Video Comic update (part 4)

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.