Night Binge Competition

(All the videos are in attached archive below)
One of the biggest animation projects (and probably just the biggest of all currently) I ever did is finally finished! I already said a lot about it in my previous WIP update post so we can just sum it up here.

The project is done for RexLioness, the first person who loved my OCs enough to actually request a comm featuring them and it was a great honor for me. The project idea itself was really up my valley with Zed and Mark just doing dude things and by this we mean gross crass dude things like competing in which farts and belches are more powerful after a long snack binge.

For aesthetics we chose old DOS point-and-click games style which gives a plenty of artistic freedom, so despite there still were some vague limitations like 256 colors for backgrounds, 16 colors for each character and no semi-transparency it still felt like a very free-style work for me after all the super restrictive 8-bit stuff I did before.

This animation is the most complex I ever did so far and it has many different things that are new for both my pixel art, animation work and OC art.

-First, it's the first time I did such a complex background for my animations in order to replicate DOS adventure games feel. This background alone is already a masterpiece compared to everything I did before. The whole process of making it was described better in a linked WIP update post.
-Also it's the first time I'm giving my characters an actual setting to live in. My characters maybe have a good lore (I mean, at least they have varied personality and relationships) but pretty much no examples of a thought-out universe so it's a good start. From now on this room will be a canon part of Zed and Mark's house.
-I never put so much effort in character animation before, at least with realistic big images, this time I really outdid myself. Usually my big animations such as Chester Cheetah, Arnold Pitbull or Etemon projects are just one basic pose and many different alterations of it. This time the variety of poses, facial expressions and animations is insane, it's around 17 unique poses and the number is even bigger if you count different facial expressions for some of them. Previous similar projects used video game limitations as an excuse for simplified animation but this time I got very close to a full-fledged cartoon, even though some simplifying is still present.
-As already mentioned in a WIP update post, it's the first time I properly animate the speech. Previously I never did mouth movements, keeping it simple with just pop up text boxes indicating that the character is speaking. This time I had to learn some lip sync stuff to do it right.
-Also I'd say this animation has the most complex story among my animated works. Usually it was just an animated pin-up, the character says some suggestive stuff and then he starts farting and shitting all over the place or something like this. Mark weight gain animation sequence was complex but again it's just a guy growing by eating food, that's all. Sure thing here it also boils down to just a row of farts and belches but it still has a certain setting with an actual dialogue, emotional exchange between two characters and even an aftermath scene in the end. It's hard to not make it like that when you're doing a 2 character animation. The only ones I did before is Volk and Vityai animations for a mini game project but they were very simple and the game setting dictated its simplicity with no space for story and dialogue.

Technically there's no more innovations in this work. All the movements, fart and belch animations and sound work are not new to me though surely it's good to iron it one more time and sharpen my skills with a really big art piece.

The only other new things for me here are minor ones related to a character design.

-Just in general it was nice to practice drawing my characters at so many angles with so many facial expressions. They really needed it as I'm mostly drawing pin ups which require the same horny facial expressions. Zed needed it especially, usually he is seen always being stuck with the same cocky grin like some sort of a brand mascot which is known with just one trademark facial expression. Sometimes he was seen a bit more horny but that's it, there was no big variety so this time he really showed himself in a new way.
-Also I finally fought the fear of drawing Zed in a full front view. I thought he looks ridiculous in a front view and I always avoided drawing him any way other than side view but one day I just had to do it. And it's not that bad actually. It surely looks funny but many actual long snouted characters look funny in front view, like Lupo Alberto, real life dogs themselves look funny and very different in front view so I guess it's natural.
-And the last thing is very minor but in this animation I showed that Zed's eye shape is not tied strictly to a half circle and triangle. I always drew it like that, making it look like Zed's eyes just have to be half-closed all the time but I just never had a chance to draw him with really emotional facial expressions which require fully open eyes. Here in one of his farting animations Zed has his half-circular eye fully open as a full circle. Triangular eye is still the same but in theory it can be open too as a rhombus, maybe I'll show it in some other artwork one day. Just a good thing to describe the character more without ref sheet.

Can't call it a novelty as it's just another pixel art piece but I really liked this 15 Minutes Later Screen I drew for this animation. People who don't like farts can miss it so I'll leave it here separately just in case.


About special content 
This animation has two endings. One intended for the public release is regular, after finally letting it all out Zed and Mark discuss the aftermaths of their havoc in a room totally thrashed out by it and that's all. The other ending is an extended version where they ended up let it all out for real and shit all over the place. So, yeah, we have hyper scat version here and it's very hyper undoubtedly although it could be a bit better. I apologize for putting less effort into the only Patreon exclusive piece of content here but I had two reasons to make it simpler.
First it was the last bit I had to deal with to finally finish this project that I was dragging on for two months and I didn't have enough energy, time and mental resource to work on it more and make it more elaborated, it already felt like a very huge extra mile to go.
And the second reason is that I felt awkward trying to do realistic hyper scat physics as I don't understand it perfectly, I think I'm not experienced enough to make a super excellent realistic scat animation where the lack of skill can't be hidden behind simplistic aesthetics like I do in simpler 8-bit animations. I tried my best and it's not too bad really but it still could be better. So, since I can't do it really good it felt like there's no reason to really invest myself into it and go all the way anyway.

Both videos can be found in an archive below. It also contains all this project's assets, all the backgrounds, every frame of every pose and, um, "special effects". "Enlarged" folder is all the same stuff but scaled to 5x its original size for the video.
I'm sorry that this time I'm gonna post the fart version publicly so it's not a part of the exclusive content, only scat part, early highlights in WIP post and access to all the project's assets. Usually my previous similar projects were posted publicly as just small teasers with nothing but the basic idle animation with all the extreme content being Patreon-exclusive and I could do the same here posting only the preview gif you saw above but this time it feels like a project too good and too effortful to not be shared openly and all the fart stuff feels too much tied with the whole idea.

So, this is it. I apologize to those who find it disappointing that I spent so much time being silent and doing my wacky characters instead of more Lycaon artworks, some might not like farts and so this entire work will have zero appeal for them. Well, this is commission, a very big one, sometimes I just have to do it and it's hard to schedule my other art plans with such projects, I'm here to share stuff that I like to do, I really enjoyed working on this animation and if you can't share my enjoyment I feel sorry and hope that my next works will be more to your liking. February is still not over, I feel my working mood coming back to me and I'm not gonna work on projects as complex and time consuming as this one, I definitely need some rest with simpler things so hoping to share stuff more frequently here.