A Spike Puppet, Kind Of...

Alright, so there's not much to really spoil with this deviation from Double Rainboom, but you should probably still go watch it anyway: [link]

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Until the official Double Rainboom website uploads all the things we created for the film, you can download the FLA for Spike (in Flash CS5.5 format) over here: [link]

Some say that deep down, Spike is actually a very complicated individual. And they would be right. Because the rigging for his puppet in the show is very, VERY, VERY COMPLICATED.

Thanks to me having quite a bit of experience drawing Spike however because of the Spike Da Dragon blog, I ended up being assigned to not only animate Spike in the ending shot of the film and both Spike and Rarity in the first half, but also to construct a working Spike puppet from scratch that could do just enough to act out his movements in all of those shots I mentioned. Which was a pretty big challenge as well, and ended up being one of the last things I did for the film because of how computer-intensive the entire film was starting to become on my laptop. Flash crashed quite a few times while making the puppet and animating the Spike and Rarity shot itself, sometimes even corrupting my file every time I tried to save it. Needless to say, I was near tempted to give up and ask Zach to give the shot to someone with a better computer and finish it.

But, nope! I kept going and ended up getting it finished, and with only a little over 110 backups saved for that shot alone! And today it serves as a great reminder to me of how technically and emotionally intensive animation can be when deadlines loom and expectations need to be met. And how I also really need to get a new computer.

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