"O LIGHT - Mob Psycho 100 fan animation" CREATION PROCESS

    Well hellooooo internet! Welcome to another blogpost! And today I'd like to share with you my creative process of my latest video! A fan-animation from Mob Psycho 100, featuring the song "O Light" by Kikuo with Hatsune Miku!

    But first, a short story: The year is 2021 and I finally got that stingy desire to watch a very specific show, a feeling I get every now and then where my brain just decides it wants to watch a random anime/movie at that very moment and I can't calm it down until I answer to its demands.

    The anime this time was Mob Psycho 100, this anime had actually been on my radar ever since it released in 2016, buuut I didn't have Chrunchyroll at that time and I personally hate the pirated anime experience (sketchy sites, low quality footage, small PC screen EEEEEEE), so I kinda put it aside with the intend of torrenting all the episodes later, however I just ended up forgetting about it, haha....

    Anyway, I finally watched it and it was love at first sight, instant fave, I love it and I believe it's one of the greatest things humanity has ever achieved. Then comes O Light, man, after watching the show every time I'd see the beginning of that music video I'd think "Hey this would make such a cool Mob animation". Thus an idea was born.

    But after so many years, why did I decide to execute it just now? Well, I was young and under-confident about my art, I also had zero editing skills/knowledge. Nowadays, thanks to self-improvement, After Effects classes, support from teachers, and currently re-watching the show, I finally decided to do it.

:･ﾟ✧:･.☽˚｡･ﾟ✧:･.: BACK TO THE TOPIC :･ﾟ✧:･.☽˚｡･ﾟ✧:･.:

    The animation took 2 weeks to make, working on it non-stop, I was actually planning for it to be 2 minutes long, but unfortunately due to irl circumstances I've decided to cut it short. 

   The first step I took was planning everything, I made a Milanote board filled with ideas, screenshots from the anime/song, personal notes and even some other fanworks for inspiration - Shout out to livarachii and her "My Time" video! It was my second main inspo! -  I could show a screenshot of my board buuut I don't really wanna :P

    I also had a Milanote board for my "Faith" video, and I had a storyboard for it too, but not this time. This time I created a document instead, describing the events that each scene would have:

    As you can see this was the original 2-minute plan, each sequence is numbered with part of the lyrics inside brackets. The actual video only goes till sequence 5.

    Note this is NOT a script, it's more of a pre-script, with no composition notes nor technical details, just vague descriptions, and I worked with just that... And it was A GOD AWFUL IDEA PLEASE NEVER WORK WITHOUT A SCRIPT WHEN MAKING A BIG PROJECT.

    During production I just went with the flow, using the original music video as a loose composition guide, but I had found myself stuck in place in so many occasions. In fact, the part where Mob is bleeding on the ground was made AFTER I HAD FINISHED AN ENTIRE ANIMATION SEQUENCE that had to scrapped because I wasn't satisfied with how it turned out:

    The idea here is that Minori would appear in front of the screen right before the punch being landed, censoring it and working as transition for the next scene, but the transition wasn't working like I imagined (that's why you must plan out things first).

    The bullying montage was also very improvised, I really wasn't in the mood to work in it so I took the lazy route and traced over the anime (for the slap and the college student part). The original idea was to recreate a scene from the manga where Mob confronts Minori from throwing milk at him, only for the entire class to lash out on him resulting in Mob getting beaten up, thus giving context for the next scene:

    Sketches from the original idea, versions 1 and 2. Ver. 1 wasn't very clear on what I was trying to portray. It was gonna be presented in a motion comic style.

    I scrapped the idea after deciding to shorten the animation, so I thought it would be better to show more of the bullying to show "yeah he's suffering", since I didn't have that one extra minute anymore.

    Honestly the only parts that were genuinely planed out beforehand was the beginning (Mob going berserk) and the end (with Minori and Mogami), everything else was done in the heat of the moment. Even the scene with Mob bleeding was an sudden choice taken after watching an Omori fan-animation, since I wasn't happy with that punching scene.

    Long story short, improving is not fun...

✦ Gifs and stills ✦

    Alright folks that's all for today, thanks for everyone who liked the video and thanks for reading! farewell....