First Person Monado Shrink A [POV Animation]

Credits: Glimmer’s model from: https://www.deviantart.com/majestysme...
A’s model is from: https://www.aplaybox.com/details/mode...

This is a variant of this animation:    • Monado Shrink A   in first person perspective from A’s POV.

Despite not having made any in almost a year, I do enjoy making first person animations. I’ve only made two dedicated first person animations, where the entire thing is shot from a character’s point of view, but I also made a first person variant of the animation Monado Shrink II, which came out decently well. Since then I’ve been on the lookout for if an animation that I’ve made would happen to work well in first person, I’d consider making a variant of it.

Unfortunately, there are usually issues that prevent it from being possible. Most of the time they just wouldn’t work from a fundamental perspective, as they’d either be too boring from first person, or not capture enough of the motion to actually make sense. Zelda’s Shrinking Snack is an example of the former (viewing it from Link’s perspective would be really boring, while I don’t think Zelda’s would look right), while Shrinking Cleanup is an example of the latter (None of the characters look at the others at the right times, which would make everything look disjointed).

Then sometimes you get technical issues that stop you, so even if it works from a conceptual perspective, it might have issues behind the scenes that make it impossible. For example, Alear and Micaiah’s Shrinking Staff was a candidate, until I found out that there were a bunch of clip distance issues from the camera being so close to Alear’s body.

This animation happened to tick both boxes, where there weren’t any technical issues, and it made sense from a conceptual standpoint. I did have to create some new animations for Glimmer, as some things like her first attack or walk cycle were off screen when they happened in the original, which meant I never bothered to animate them, but for the most part this was a very easy project compared to creating a brand new animation. And there’s some cool stuff to show off. Like A swinging the Monado in first person looks really cool for some reason.

I wasn’t quite sure what to do with the sound design for this animation. I didn’t know if I should cut A’s voice entirely to make it feel more immersive, or if I should leave it in to keep the spirit of the original. In the end I just decided to leave the sound entirely unchanged, partially because I’m lazy, and partially because I figure that if it’s that much of an issue, viewers can just mute it. Also I figure that if first person shooters can have their characters speaking, then it makes sense for me to have it too.

So despite not being particularly impressive from a technical standpoint (as it's basically just gluing a camera to someone's face), I’m still happy with this as it looks pretty nice when you recontextualize these actions in first person. If I see another opportunity to make a first person version of one of my animations in the future, I think I’m likely to go ahead and make it.