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DCLeadboot β Krakatoa character base
Published: 2009-06-25 16:15:37 +0000 UTC; Views: 2916; Favourites: 25; Downloads: 44
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Description
A character reference for my new character, Krakatoa the Kraken - the loyal, obedient and rather large pet of Leroy "Hydrex" & Pearl Rudderbuck. This image is also animated!With fully-animated tentacles and feelers - not to mention face - Krakatoa is capable of a range of emotions despite being unable to speak words or smile (he has a beak, after all, like any cephalopod).
By nature normally calm and peaceful, and surprisingly gentle with those he recognises as friends, but as his name suggests, the Kraken can be roused to a volcanic fury as far as anyone identified as "enemy" is concerned.
Krakatoa is Copyright Β© me, though inspired by Pirates of the Caribbean!
His fuller backstory is given here:
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Comments: 142
Heh, heh... I'm sure he'd let you.
Thanks very much!
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I kinda take it most people do not want to pet him.
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People are naturally fearful of his size, I guess.
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Most people tend to find octopi and cephalopods in general as "creepy". I always found them cute and for years thought "cuttlefish" was pronounced "cuddlefish" because they were cuddly looking.
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They are rather fascinating creatures.
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Some people keep them as pets and they say they are friendly if unprovoked.
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Pretty much what Hydrex and Pearl said in Krakatoa's debut picture...
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I'm sure that fish doesn't feel the same way.
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I guess not... but then, that is the otters' staple diet... 
(btw, that was also the old-style Hydrex and Pearl, back when they were created as Sonic fan-chars... I later altered their design to fit into Danbuster's circle of friends)
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I've never seen any fish Sonic fan characters. I've seen things labeled as dolphins and sharks but never actualΒ fish.
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Hmm, my friend AlexRaccoonGlider has his own cast of dolphin characters among... many other characters - they're also completely original, rather than being based on Sonic.
Like any water-going mammals, of course, fish is among their staple foods.
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Certainly not a of lot anthro-fish out there...
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I just wanted to let you know that I featured this in "Realms of Fantasy and Myth: Week 35 - Kraken", you can find it here: [link]
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You're cartoon 3D skills never ceise to amaze me.
I still sometimes keep wondering how you do that ^^
But I bet a lot of patience, seperate layered objects and a mix between both tween-types are involved.
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There's a lot of layers, yes. Each tentacle-symbol has a number of layers each - the shape being shape-tweened (with the line at the root being covered over with an ellipse) and each row/layer of suckers has to be motion-tweened to move with the tentacle.
(And Dad believes Flash looks naff... I'll have to prove him wrong - and save myself the expense of ToonBoom, which I can't currently afford)
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Hm, never had heard of "ToonBoom" before!
Just checked a promotional vid on youtube, seems some of the features are pretty pretty indeed, though most of this can be achieved with flash too, though admittedly, takes more time and effort to do so.
The 3D movement looks nice, though you're living proof that feature is possible in flash as well.
"Apply textures" works with flash too, it's just "fill with texture" instead...
The skeleton-movement thing they do seems like a great improvement to do animate things a lot faster.
Updating to Flash CS4 would include that all the same, though. (not like I'm updating, just for info)
But LE GASP! It can do mouth animation AUTOMATICALLY! O_____O
Okay, that's a really usefull feature. O_o
I remember how animating Eggman's mouth in his Billiard masterplan speech took me 1.5 days to animate.
That was certainly mind-numbing -_-
It stands to reason if it is worth buying an extra program - omg, they reduced the price by 500$! ... now it's only 1500 bucks, not 2000, lol - if you already have flash.
Same question came up for me, concerning programs on student special offer - If all goes well, my studies will be over soon - I'd been wondering about getting Flash "10", or the new "11"...
But I can't really see the point of paying another 150β¬ just for a few extra features.
I guess I can also cut photoshop from the list, photoshop elements and GIMP 2.0 will do fine for me.
Seems all Photoshop has to offer in contrast to Photoshop elements are some uninteresting 3D effects...
Other than that, I guess I should upgrade my videoediting program, or switch to a new one alltogether. But it seems I can get something nice for a low price here regardless of being a student or not.
And last but not least, I'm quickly gonna raid the "free for Computer Science students" section at Microfts'
Not sure what most of those programs do, but, meh, I'll download them anyway, they're free
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True enough, there are a lot of things I already do with Flash.
Flash (at least, my version) seems to lack the layer-hierarchy thing ToonBoom has that allows me to attach limbs in motion-tween. I need extra keyframes in Flash to keep parts together. But on the other hand, ToonBoom doesn't seem to have a shape-tween feature - which I'd probably need for something like a waving tail or tentacles.
I'd have to do my multiplane scenery and lip-synching manually in Flash, but that's the way I've always done it.
Yeah, about ToonBoom's mouth-animation thing. When I used a test sound myself, I still had to manually correct the lip-synch. It didn't make a totally complete or correct job of it, I don't think. Well, either the feature isn't perfect enough, or the sound-clip was a little quiet for it (though I'm sure I boosted the sound-volume - GoldWave is pretty good at that - and enunciated the "quick brown fox" sentence very clearly)
Maybe I need to improve my methods!
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Yeah, that animate-limbs thing is something I only saw in Flash CS4/10 otherwise (I have Flash 8, which technically would be "CS2" then)
But I noticed shape tweens being used at one point in ToonBoom in the video I saw [link]
Got any hints on how to make a decent mouthanimation with less time and effort?
I just use a "talking mouth"-loop and resize it,
but to make it seem right I always have to interrupt the tween, and add a second layer where the mouth is closed/not animated...
Gotta hate it when the mouth-loop has the mouth open up just inbetween two words being spoken
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What version of ToonBoom is that?!
Seems to have a bit more to it than the demo I've got (Version 5) - either that or there's something the PDF manual failed to cover.
When I lip-synch the mouth, I tend to have the "talking mouth" loop, consisting of several states (something like these: [link] - though you probably wouldn't need all these mouth positions) - set the graphic-symbol as "single frame", then change the First Frame as appropriate.
For example, to say "friend", the mouth would go through a sequence like: FR, eh, ND, S
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eh?
That means you go through every single frame and constantly have to right-click/replace the animaed mouths?
Congrats, that's even much more work then the way I do it!
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There has to be an easier way...
Well, actually, I have just one symbol with all the mouth-shapes in it... I only have to select the frame-number from the Properties panel, so at least that can speed things along a bit?
Right-click/replace tends to be reserved for going over to a different set of mouth-shapes (from casual-mouth to smiling-mouth, for instance)
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well, that's at least one step less work
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Have to give it some thought, I guess.
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He looks so cool, He's seems a very gentle giant
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Thanks! 
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I find this character of yours absolutely adorable for some reason... I can't quite put my finger on it, though... I just find him rather cute and huggale.
Neat job on this reference pic, and it's cool to see it animated.
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Awww, thanks very much!
Hmmm, maybe is those big orange puppy-like eyes...?
And indeed, making this reference animated meant that at least I had the tentacles working now, for use later - they're very complex to animate, you know!
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Wow, seriously, that is amazing. 
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Thanks very much!
Yeah, those tentacles were really difficult - still, I needed that for animation usage!
Guess it came of seeing "Pirates of the Caribbean" and thinking how a Kraken-beast could be a force for good... in the right hands (as opposed to Davy Jones)
Of course, Krakatoa can be a scary beast - but only for show or in mischief. If he sank or damaged a ship, it would either be an accident, or something he was specifically asked to attack - such as a whaling-ship...
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KRAKATOA -claps hands together and volcanoe errupts-
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Oops... wrong Krakatoa...
*shelters to avoid the massive megaton-nuke volcanic explosion*
But thanks for the fave!
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lol i know its just that i got done watching spongebob XD
and your welcome
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Rayq: MWAHAHA my plan to evaporate all the oceans will eliminate pathetic lifeforms!
*WHACK*
Arnon: Maelstrom, will you please stop stealing my hammer?
Maelstrom: Aww, but he's evil!
Arnon: You could have just asked me to hit him!
Maelstrom: Fine, will you hit him please?
Arnon: With pleasure.
*WHACK*
Rayq: Owwwwwww....
Me: Nice Artwork, he's cute!
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Thanks!
And do please try keep those guys in check - Hydrex wouldn't thank you for evaporating his food-source and Krakatoa wouldn't thank you for evaporating his habitat!
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Yeah, Rayq's one of my evil characters, so he'll probably never suceed. The other two are good guys.
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XD I'm still trying to think of more Sonic-style villains, because currently I only have four, and one of them occasionaly turns into one of the good guys's dead brother and becomes a good guy himself, whereas I have about seven good guy Sonic characters, with two humans, a living computer and a winged horse on their side. So it's very hard on the evil characters.
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Yeah... even with bad guys, they have to have motivation, don't they...
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Indeed! I've got to think of some more.
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Thanks very much!
*Krakatoa purrs happily*
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Aww..
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Pearl: Awww, he couldn't have put it better!
Hydrex: How sweet! It's so rare to find someone who doesn't act all terrified of the big softie!
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Aww how can i be terrified!! He's adorable :3 Anyways, is he a octppus or something? He still looks cute x3
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Hydrex: Heh... no, actually... he's a young Kraken!
Pearl: Big and powerful, but he's really quite tame and he knows friends from foes.
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I like the character's design, it looks very friendly !
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Thanks very much!
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