Monday 05 Dec 2022
It is done. For the first time EVER, I have created something from scratch, start to finish, from my own head. I'm not sure how I feel. Hopefully writing can elucidate that.

Goals:
Two fairies of unique character playing, showing varying emotion to the dismay of the ferryman. The fairies should both bounce rhythmically opposite and display near opposite traits. Perfect loop. Don't sweat the small stuff. When it's good enough, don't push through refining every single minor detail. Make it good without wasting time.

Notable Steps:
* Rough, gestural clipart movement
* began roughing in ferryman's design (September 2022)
* Implement a more intentional set of boat movment
* Finish ferryman's initial finals...now, at this step....(?)
* take 2 month break
* block in left fairy's jump with clipart
* begin experimenting with squashing left fairy for her jump (decide to do it on 1's)
* complete rough """"constructed"""" left fairy's jump
* begin blocking in right fairy's "pop" at the top of her jump (decide to do right on 2's)
* block in right fairy's full cycle, focusing on conveying rotation during her jump
* For some reason, begin to go over right fairy in detail i.e. a final lineart
* finish a complete once over on right fairy minus hair(?)
* begin working on right fairy's hair (decided to do on 1's, all hair done this way)
* finish the rough of right fairy's hair (this completes right fairy, at least roughly)
* Struggle to design Left (daiyousei) because I don't know how to render things like hair and clothing. copy some dude on pixiv and then scrap it because I wanted to do it myself
* Begin roughing in left fairy's movement (on 1's) with design and features
	* This step was preceded by a day and a half of thinking "what is this BITCH supposed to do when she lands" and other mean-spirited thoughts
* Settle on a hair flip, begin roughing in
	* this step was incredibly easy. By what I can only assume is a confluence of learning and instinct, I remember it specifically taking only an hour to get a decent enough flow to it in its entirety, including roughed in clothing. a highlight of the workflow
* Begin work on left fairy's hair
* Looks like poop, break a bad habit (I remember this too)
	* Check the note that begins with "Hair is"
* Focusing on correct placement, match the position of her hair and ponytail thing to her head position
* """final""" in left fairy... why did I waste time doing that?
	* I know now that I wouldn't have done this because I know now that it's stupid.
* sketch in final background (5 minutes)
* Go back over the left fairy finals for the TRUE finals, single layer lineart.
	* This is when I began trying to systematize the process of rendering, and I settled on the thick 10px outlines and 7px (with pressure changing things) interior details. Two passes, one to get everything on a single layer, the next to pretty it
* Left fairy is complete.
* Begin trying to create a water line.
	* Settle on 1's, but very close together spatially.
* Try to create a splash with lines (I have no idea how I'd actually render a water splash, I'm lucky it moves so nobody notices how weak it is)
	* This formed the M.O. for the Left fairy's jump's splashes.
* Throw caution to the wind and draw big ass random shapes that kind of feel like water
	* This was the M.O for right fairy's jump
* I can't really document this part in a technical manner, but by treating the water as a big gelatinous object flanked by smaller organic shapes, animating the shapes became a matter of just feeling it out. That's not very helpful, but then again this is the least controlled aspect of the project. I need to work on  understanding water.
* Finish the water splashes
* Flip it
	* realize that the constructional errors early on have caused damage.
	* stop caring about that
* Go over right fairy just like left, thicker outline, thinner details.
* Touch up neglected ferryman
* go through various layers, ensure proper overlapping.
* quit, begin writing this doctoral thesis

Notes:
* I constrained myself to the 24~28 frames from the very beginning. Because of that, the followthrough on the movements feels rushed, especially left fairy's hair flip when she lands. It doesn't read well until you see it like 8 times and understand what she's doing, and even then it's kind of iffy.
	Right fairy fails here too but to a lesser extent.
* Left is animated on 1's completely, while right is animated on 2's for the pose, and 1 for the hair/bow. Why? Why not... they both took nearly the same time when going over them, but I absolutely will never do roughs on 1's like I did for left again. it took way too much time relative to the other fairy and stalled momentum.
* Ms. Ferryman in the middle was the first thing drawn, and she looks like it. I don't think it's a big deal. Overcoming the perfectionism of a project was also a stated goal here, and everything must stop sometime. I could keep going, but to become better, I must learn where to fight and where to not.
* Left fairy's landing was a conceptual hurdle. I had no clue what I could fit into the alloted time. I think the solution I found is satisfactory. Once you see it a few times, as I said, it reads OK.
* When you flip the image, the readability disappears and it stinks big dookie. Of course, when distortions happen while flipped it indicates a lack of construction. There was a decent amount of construction early on, but the roughs here are about 2 months old, and I started working on it 3 weeks ago. My philosophy has changed since then, hence why the feature placement gets killed here.
* I think the water splashes on right's jump are the more satisfying of the two. Left's jump was more restrained, and I think because of that the shapes on Right's have more impact and feel better.
* Random/multiple ≠ better. The way the water moves during right's jump is more controlled and looks less random and chaotic thus good than the left.
* I don't know how to draw rocks. That's why the background is so impressive. I think it's more of a question of value knowledge than spatial. Placing shapes for dark and light on top of forms composed of sharp angles is my guess on where to go for that.
* I really like left fairy's hair when she's airborne. Of all the bits in this thing, I think those are the nicest shapes. It feels like they have volume.
* The thick outline thing was spur of the moment, came up with 5 days ago. My lines are still weak, but as time passed, I developed more confidence in them, and the consistency afforded by a planned (more on that later) attack paid off I think.
* Hair is a problem. Maybe not so much now, but in the beginning, I was a slave to "physics" and my perception of reality. Right fairy shows the best example of this. Look at how her hair when she tips her head flows like cloth. It seems strange, and it was even stranger until just before I went over it with the final outline, where I redid her hair there (though it still looks odd).
	* On left fairy, I couldn't even place it on her head. I don't know why I couldn't, but I couldn't. when I did, it was so elastic and springy it just went all over the place, following the whim of straightahead 1's. I decided to try to hone in on only the most essential movements, and as a result, I think the entirety of left's hair, which was designed last, is much more solid and interesting.
* I was going to make Ferryman more detailed, or give Cirno her crystals, or dai her wings, but there has to be a stopping point. I think it's fine.

Post-mortem:
Over the course of the month, working on and off, new techniques/ideas I learned
could not be implemented retroactively. Fundamental shifts in my feelings about my workflow came to pass, but previous things implemented had disallowed me from making changes huge changes. However, all of those shifts were in service of learning. The experience gained from working on a project and the hiccups that come from freeballing it gave me a grasp of how I would tackle even the shortest clip, like this one, not even a second long. As well, I came to understand problem-solving within the limitations of my own jury-rigged framework. I could not just change the timing of the animation to give right fairy more wind-up, I had to deliberately make calculated decisions with tradeoffs and not get overwhelmed by the challenge. Just soldiering on.
That's a lot of platitudes about "systems" and "techniques," but practically speaking it comes down to improving my knowledge of 3D space. Placing line on the perimeter of imagined shapes, implicit depth via cues outside of defined shapes, etc. I can guarantee that I'm not reinventing the wheel here, as every master draftsman probably already understands those concepts to a great degree.  But if I can manage grasp them , then I think anybody could.

New workflow: 3 layers (to be attempted):
* Complete each layer for the whole scene, every character, object, etc. before moving on to the next.
* Layer 1 is for:
	* scratch gesture in whole pose(s) and bg grids for persp
		* if camera moves, profile view of movement to grasp timing
	* place constructive forms on top of those gestures in the same layer. it might get messy but that's what practice is for. this is layer 1.
	* Any and all ideas about specific poses, camera, form, etc need to be sussed out HERE in their entirety.
* Layer 2 is for rough design, rough secondary motions, and feature placement
	* If I have to worry about anything fundamental that belongs in Layer 1 here, then I have failed. The goal is to compartmentalize each of these and reduce the effort and breadth of focus.
* Layer 3 is final lines.
	* There is no reason to be doing anything but focusing on solid, appealing rendering here. As before, if I'm making changes that aren't line quality/overlap/ etc. here, I have failed a previous step.
* These steps reflect my current view and skill level, which does not include things like rendering color, minute details, or values. I have no idea where I'm even going to begin with those. Maybe I'll just put them off and never learn. Hopefully not