WIP #37: Bunny business Part 1 (Patreon)

It's time to dig into that easter-themed project with big angel bunny we've been running so many polls for! As you can see, I'm hard at work on a few different aspects of the project! So far, I'm just laying the groundwork, but nevertheless there's some cool stuff to show!

The general concept is an easter picnic with the girls dressed up in bunnysuits, and a... special guest! I think it's pretty clear what happens next. Format wise, I'm not quite sure what I'm going with, but it's not going to be a 100 pic behemoth like hot bolt summer, at the moment I'm focused on creating gifs and animations filling out the hardcore part, and then  as we get closer to spring next year I'll start fleshing out how I'm gonna present the (pretty slight) story context around it.

if you've been following my work for a really long time, you might recognize this concept! I've been wanting to do right by the idea I had back then for a very long time indeed... it's kind of incredible to see just how far my asset work and general scene cohesion has come in three years!

So first up, the bunnysuits! And the environment. I'm going to do a separate writeup on the ridiculous optimization hacks that made such a visually complex environment like this not only possible, but performant, suffice to say here that there's a lot of smoke and mirrors.

I haven't animated a walk in so long. Look at her go, I must do more!

So far none of the outfits are complete, and I've still got AJ and Pinkie's one to do! As always I enjoyed designing bespoke outfits for each character based on my interpretations of them, so Pinkie will be wearing a suitably contrarian reverse bunnysuit, Twilight's suit colour is based on the dress she wore that one time in season 2, AJ's suit is all-leather, etc. With fluttershy's suit I wanted to echo the outfit Flutterbat was wearing in Witching Hour, since this has continuity with that. (is it a sequel? I think that depends on how well the final size measures up)

And the animations! This has been the fun part for me. None of these are finished, and you'll notice the first four aren't from any poll I've run here - I just did them for fun, to relax! 

There'll be plenty more where that came from! Of course, the poll animations we've voted on so far will also join their ranks, along with a few more dynamic and involved pieces I'm working on in the background at the moment.

Also, of course, this project will feature some OCs from the polls! At the moment it's Dark Straw and Steel Heart, and I'm enjoying how their animations are coming together so far.

As you might be able to tell I'm having a lot of fun with this new and far more expressive angel bunny rig.

Also, bonus pinkiemac animation for "Teatime!":

I'm looking to resume work on that project in earnest soon™, now that hot bolt summer is done! I need to go in and re-work and fix a bunch of the animations, though, since the models have been through more than one update since then, and there was some stuff I wasn't happy with before. Fun times to come!