Notes part 2: I added music in this one too. The first song is “The Two Off-Seers”, which plays during Noah and Mio’s fight in Xenoblade 3. I wasn’t really sure what to put here, but I knew that the animation needed something to give it a bit more presence, and the obvious solution was to add music. I was actually shocked at how well the song matched with the action of the piece. Stuff like when Eirika comes in to save Lyn look so much cooler with the tension of the music behind them. And I swear, I didn’t time it, it just so happens that the first big musical moment happens at the exact moment that Celica shows off her red eyes. It was totally unplanned, but it just worked perfectly. The second song was harder to pick. I didn’t want it to be whimsical, nor intense, and not somber or happy. I knew what I didn’t want it to be, but not what I did want it to be. I ended up going with “Iris Network” (also from XC3), because I found it to be a pretty neutral song. I’m happy enough with the music, but I do think it maybe could have been better. I was considering just not having a song at all, but I thought it made it seem a bit too bland. The voice acting is… fine. I did manage to use Celica and Lyn’s actual JP voices this time, since they both show up in Warriors. But for Eirika I went with F!Robin. Which I actually don’t think was a very good choice in retrospect because her battle cries are so boring. But anyways, I think the dialogue sounds fine, and it does its job. The mouth movements are bad though. I got lucky and happened to not show the characters at angles where they needed to move their mouths very often, but when they do it still doesn’t look great. I really need to use a plugin to do it automatically for me, but I just never got around to it and decided to do it by hand. With Eirika because of how her model is designed, I actually wasn’t able to move her mouth at all, which is another reason why her being tiny and hard to see is lucky. In my last animation with captions, they ended up being a bit hard to see against brighter colored backgrounds. This time I used the “glow” effect to put a slight black outline around the text. It’s super hard to see even if you’re looking for it, but I think it helps make the text easier to read. I also switched to using Century Gothic Bold for my font, because I think it ends up being a bit easier to read. And I do like the detail of giving each character’s captions colors based off their hair colors. That’s a fun detail. Oh yeah, and I edited Lyn's model a bit to take off the lower part of her dress because it was a huge pain to work with and caused so many issues. I think she still looks nice without it though. Overall, I think I did a pretty good job with this animation. It does its job as a fun action piece of tiny people fighting a normal sized person, with a couple of fun attacks and decent visual storytelling. I’m extremely happy to finally be able to release this though since it’s been well over a month and a half since my last post. I hope you all enjoy it!
That's sort of left open for interpretation. Maybe they find some allies who can help them out while they're small, maybe they find a way to restore themselves, maybe Eirika will only grow once and is stuck tiny. There are a lot of things that could happen, and I never really picked out anything specific.
Notes part 2:
I added music in this one too. The first song is “The Two Off-Seers”, which plays during Noah and Mio’s fight in Xenoblade 3. I wasn’t really sure what to put here, but I knew that the animation needed something to give it a bit more presence, and the obvious solution was to add music. I was actually shocked at how well the song matched with the action of the piece. Stuff like when Eirika comes in to save Lyn look so much cooler with the tension of the music behind them. And I swear, I didn’t time it, it just so happens that the first big musical moment happens at the exact moment that Celica shows off her red eyes. It was totally unplanned, but it just worked perfectly.
The second song was harder to pick. I didn’t want it to be whimsical, nor intense, and not somber or happy. I knew what I didn’t want it to be, but not what I did want it to be. I ended up going with “Iris Network” (also from XC3), because I found it to be a pretty neutral song. I’m happy enough with the music, but I do think it maybe could have been better. I was considering just not having a song at all, but I thought it made it seem a bit too bland.
The voice acting is… fine. I did manage to use Celica and Lyn’s actual JP voices this time, since they both show up in Warriors. But for Eirika I went with F!Robin. Which I actually don’t think was a very good choice in retrospect because her battle cries are so boring. But anyways, I think the dialogue sounds fine, and it does its job. The mouth movements are bad though. I got lucky and happened to not show the characters at angles where they needed to move their mouths very often, but when they do it still doesn’t look great. I really need to use a plugin to do it automatically for me, but I just never got around to it and decided to do it by hand. With Eirika because of how her model is designed, I actually wasn’t able to move her mouth at all, which is another reason why her being tiny and hard to see is lucky.
In my last animation with captions, they ended up being a bit hard to see against brighter colored backgrounds. This time I used the “glow” effect to put a slight black outline around the text. It’s super hard to see even if you’re looking for it, but I think it helps make the text easier to read. I also switched to using Century Gothic Bold for my font, because I think it ends up being a bit easier to read. And I do like the detail of giving each character’s captions colors based off their hair colors. That’s a fun detail.
Oh yeah, and I edited Lyn's model a bit to take off the lower part of her dress because it was a huge pain to work with and caused so many issues. I think she still looks nice without it though.
Overall, I think I did a pretty good job with this animation. It does its job as a fun action piece of tiny people fighting a normal sized person, with a couple of fun attacks and decent visual storytelling. I’m extremely happy to finally be able to release this though since it’s been well over a month and a half since my last post. I hope you all enjoy it!
Very cool!
Thank you!
Great way to start the year
I actually planned to release this before Christmas, but I ended up needing more time to finish it!
what happens next?
That's sort of left open for interpretation. Maybe they find some allies who can help them out while they're small, maybe they find a way to restore themselves, maybe Eirika will only grow once and is stuck tiny. There are a lot of things that could happen, and I never really picked out anything specific.