Hikari's Dilemma - Shot 19 - Deep

Edit: Oops, the gifs I exported had the wrong settings. Replaced them.

This is (probably) the last closeup in Hikari's Dilemma (Newgrounds / Vimeo / Youtube). I've kinda been using this traditional animation fever as an excuse not to work on some of the other, bigger shots... which I guess I'll have to get back to now. Ah, well, it was a fun diversion.

I couldn't be happier with how these traditionally animated closeups have been coming out.  

Don't get me wrong, I love the way my puppet animation comes out as well, but being able to do some honest-to-goodness hand drawn animation and be super proud of the result is incredibly satisfying. :D

As always, I started with the original panel from the comic. As with the previous one, the original comic panel was portrait orientation, meaning that there was a lot I had to make up for on the sides.

Through a bit of train and error, and looking up a lot of reference, I did finally manage to unlock the secret of butts. Mostly. I started drawing all the frames, again shifting around the timing until I got something that looked pretty good.

Since the rough frames were looking good, I went ahead and did cleanup, inking, coloring, and shading. I also threw in a bit of a simple background, showing the bed's headboard and a bit of the wall.

But... something just looked wrong. The space in between there was too... empty. And so, I endeavored to add a bit more, showing some of the skirt, a bit of Hikari's chest, and Asuka's arms. 

Fun fact, Hikari's chesty bits are only visible for 2 frames, and yet it does a lot for the final animation.

Now, this shot isn't exactly 16:9, you may have noticed. Well, you see, this is to preserve my artistic vision- nah, just kidding. In the animation, this shot will pan slowly from top to bottom, in your usual, comfortable to view 16:9 ratio. 

And now... On to the next shots.