Another interesting aspect to the
process of putting together this video comic is the small bits of
frame-by-frame animation I'm doing. I am doing it sparingly, in only
a few parts, but it does really add to things and the movement
creates an interesting hybrid of the typical JRPG character stills +
text and a somewhat stop-motion cartoon-like feel. One situation I've
run into a few times is when I have an animation going and I need to
change things in the environment (or with the characters) at a
different rate than the animation. There are several ways I could do
this, and I've experimented with both. In the brief animated section
of the combat scene, for instance, at one point I have the stuttered
muzzle-flash of a semi-automatic firearm going, at a rate of about 1
or 2 frames alternating between “on” and “off,” so the
flashes look intermittent in order to synchronize with the fast rate
of the gunfire in the audio track. Yet a few of the characters are
moving around at a slower rate—if they moved as fast as the
gunfire, they'd be just as stuttered and it wouldn't look as natural
for their movement. So, I ended up creating a small “zone” in the
graphical frame that I'm using, where I keep all art out of that zone
so the gunfire can happen at a separate speed. Then, in my movie
editing program, I overlay the gunfire on top of that area, with the
rest of that “slide” completely erased and clear so that the
character slide underneath shows through. That way, I can advance
things at two separate speeds, keeping the fast gunfire and the
slower movements of the characters at the same time.
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