Jump to content

gogo's new bling bling avatar! (Topic created in Aug of 2006)


Schot

Recommended Posts

*Edit: Notice this topics date* :)

 

Oh gogo. Poor poor gogo. You've made this request to me oh so long ago and more than once. But for the sake of the forum and all the members here you've retracted your request so that others could benefit.

 

You WILL get that new shining AV....

 

Eventually! :)

Link to comment
  • 1 year later...
aww GoGo!!!

 

 

/hug

 

Have to design that time machine eh wink.gif

 

 

Well well. Time machine has took a while didn't it, lol. It's been a little while since this whole thing began eh, haha. Back in 2006 I had envisioned the avatar that you now have gogo but at that time the knowledge I had simply wasn't enough to do it.

 

With great pleasure I have finally fulfilled my promise!

 

The task at hand to pull off this kind of animation was without a doubt going to require some flash magic. I knew this back in 2006 but at that time, and for the longest time, I simply couldn't do it. Though I've gained a great deal of experience with Photoshop that experience sadly does not help much when it comes to flash. I needed to learn flash from a beginner level. At the time I was taking on so much what with learning html and css photoshop aaaand our forum software. Throwing flash into the learning would have just been to much. Time passes however and it has only been recent since having the time to open up my flash and take a good hard look. During the past several months however I have been rebuilding the avatar from scratch piece by piece in photoshop using vector graphics. Vector graphics btw are a highly efficient type of image making animation of them much less costly in terms of animation compared to normal raster images, normal graphics like jpg gif png. Because gogo's avatar is comprised of mostly solid colour shapes vector was most ideal.

 

Looking at the large version of his avatar in the Happy Birthday gogoblender!! :) topic you could try to count the layers that I rebuilt except for the fact that some of the layers look as though they are one when they are really 2 or 3. The bottom most layer that turns for example, (black spikes with bronze-ish backing and purple/blue border), is actually 2 layers one on top of another. The next in, (the yellow flame like border pattern with brown backing), is another 2 layers. The black zig zag is 1. The next in has two layers of one being a dark brown circle and a dark red gear shape on top of it. Next is a single layer of a semi transparent solid yellow star shape. The next two layers are of the small blue squares and small yellow squares. Then another single layer of a star shape also semi transparent but a black outline of the star shape this time. Flames come next and for them what I did was draw a single flame out comprised of two pieces then merged into a single layer, then duplicated to create the other flames and then those were merged into a single layer. The thin yellow bordered star shape comes next as a single layer. Then the waves like shape, again a single layer. Then the small blue triangle shapes which were created much like the flames but are in png format, (Was getting tired of rebuilding at this point so did it the lazt way, haha). And finally... The face of gogo, hehe. This one is a png as well and taken from his original avatar. The face is in png because the task of redrawing it would have been very hard for me.

 

So there you have it. 16 pieces in all. Including the background would make it 17. 12 moving parts in all and 2 of which are hard to see moving because they are semi transparent. About 10 different spin speeds when considering rotation direction.

 

Whew! I have to say this my absolute favorite creation to date and I have learned much from it. So as much as it is a gift to gogo and is also a gift to me. ;)

 

 

This is however something that I can't do often sadly given the various work that needs to be done around the house here, haha. For comparisons sake Here is the old gogo and the new.

 

The old:

sunny-1.jpg

 

The new:

 

 

gogo has asked to put the square background back on so I'll be doing that soon. Cheers gogo and enjoy! :D

 

And here it is with some modifications. :bow:

Link to comment

:) It surely took a while

 

But the result is simply speechless. :bow:

 

I have a feeling that many people are itching for a av/sig request now. ;)

Link to comment

Argh my eyes!!

Seriously though, amazing avy! Your best work yet in my opinion..

How did you get round the pixel degradation that is Gogo's old avatar?

:superman:

~Doom

Link to comment

Thanx guys! :D

 

 

Hehe, myles. Shhhhhhh! :superman:

 

 

Good question Tim. In all truth I didn't get past that problem completely. :blush: The "face" of the avatar is the only piece that could suffer degredation since in the flash you see the face is still in it's native raster format. I imported that piece as a png. If I were to try and have the face rotate as well then we would be seeing a lot of "tearing" or degradation of the face. Thankfully it doesn't need to move and so it's quality is about 98% of the original. Actually... Now that I'm talking about the face I notice that the final version's face has noticably less quality than the second last version... Will have to fix that, heh.

 

As you know gogo's original avatar was a jpg and a very low quality at that. Long ago when this all started I did a little test flash using a cut out piece of gogo's avatar and made a basic rotation of it. The result was... Ugly, haha. I realized at that point I needed to learn a lot more.

 

In order to prevent a quality hit to the various parts of gogo's avatar, the image as a whole even, I had to redraw every distinct part of the image and hence the 16 drawn layers I've made. They had to be redrawn as vector which I did using the pen tool in photoshop, colouring and applying borders(strokes) as needed. Later I discovered I had no way to bring those layers into flash in such a way as to maintain quality and it was at that point a crying fit was required, lol. I had to redraw the whole thing again in flash... Good practice right?! Well that's what I keep telling myself, haha.

 

Simplest answer is that if you want smooth graphic animations then you gotta use vectors and you make them using the pen tool in photoshop or flash. Which reminds me... You could possibly do this sort of stuff with only using Photoshop/Imageready. I might give that a try some time. I much prefer creating in Photoshop. Flash feels so awkward and limited with the exception of actionscript which was used to create gogo's avy as well. Only the 1st frame is being used and within it actionscript generates the rotation for each of the moving pieces. :)

 

 

P.s.

Starting to wonder if maybe I made it perhaps a weee bit too vibrant. :blink:

Link to comment

om you even put in the FDM logo, didn't notice that before.

 

maybe its time you consider a graphics tablet? :superman: I tried Wacom Graphire before and it feels smooth enough. Of course, I don't draw enough to warrant a purchase.

Link to comment

Oh believe me. Last time I walked into a pc shop they had to hang a bucket round my neck to catch the drool, lol. Was surprised to see that they've come down a lot in price. I saw one, not wacom, for around $50! :blink: An absolute must for sure. I'm eager to try my hand at character design. :blush:

 

Oh and yup. Snuck that lil fdm in there. Mwahaha. Branded! :superman:

Link to comment
Good stuff, although some times I feel his avvie is looking into my soul

 

I'll second that sentiment. Looking too long at the avatar leaves me with the urge to sell all of my worldly possessions and follow Gogo.sarcastic-kneelsuckers.gif

 

But on the serious side--which is my left side--I have always admired the original avatar for the spectacular work that it was and this new one is that much better. He even has a little mischievous smirk.

Link to comment

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...
Please Sign In or Sign Up