Campfire Stories

_{CUTIE MARK CRUSADERS CAMPERS ANIMATED COMIC WITH FLAMING MANE YAY!!}

First of all, I apologize for the lateness of this comic. I was not only away from my computer, but the amount of vectors and layers for this comic was too darn high!

Now, this comic was something I wanted to try after seeing the "Mane Series" of *Toxic-Mario, specifically the Spitfire's-mane-is-made-of-fire ones. That was my main inspiration (Thanks Dude!). Maybe sub-consciously I was inspired too by "My Little Browsers" by *ParallaxMLP. Anyway, here are they.

So, in "Feeling Pinkie Keen", after escaping the hydra, Twilight "evolves" in Rapidash in a very literal moment of hotheadedness, and her mane and tail bursts in flames. When I was making "Princess Celestia's Room", I noticed that the flames in the Princess' chimney had a shape very similar to Twilight's Fire Mane, and I keep this info at hand in case I needed it in the future. The future happened some weeks ago, when I made the "Equestria Daily Summer Ponylympics Banner" and I used that animation cycle in it. But I still wanted to do a Comic, so I made this one.

I initially wanted to do a comic in which Spitfire was hiding from Rainbow Dash, inside the aforementioned Princess Celestia's chimney, carrying a electric, magic, portable fan, so Spitfire's mane was flowing with the wind, thus, looking like a fire in a fireplace. But then I had the problem of having yet another flowing mane (Celestia's) and with it, a lot more vectoring, exporting, layering... That, and the thought that having a grown-up Rainbow-Dash-fangirl-chasing-Spitfire was a little too much.

So I tought "Where else I had seen fire?". Sisterhooves Social, when Applejack, AppleBloom and Sweetie Bell were around a campfire. I sure do love to write, don't I? So that way I ended having the Cutie Mark Crusaders camping and telling stories around a campfire. Then the storyboard basically wrote itself: Applebloom telling the story of the hydra, the question of why Twilight didn't teleported herself, and finally having Twilight herself as the campfire. But then I thought that the CMC looked too well-illuminated for a night scene, even if they were in front of a fire. So then I shaded the CMC vectors with a black silhouette at 50% opacity. It was difficult, but now it looks WAY better.

It was hard to have the fire in all the panels without showing Twilight (particularly the first one), and almost a nightmare when I realized I had to export, to sort, to combine and align 17 x 7 = 119 "frames" for the comic.


This time I did almost all the vectors, except:

●"Summer Campfire" by *BonesWolbach and made into a SVG by *DaringDashie
●"Twilight Reading - Season 2 Poster" by ~Takua770, using the general body pose.
●"Twilight's Book" by ~Vectorshy, modifying the cover to "Camping 101"

The file is an animated GIF, indexed at 8 bits (256 colors), it's big, even optimized (1.2 MB) because the amount of movement, and was not dithered, since it has mostly flat colors (except in the foals' irises and the fire) you'll notice almost no banding.

Anyway, the vectors I made for this comic are:

●"Sweetie Belle Looks Beyond"
●"Scootaloo Looks Beyond"
●"Sweetie Belle not sure if..."
●"Scootaloo: Yeah, sure..."
●"Applebloom Just Wants a Hug"
●"Twilight Rapidash says: Hello There!"

The GIF should play well in most browsers, but if it doesn't, tell me, please.

Vectors created in Inkscape and animation in GIMP.

Again, feel free to correct my grammar, syntax, etc. Specially Applebloom's accent! I want to be able to make an Applejack comic!

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Edit: Corrected Grammar and Twilight's "Hollow" Fire Mane.
Edit 2: Corrected glitch in The Matrix Sweetie Belle's eye.
Edit 3: AAARRRRRGGGGG Corrected glitch in the speech bubbles.

Featured in Equestria Daily, August 18th, 2012