Animating a Magical Girl Transformation (In progress)

[BlueB]

I've been working on animating a magical girl transformation completely in Ren'Py. Here's the .swf of horrible quality:

[The extension swf has been deactivated and can no longer be displayed.]

I swear it looks better in the actual program, CamStudio really killed the quality and smoothness of everything. Anyone know any better way to capture?

I drew everything in SAI, animated in Ren'Py, and then recorded it with CamStudio. Should I just learn how to animate in Flash? Probably, but I've always been a programmer at heart. If anyone is doing a game with magical girls and wants a transformation sequence, I'll probably post samples of the code in the appropriate section.

I'll update as I complete the sequence. If my guesses are right, the whole thing will be about 40 seconds long (I'm a horrible storyboarder).

[sorani]

THIS IS AMAZING! All those magical girl transformations will come to life!
I would love to see the transformation sequence code XD so looking forward to it!

And good luck with the final take! It's gonna look amazing!

[BlueB]

Here's the finished product, nil music: https://youtu.be/Xcohh1Pi17U

The whole thing is less than 20 seconds, because for some reason the program I used to capture sped it up a bit??? There has to be a better way to show you guys this.

Tomorrow I'll start uploading step-by-step how I did it.

As a reference, this is her full outfit:

[King-sama]

Looks neat! I guess you need to also add that final outfit in the transformation too. Her face and then the full outfit with a pose

[BlueB]

Unfortunately, Youtube won't accept the AVI of the full transformation for whatever reason. Rather irritating, but let's move on.

Set 1: Getting started

So, you want your magical girl transformation to come to life, but don't know anything about animation software? I'm here to help. Using only drawing programs and Ren'Py, you can create a decent enough animation. Before you jump headlong into the code, however, you'll need a few things: A drawing program, like GIMP or Photoshop. I use Paint Tool SAI and edit in Photoshop, but you can use whatever you prefer; and Ren'Py with a basic knowledge on how to code.

So now we have that, we'll need a magical girl! Our example is Cutey Lace here.

She's beauty, she's grace...

She's ready to fight evil now, but she's not always in magic regalia. We need a transformation sequence!

First, let's plan it out roughly with a storyboard.

Click the gif to see it not freaking out

Now that we have that done, it's time to flesh it out with full pictures. However, it's critical to your success that you know how to break them down in to the correct pieces. First, we'll need a "kira kira~" background.

This is twice the size of the window we'll be using, giving us plenty of room to move it around. It's bright, but doesn't distract too much from the main action.

Next post, I'll be explaining how to break apart your sprites to get them ready for animation.

[Ozitiho]

Haha, wow. You did that in Ren'Py? That's freaking amazing. Good job!