“We came across numerous things as we delved deep into the dark, foreboding forest. Mercifully, most of my memories are those of my shaking legs and dry mouth, only occasionally broken by the faintest recollections of… other things. But even those few occasional sights, smells, and sounds are enough to make me wish for a complete oblivion.
Curiously, my friend never shared this sentiment. While I was struggling even to keep my consciousness, she inspected everything with almost morbid curiosity, shaking off the most horrid sights and implications with little more other than a chuckle.
Sometimes, I wonder if it’s courage or madness. Or if there is even a difference between the two.”

Commissioned by PokeGirl150, featuring Blaze Pen and Withering Willow.

Open for commissions!

Technical
Still image created with inkscape.
The animations were made and exported with aniGen.

I completely remade and redesigned my movement assets (front & hind hooves and bodies), so now I can do smooth transitions between idling, walking, trotting, running, bending forward and backwards, crouching down, and probably a bunch of stuff in between. “Smooth” is a bit questionable, of course, since I don’t have a lot of experience with complex motion, but at least now I have the assets.

I also did some experiments with bulk color animation - the fastest way I could come up was linking identical color to one, single stop gradient. This allows me to animate only a single element, and having the animation translate to all others instead of copying the same animation to each individual element. Changing the animation, obviously, is much more convenient. However, this also bloats up the code a bit because Inkscape adds another gradient for every element, basically creating a scheme like this:

[ Animated gradient ] <-linked by- [ specifc gradient with offset ] <-linked by- [ graphical element ]

I plan on doing some more research on SVG’s color-profile, or maybe color inheritance. Or maybe I can trick inkscape somehow to reduce the unnecessary gradients. Or maybe I could link directly to one of the other elements? If anyone has any ideas on the topic, I’m all ears.

Links
Original SVG

As always, I appreciate any comments, criticism and discussion.