This is my "big" entry for the September EMTC. Theme: Seasons. [link] I have one small one that won't take long I plan to submit right under the buzzer.

=SparklyDest wonders where I get the time to do all of my pixelling. Honestly, most is pretty quick. But, for this one--which took well over 8 hours--I ended up waking up at 3 this morning and working pretty much non-stop on it. Yes, coffee is my middle name.

As with a lot of my entries, I like to take the theme in a different direction. When I heard "seasons", I thought of the typical 4 weather ones. I also thought of the seasons of our lives. It reminded me of this awesome animation I saw years ago called Circle of Life. If you've never seen it, you should check it out here --> [link] Nevertheless, this piece is heavily inspired by it, but not quite the same. I wanted to do something similar, but touch on some of the traditional "seasons" of an emote's life.

If you're not sure, the seasons in the animation are: Birth/Baby, Childhood, Young Adult/School-Uni, Falling-In Love, Marriage, Watching the Kids Grow-Up & Leave Home, Grandparenthood, Growing Old Together, Loss of Significant Other, and Death.

Honestly, I cried several times while making this emote. Just an emotional little scene. Plus, I guess it doesn't help I keep thinking of my own kids starting to leave the nest in a few years. *sigh* Because of all the fading in and out, I needed a background, so I went with the photo album frame. I wasn't sure about it, but it turned out okay.

I know there are some flaws in the animation, but aside from spending hours on this, I had a terrible time with my animation program and it took *Ravenswd and I two hours fricken around with it and some alternate systems to get it to save right. I went ahead and made some moderate edits. Anything else would mean ripping stuff apart, which I'm not gonna do now.

Monster of an animation at 303 frames
Time 9 hours (2 hours yesterday, 7 today)
Made in PSP7, Animation Shop, and Ulead (when AS wouldn't behave)

*** As with most of my smileys, you may use this on and off dA, without my permission. The only thing I ask is that you keep the file name in tact and don't remove any credit information. If you do use it for something, it would be nice if you could comment and let me know. It encourages me to make more smileys if I know people are using/enjoying them.

Please note, this piece is NOT available for commercial use.***

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Related Deviation: