Painstakingly animated STEEM token GIF!

Good afternoon, Steemit friends! I took a day off from editing to work on a personal project that’s been in my head for a couple weeks now. I have early roots in illustration and animation. In my early 20’s, I worked for an animation studio for two years in my hometown of Scranton, PA. It was laborious work, mentally and creatively exhausting. I was subcontracted talent […typical in creative studios], and for every hour I made $15, the owner made $75. It beat stocking shelves in the local grocery store or waking up at 4:30a.m. for my previous job in a bakery. I learned skills way ahead of the curve. I was using Flash for animation when it was still owned by Macromedia in 2001, and became proficient in Final Cut in 2003. Skills that would later come in to play in making Steemit posts, apparently :P

I daydream about the things I’d create if I had “more time”, but time equals money and that’s usually where the equation ends for me. No time. Lately, however, Steemit has been making enough of a dent in my financial tide that I haven’t been as desperate to take on huge, stressful shoots. I’ve been able breath a cautious sigh of relief knowing some pressing bills and credit cards are paid, and with that, consider small projects “for fun”. Crazy concept. I haven’t been able to do that in over a decade.

This little animation is one of those “for fun” projects; the first of many I hope. I had this concept in my head of a spinning STEEM coin, similar to the iconic Bitcoin token. There was several ways I could approach it. Flash […my old faithful animation software] has become antiquated. I was considering modeling it in a 3D application such a ZBrush, but there is a pattern in my life where I choose the hardest road […I think just to keep myself honest and challenged] and that’s what I went with. 

Straight up pencil illustration […granted, digital pencil]. I did this frame by frame in Procreate with Apple Pencil and iPad Pro. I references individual frames of a spinning quarter to get the size and dimensions down, then manipulated the “STEEM” logo with a transform tool to that of the angle of the coin in motion. You can even see the onion skinning of the frames in stack. What I expected to take a couple hours has turned in to two days […on and off between other work]. Hard road, indeed. There's no short cut when animating traditionally. You have to just draw the same thing with slight changes a shitload of times.


Once the frames were complete, I exported them from Procreate one at a time and compiled them […in order] to ImgPlay animated GIF creator on the iOS app store. I’m pretty happy with how it looks for a first go. If you guys enjoy it, I can make improvements, maybe a back side of the coin, or other blockchain GIF’s entirely. Feel free to grab this art and use it anywhere on Steemit or the web. Just leave a link back to @kommienezuspadt if you don’t mind!