[Lakelezz]

Thank you! I am really happy with the lantern, too!

I have to agree - the second picture is probably what I am going to use from now on. Additionally it looks much more scary.

[Probo]

i like where the cobbles are heading, the strong highlights make them look slippery wet and the shading in general really nails that uneven surface cobbles have.

[Mr. Fahrenheit]

You could try a fly as just like a black silhouette that moves across the light then disappears into the night when not directly in front of the light.

[Mathias]

Thanks a lot for your comprehensive edit! I tried to orientate by your changes.

You're very welcome.
It was fun to edit.

Additionally the fly is being an awesome idea! However I am pretty much reduced on what to do without simply copying the idea.

No no no, there's other stuff you can do.
I just wanted to infuse some life into the scene so I thought to add the moth.
My original idea was to subtley animate a small group of moths fluttering around the light, attracted to it.
I think the one figure-8 looping moth is too distracting actually.
But, if you want to use the idea, go for it. Here's how I did it:



Quickly drawn motion path in blue.
Then took a pink brush with automatic spacing and plopped down the pink dots. Gotta have as many dots as frames for accurate looping. I had to keep tweaking the brush's spacing in order to wind up with exactly 30, but I eventually got it right.
Then I just drew a moth and moved it to each pink dot, per frame. Super easy.

By the way, I thought about some fog-animation moving above the ground or at least where the cobblestones are fading out. I tried to animate fog but it feels really difficult.

Hey! I wish I'd thought of that! Makes absolutely perfect sense - we're right in front of a body of water, there's a light source right there to creepily illuminate the fog, and the air is likely humid so fog is even naturally probable. Plus fog is definitely a good spooky environment effect. OY. hadn't even crossed my mind mind . . .
One could easily pull off a fog effect using The Dan Fessler Mega Dynamic Pixel Technique.
If you don't do it I might have to . . .

My water is not moving as I want it to be. I really like how your water animation is working - do you have any tips for me to get the same effect?

Haha, yes I have tips.
I'll just dump a bunch of GIFs in here that break down how I did it.
But a warning - doing this kind of junk requires a decent level of proficiency with Photoshop's animation tools. I highly recommend this technique but it's got learning curve.
Photoshop CC 2014 was using for the following . . .

Ok, hit the spoiler button to unhide this mess:

Spoiler

What I did is essentially very simple. It's even simpler than what you did because it doesn't even require redrawing anything per frame.

I'm simply moving textures over each other and blending them together, then indexing the result (chopping the colors down to only what I want).

I grabbed your water and isolated it. I then attempted a perspective transform to make it seem like it receded into the distance because I felt your water was too flat and out of perspective.
I don't think my perspective transform really comes across very well but I did get larger clusters in front and smaller ones in back for a little perspective boost. This was my cheap, fast way of avoiding redrawing it.
Then I applied a motion blur to smooth it out:



So I have my base layer now. I decided not to animate it at all, but just let it sit there statically while I blended other layers INTO it.

Now for a looping, tiling texture to scroll over it:



Now to blend the moving texture into the base. I also applied a motion blur effect to this layer as well, to make the clusters more horizontal-ish.

But instead of just alpha, I used a blend mode that achieved some interesting highlight effects:



Not happy with only that, I searched for an additional effect for even more random watery movement.

Found this nifty animated GIF:



It features much more organic movement than just scrolling things past each other.
It happens to have 15 frames.
My edit of your scene uses 30 frames, so I can use exactly two loops and add it to my blending pile.

Here's what a crop of it (motion blurred) does to the base layer by itself:




Here's both blended textures combined with their effects pretty much maximized (opacity turned all the way up):



Too extreme, so I tweaked opacity and used a feathered, darkening vignette layer to make the edges fade out on the sides, to help keep the viewer's eye in the scene and not attracted to the edges.

I ended up with this:



Last step - apply indexers:




That's . . . all it . . . took.

Totally inspired by Freaky Fessler's Fantastic Fotoshop Fun.