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A life update, Darth Vader #1 Edit and Motion Art

I seem to be in a bit of a rut lately with certain things. I’m still recovering from the aftershock of The Rise of Skywalker as my anticipation for this film was a lot higher than I expected. I’ve also been thinking a lot about what I want to achieve this year and I’ve come up with a shortlist. These goals are not NY resolutions. They are goals I want to achieve for several years to come so they’re bigger than that. They are life goals. And I have given myself a time period of six months to get started on one of them and the other one I hope to work and improve on with time.

I’ve neglected some of the things I love to do for other things that I thought were more important but as it turns out, they’re not. So I’m pushing back a little so that I have more control over my time.

And finally, the edits. I saw this new Darth Vader cover on Tumblr and thought it would like nice with a little animation. The cover art is by artist InHyuk Lee

Edit

DARTH VADER #1LEE IN HYOK02

Motion Art:

DARTH VADER #1LEE IN HYOK02 (960px, 25fps)

 

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The Pull to the Light – Kylo Ren Animation

I’ve spent some time organising my motion art, GIFs and video clips on Pinterest because I have amassed quite a few over the year or so that I’ve been making them. I thought just one board looked too cluttered and now I can see exactly how many I’ve made and what I’ve made.

While GIF-making was not new to me, creating motion art was something new that I started to enjoy and thought “why not?” Just with anything that’s new, I can see that some of the images I made weren’t as polished as they could have been now that I’ve been making them for a couple years. So I am using some of those original images I created as Motion Art and I’m improving them, at least I think I am 😂

Here’s one I remember making and I liked it at that time, but I decided to improve it. I see Kylo Ren’s struggle in this image, the shadows behind him but still part of him, with the light still there, trying to penetrate the shadow. Turning it into motion art was a pleasure. I also edited the original image extensively as I didn’t like how “washed” out and over-exposed the original image looked. When I first made this motion art I didn’t even notice that the original image was over-exposed. I guess I have learned a few things along the way 😊

KYLORENTHELIGHTPREVIEW (1200px, 25fps).gif

 

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Ben Solo The Rise of Skywalker Animation

So it’s officially 2020 now and I wanted to kickstart the year with a beautiful animation with art by shuploc.tumblr.com. It’s one of the most beautiful pieces of Ben Solo that I’ve seen and I just had to animate it! I added the blue lighting to signify Ben’s turn to the light in the final act.

Animated by Darkside Creative Star Wars Creative

And I mucked around with this edit I did some time ago and changed the lightsabers both to blue signifying Ben and Rey’s Dyad in the Force. I also changed Ben’s lightsaber as well (otherwise it would have looked weird with a blue crossguard lightsaber).

Ben and Rey Animation by Star Wars Creative Darkside Creative

 

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Star Wars A New Hope Animated Poster

The new Star Wars posters have finally arrived in semi-HD quality, and after looking at the image for Star Wars A New Hope (also in my favourite colour, purple!), I really wanted to add a few animations to it to see what it would look like.

I am pretty happy with the end result, I think it looks quite pretty – what do you think?

STARWARSANEWHOPENEWPOSTER (812px, 25fps).gif

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The difference between Motion Art and GIFs

I’m guessing that not everyone knows what “Motion Art” is and how it differs from a GIF or .mp4 file. Well, actually, Motion Art is very different from any other type of animated file because only certain parts of the image will be animated. With a GIF, usually, the whole image will be moving. So that’s the main difference. And I have become quite lazy over the last year or so calling the motion art that I create “GIFs” when they’re really not GIFs. While it doesn’t really matter that much to someone looking at the image, technically, the process to create motion art is very different to that of a GIF, or at least it used to be until all manner of apps and software for the phone and PC started popping up all over the place.

I don’t think it really takes much know-how to create motion art, but it certainly does take creativity because you have to be able to “see” what the image will look like when it’s animated which may not sound complicated but it can be. I’ve scrapped dozens of motion art files in the time that I’ve been making them because they didn’t fit my “vision” of what I wanted the image to look like. Another critical factor is whether or not the image needs animation added to it to improve it. Out of the thousands of images, I’ve seen in the last year or so, only a tiny portion of them have been animated, and that’s because some images just look better the way they are while others would definitely look better with animation added.

Here’s one I did yesterday of Luke Skywalker from a scene in The Empire Strikes Back, one of my favourites:

LUKESKYWALKERMOTIONART01 (923px, 25fps).gif

I’ve had people ask me to animate images for them, and I’ve always advised that I need to see the image first before I will create any motion art with it. Some images are just better left untouched. I don’t know if everyone understands this concept, but it’s one I apply every time before committing myself and my time to creating motion art.

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Kylo Ren Wallpaper transformed into Motion Art

I found this awesome wallpaper of Kylo Ren while browsing the internet for Star Wars content and I just fell in love with it so I decided to animate it for my “Edit A Day” project. I actually really like how it came out, too.

What do you think?

Here’s the original high definition image:

kylo-wallpaper-e1516357289738.png

And the animated version:

KYLORENEDIT19 (1080px, 15fps).gif

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Obi-Wan and Anakin Variant Cover Edits

I felt like doing something I haven’t done in a while and that is edit comic covers. I’ve edited quite a few comic covers in the past because I like removing the text and looking at the image behind it (if you know what I mean). Sometimes the text can really overshadow a beautiful piece of art. I’ve found that most covers get the variant edition treatment (not all but some do) and the artwork is produced without text already which is awesome. But sometimes, this doesn’t happen and I like to practice my editing by removing the text.

I am probably going about it the wrong way but it seems to work OK for the stuff I’ve done in the past. I’ve made some really nice motion art out of some covers as well like this one of Darth Vader which is one of my favourites. I always credit the original artist when I make motion art out of their artwork and everytime I’ve done this, I’ve been given really good feedback, sometimes from the artist’s themselves. This is what keeps me going, really, when people enjoy what I do.

So here are a couple I did today because I love Obi-Wan and Anakin together. Checking Star Wars Fandom dot com, I don’t see textless variant versions of these covers at all so that’s a bonus! Now they are both Textless. I think I might make some motion art out of Cover H because it’s beautiful.

Obi-Wan and Anakin Part I Cover F Textless:

ObiWanandAnakin-1-MovieEDIT01.png

Obi-Wan and Anakin Cover H Textless – Art by Gabriele Dell’Otto

OBIWANKENOBI AND ANAKIN EDIT02