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This week I took a break from Blender and went off to work on Dem’s sprite:

Speaking of layers: before merging there were 180, after merging — 60. That’s because every moving part lives on its own layer, and during painting you also need extra layers for shadows and outlines :D

Generally speaking, it’s actually better to keep those layers even in the final model for more natural movement, but I really don’t want to overcomplicate things that much, so I decided to cut the layer count. Plus, there’s a very non-zero chance that I’ll have to adjust/redo/add some parts later (adding more hand poses is almost guaranteed), especially considering that this is my second model ever :D

By the way, right now the model actually looks a bit… let's say weird:

And that’s because it's way easier to draw and animate separate symmetrical parts (legs, arms, hair, eyes, ears) once, and then clone and mirror them — it saves both texture space and my time and nerves (x

So far I’ve only done the bare minimum animation-wise:
3 eyebrow shapes, eyebrow height changes, eye shape changes depending on expression, blinking and gaze direction, mouth shape changes for three emotions, and mouth opening for each of them.

Next up I’ll be doing head turns and hair movement. And if you’re interested in watching the process of making different game assets — feel free to follow and comment (:
See you next week~