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The Mysterious Gait Under Wraps
(Note: There is a higher-resolution version; the version above is the one that's most commonly shared, due to its lower amount of memory)
It's a start of a new page, and I decided to start with a piece that got a surprising amount of popularity.
Sometimes, I get some inspiring ideas on unusual thoughts about the Mario series, and if I'm lucky, they get to be drawn. What you see above is a result of one of my ideas that I felt has potential to be something more. The basic idea is: what does Peach's dress look like underneath it? Specifically, how do the legs move under the skirt? You see, in Paper Mario, only three humans exist: Mario, Luigi, and Peach. Mario and Luigi's feet move like a pendulum, which leaves little to the imagination. But Peach is another matter. She is never seen in any other clothing that shows her legs.
Indeed, nobody seems to ask this question but that means it's also a question begging for some natural suggestions, and off-the-wall ones. This idea initially started out as a mere sketch and some strange suggestions, but eventually I wanted to use it as an opportunity to draw animation.
This animated piece is my serious attempt, whereas previous ones were just small stuff. Indeed, the real challenge is coming up with how the legs move in motion. Some, they were easy, but many of them were difficult. For example, the Regular one features normal walking, but animating a walk is not so easy.
A couple of them got revisions. Float had less feet movement but I decided to redraw it to give it clearer movements. Also, wheel initially have the feet moving clockwise until someone pointed out that it looked like it moves backwards, which is a good call because I didn't notice it.
This is a 12-frame animated piece, and it loops every second, so it's 12fps. Within the 12 frames certain things took advantage of the whole 12 frames, while others are 6 unique images stretched across 12 frames (2 frames each). This is most evident in the text, which I should point out were not animated uniquely. Since I had fun with the result, I just threw in the animated text. One thing that I initially also did was to put Paper Peach blinking, but blinking every second looks a bit unnatural, so the blinking motion is omitted. Indeed, I think blinking probably looks best at 2 seconds each time, or maybe more.
Initially, I shared this piece on Reddit and Tumblr, the former in r/papermario and reposted at r/mario. I left the art overnight, not thinking it to have more popularity compared to the Mario piece I did. I was a bit worried that some people may questioned it too much and dislike it, but to my surprise, it actually took off! It's currently has the most notes of my posts on Tumblr, while on Reddit, it ended up being the third-most upvoted post on r/papermario. I have to thank everyone who resonated with this piece, I certainly didn't expect it to be as popular as it did. It's one thing to have the Garfield styled Mario being popular (which I expect), but this is another level entirely.
By the way, on Tumblr, these are the final results of the poll, after I was only made aware of the option to make a poll.
The one that seems to garner a surprising amount of popularity is Secret Skates. It's one of the funnier ones, and I am glad that I cranked my head to come up with the idea. I wanted something mechanical for one of them, like riding a cycle, but they seem to be difficult to implement, until I decided I want a pair of skates that magically appear. It also looks nicely animated, which I am surprised on how good it ended up being.
Sadly, Reddit's viewership timeline is gone after 45 days since posting, so I can't share the graph for that post.
Hopefully these look good enough to get some laughs! I felt accomplished looking at all the animation I spent nights doing.
Park Animation Test
Krita has a feature that allows you to draw animation. Wanting to experiment with it, I decided to start with something simple: a two frame animation. I often like the look of redrawn frames to give the impression of time passing in the scenery, which is what enamored me on Kirby's Dream Land 3 compared to Kirby Super Star (though their art style is not shabby).
I do think that a two-frame animation might be too simple, though. It probably has its uses, so maybe I might find a use for two frames of looping animation.
Thank you for reading.