Lava Dome Five

--EDIT 01/07/07 -- THERE IS NOW AN .AVI VERSION AVAILABLE (4.89MB as compressed zipfile) WHICH CAN BE DOWNLOADED HERE 

Hello there, LD5 community! RipRoarRex here, finally able to bring you my first animated feature after what feels like an eternity of waiting!

 This animation was made to satisfy three requests from Zilla_Kilgare, Godzilla89 and Draconis, but I know a lot of other people have been eager for me to finish this thing too. In it, Rexar is having a good stomp through the city when he spots 3 vehicles arranged in a pattern which, conveniently, is about the same shape as his left foot.... ;)

 It's taken me WAY too long to finish this. I got pissed off with it in May and stopped working on it for about a month, and only in the last couple of days have I picked it up again. The drawing quality isn't as good as my recent artwork, cos to do it THAT well, it would have taken... well put it this way, I'd have the 2008 Beijing Olympics on my TV in the background, still working on the damn thing! Lol! I'll warn you, animating is only for the patient, and preferably for those with a LOT of time and freedom to spend hours drawing scaly claws! Lol! Here's a few points you should know about this animation:

• It has NO SOUND. Unfortunately, using Jasc Animation Shop 3, there is no way to add sounds to the animation. I could import it into other software that would reduce the image quality but allow me to add sounds. However, I don't have any sounds to use either!!!
• The animation is in .GIF format. I COULD convert it to .AVI, but I think it'd be a larger file size and, when I've tried to play my own .AVI animations on my computer, it seems to run REALLY badly. The .GIF is probably best, but you'll have to let me know if there are any problems with it.
• The whole thing SHOULD last 38 seconds (that'll be how you can find out if it's running properly or not).
• The size of the .GIF... wait for it... is 6.75MB! Lol! It's a rather HUGE file for a 38-second-long .GIF, but I can't make it any smaller without reducing the quality. For this reason, rather than trying to play it within the internet browser, I'd recommend DOWNLOADING it. At least that way, even though you'll have to wait for it to download, it should run at the correct speed on your hard disk. Also, sometimes these files, once downloaded, open in your web browser automatically. I would advise NOT running it through your browser. I presume the majority of viewers like me have Windows Picture and Fax Viewer which opens whenever you double-click on a picture, so I'd recommend running it through that. I've been informed by Draconis that it runs REALLY well in BSplayer, but I don't have that! Lol!

By the way, if anyone has any of the following problems, let me know:

• Animation runs slowly (i.e. lasts longer than 38-39 seconds)
• Frame transitions seem to 'wipe' down the screen (rather than smooth fading)
• Animation stops at an unexpected point (there should be titles at both the start and finish of the animation)
• Any other problems e.g. colours, trouble playing/downloading file

These are all things I have experienced at some point whilst playing this on my computer, so inform me if you have any similar difficulties.

Anyway, that's enough blah for now. I'll let you watch Rexar crumpling some metal. That's what we all wanna see.

Right-click here  and select "Save Target As" (or similar function) (Sometimes it takes a while to find the file, but it does work; I've tried it. )

--EDIT 01/07/07 --  THERE IS NOW AN .AVI VERSION AVAILABLE (4.89MB as compressed zipfile) WHICH CAN BE DOWNLOADED HERE

Enjoy!!

RRRex

Thanks mate!

Rexar likes to take his time. It's important to savour these things...

Hope it ran reasonably well and that he wasn't taking more time than he was supposed to because it was running too slowly! Lol!

No such thing for me man, All I've got is time to kill, and if I can kill it watching things get stomped, that's fine with me!

Very nicely done. Gotta do things s. l. o. w. l. y., I agree!

By the way: Never fear AVI! If you use DivX, you can compress file sizes tremendously well. Or you can do it like I do: Get yourself QuickTime with its MPEG-4-Codec and use programs like Adobe Image Ready to create MPEG-4-Quicktime movies with it. Then zip the whole thing and I would be surprised if your animation would still be as large as one MB - with much better image quality! I also used GIF to save my movies back in the day - and eventually you just get sick with the blocky graphics and limited colours not doing your work justice.

i first saw this on big clawz and i just want to say its FREKING HOT!!!!!!

well done please do more!!!!!

 thank you!

(sorry im so enthostiastic about this vd! )

I have thanks you on BigClawz... but again i wanna thanks you for this fantastic work!!!

RRRex... THANKS TO EXIST! 

Hee-hee! Thanks, everybody!! Making this thing took forever and annoyed the crap out of me on several occasions, but I'm really, really pleased with the result.

And by the way - thanks for the tips, Ahastar. I dunno how easily I can get my hands on the kinda software you're talkin about (gotta admit, as soon as something says "codecs required", I feel like running away! I've no idea how all that works!) but I'll bear it in mind for the next animation I do...

...though it may be a long time yet before I finish another one...

That's quite incredible, Rex... the amount of work that must have gone into this is pretty astounding! I can almost hear the macro and vehicle crush fans gasping in delight from here :-)

 But yes... you totally have to make the next one a real video format! Half the fun is slowing the animation down and looking at it frame by frame, which is tough to do with a gif.
 

Not if you use ImageReady to load the animation into.

It is quite framy :)

*does the Curly shuffle*  That's just...incredible.  Sexy.  Incredibly sexy!  The camera angles, the animation...oh, wow.  The enjoyment of Rexar...I'm just completely melted here.  I think the angst and frustration you said you had in creating this...man, it was worth it.  It really was!  That is just amazingly gorgeous stuff!