This Week in the Forest! #151 (Patreon)

Yo folks! Here's what we've been up to the past week!

Starting with a Word form Vixel!

3/19 weekly update:

Hey floofs! ^w^ Short update here! Last week I finished most of my stray coding todos working toward our next monthly build. Then I spent the weekend at the local furcon! This week I'll try to knock out the remaining polish and playtesting so we can be ready to publish new builds.

Have a nice week! <3

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On my end I've been up to a couple things!

FIRST, The bun sales are going great! I think about 35 are sold so far! Lots of premium boxes too! For some reason I didn't think those would go first... Anyways, I should be opening these up to the public soon, so pick one up if you're interested!

Regarding the premium boxes GOOD NEWS! My guy said they are all done in production and ready to be shipped! So probably like, AT MOST a month wait? Likely sooner!

Then TFOL-wise, I've been getting back into Toonboom to mess with the animation workflow! REALLY DIGGIN IT! There's some alien fucky wucky shit with the program, but the more I'm learning it, the more things are feeling a lot better. My biggest issue with it is how SLOW it is. No idea why it's like that. Opening a file takes like, a minute. Moving things around in layers or the node view just is clunky and gross. TO BE FAIR this file I've got going on is >kinda fuckin huge< so it might just be getting bogged down.

In any case, I've made a lot of progress so far on the next animation. And it's like, a very complex one, but it's super nice knowing how this workflow is. I'm able to comfortably take my time, and the coloring and lighting (when applicable) will be taken care of for me due to this workflow!

To give some background on this workflow, All of TFOL has been animated so far in a modern TV 2D animation style. This basically means it's a hybrid of tween animation and hand drawn. Tween when you can, hand drawn when you have to. It's the most efficient method of animation, and the workflow is great for working on a good drawing, rather than a bunch of inbetweens.

Pixel art uses this method kinda unintentionally. It's the same workflow, but on such a smaller scale, it doesn't QUITE feel the same. But it is. Cut up, re-use, fill in. That's essentially tweening with extra steps.

SO back in the day, I used to fuck with Flash ALL THE TIME. After college I did some work for a place using flash, and i was nuts with it lmao. It actually was probably where I really honed my animation knowledge. Or at least, honed the foundations for where I'm at now.

For whatever reason, I never really considered using flash for TFOL, and over the years, Adobe Animate has gotten more and more alien to me, and less and less familiar.

SO I figured might as well finally learn Toonboom Harmony. There's SOME things I'm really not a fan of, but there's A LOT that just works really well. I understand why folks dig it.

ANYWHO! Up above was a quick loop that I put together using the workflow. Lots of set up, but once the set up is done, so is the final color and lines. I'd much rather spend more time "setting up" than way more time "cleaning up" so this has been awesome so far.

Yep! SO other than that, I wrote up the dialogue for the next scene you guys will be seeing. It's pretty spicy ;>

OH! I've been spending a lot of time getting used to this new tool:

Wow big picture. I've been using this as an ergonomic method to working. Long story short CTRL and SHIFT hotkeys are FUCKING my wrist. Like, real bad, it super sucks. And there's no way around it using so many programs, EXCEPT SOMETHING LIKE THIS!

That's 22 keys right there. And SUPER customizeable to make everything fit perfectly. There's no crazy stretches you have to do, it feels fuckin' dope! This plus reWASD is insane. it's SOOO fucking good for the craziest shit. It goes beyond a button does one thing, but double clicking the same one can do something else, click and hold does something else. It'S SO gOOOd! Now I've got tools that I use interchangeable accessible with the same button, just activated differently. And it's absolutely been helping the wrist. I'm very excited for the future of mastering this thing.

I've only had it for a week, and I pretty immediately felt like I could get used to it. A week in, I've adapted it to my main drawing programs, and a fork for Toonboom and it's fuckin' gucci.

That weird ass stand let's my have my hand in a more comfortable position too. Literally this shit's a game changer.

New tool? New workflow? this shit's been big peepee hours over here xD

OK! enough from me. We'll be working hard to get ya guys some new content soon :> Take care!