foxmcfly
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Adapting for the future
🕑 Added 2023-02-27 17:30:53 +0000 UTCI have lots to worry about; A.I. art taking away casual customers, bad economy making people spend less on art, bad economy making it more expensive to survive, shifting market for games/animation etc.
But I'm still here. And I'll be here until things become so bad that I can't afford to do this anymore as my job, or hopefully until I die of old age after a long life of drawing.
I spent months working out if two new software options were a good fit for me: Adobe Animate and Live2D. The short answer is NO and also NO. The long version is that Adobe Animate (which was replaced 'Flash') offered a shiny new couple of features, but they also removed vital baseline features and a bunch of bugs they never intend to fix, making the software useless for anything other than vector art now and then that still needs to be exported through the old Flash CS6 to preserve image fidelity. Absolute trash. Plus Adobe outmoded Flash as a viable option for the future. I will still have to complete Five Nights at Betty's and FNAB2 in the old Flash format for play via emulation. If they're ever gonna be complete, they'll be completed in Flash.
I have discovered a means of having a more future-proof option. One of the games I play (The only hentai game I play on my phone) has really smooth warping animations. The kind that make a beautifully rendered still image look like hair blowing in the wind, breasts bouncing and swaying with momentum, or a butt squishing as it's squeezed. Adobe Animated tried and failed to deliver tools that make this work without issues. This animation program is called Spine 2D and it's designed to be plugged into game making software like Game Maker or Unity. If I ever want to make the leap forward into games beyond the limits of the dead Flash format this might be my future; The problem is:
- The 'Old Way' was: Draw my art, animate it, and make it into a game ALL in Flash.
- The 'New Way' may become: Draw my lines/colors in Flash, shading/lighting in Photoshop, Animate movement in Spine 2D, turn animated assets into game in Game Maker.
This will make my work look amazing and give me limitless potential for making real games (not just the bare-bones, on rails, choose-your-ending limitations I have with the Flash FNAB games). But I also foresee it being SO much more work and training to just get things from drawing, to animation, to game. I don't know if this will end up being a viable option or just another dead end for me. The Spine2D software is (thank god) not subscription based, but it's $330. Which isn't something I'd buy until I was 100% sure this was something I'd use for my business. I also own a business license for Game Maker, but no clue if that older version is compatible with the Spine2D integration. I'll do some research and we'll see how all this goes.
I'm sorry I don't have the Mielissa inflation game I planned on making. But I'll be releasing some other animations soon enough to get you all excited. And hopefully it will get me back into wanting to animate again. I do love it, and I know it's why many of you came in the first place.
Tell me more about why you're here and what I can try and focus on. I really need to hear from you.
Thank you all for being so kind and patient with me.
- Fox
Comments
MadMilk
Oof that's a hard question to answer. I'm here for all of the above
