Were you expecting round three of the Erika and the Hypnoraptor series by any chance...? Well surprise! We have a quick break from Zorro this week, and are instead graced by this lovely image done by two different artists! This picture was drawn by a veteran artist of this blog Etlabsotwe, as well as being animated by old Hypno Hub mod Pompom. And actually, this picture was a collab between Etlabsotwe and Pomom, meaning it was drawn with the intention of being manipped into an animation. So the assets and such were draw separately, which makes this animation a bit more distinct amongst animated manips.
As for how this picture came to be... well first, we need to discuss Pompom a bit. Pompom was an old moderator back on Hypno Hub all the way in 2015 or so. She and I became friends and we had some light discussions here and there. Also at the time, Pompom would do a fair bit of animation manips on existing pictures and upload them to the Hub too. Most of which can still be found to this day in fact! She had shared something she was working on at the time with me, that being a manip of Clair from Pokemon drawn by Sebastian. After sharing the work, discussions about manipping an Erika piece came up and the rest was history!
Well I say that, but there's more to the story. As mentioned earlier, this was a collaborative piece between Etlabsotwe and Pompom. In the past, Pompom had also manipped a fair bit of Etlabsotwe's drawings. And at the time Etlabsotwe said that he was going to draw me anyways... so this lead to an interesting collaborative effort where Etlabsotwe ended up drawing this piece specifically with the idea that it'd be animated in mind. I don't know the first thing that goes into animating a still picture, but apparently the fact that Etlabsotwe was able to draw the assets and stuff separately made the process a lot more smooth for Pompom. The specifics on that are lost me me however, as that was something those two discussed.
As for the idea itself though, it's actually kind of funny. As per usual, I didn't have an idea that I wanted immediately, and since Pompom would be working on the image for me I figured I'd let her decide on the core idea. We can see that in the end she decided on an "Alice in Wonderland" type of idea. Of course I approved the idea since there was very little I'd be against... but I wasn't super into it to be honest. I didn't dislike it, and if you had me pick between like and dislike, I'd pick like. It's just the theming wouldn't have been in my top twenty or something you know?
So back to why I said it was funny... it's because while at the time I was fine with it, I'd say this idea actually ended up aging ABSURDLY well. These days, I'm a big fan of the Alice in Wonderland aesthetic. Either Alice herself, or even just the setting... especially when paired with hypnosis! In fact, I more or less named my original character off of Alice in Wonderland too. So yes, this is one of those ideas I really feel like I didn't appreciate as much back then as I do now. And that's saying something, because even back then I still loved it!
Art by: Etlabsotwe
Animated by: Pompom
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