Happy Halloween From Mobius the Goat
Trick or Treat! Happy Halloween from an animated Mobius the Goat! And if you can’t see the animation, hover over the image and then pick the play button. Or, if you get tired of the animation, I suppose you could use the same method to stop it. But who would get tired of a smiling, trick-or-treating goat?
As you might imagine, Mobius is hoping for more treats than tricks this year, so be nice to him, please.
Tricks or Treats?
When I was growing up, I never wanted a trick on Halloween. I only wanted a treat. After ringing a doorbell, I probably should have just said, “Treat, please!” Who really wants tricks, when it comes down to it?
Such is true with everyday life, too. People want you to be nice to them. I want you to be nice to me. You want me to be nice to you. No tricks, just treats.
So in everything, treat others the way you want them to treat you, not necessarily the way that they do treat you. If we all treat everyone with kindness, evil will be hard to find.
“So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.” - Matthew 7:12
About the Artwork
I have wanted to try some animation for a while, and Halloween seemed like as good a time as any to do so.
Having no experience with animation at all, I tried something nice and simple. Mobius lifts and opens his treat bag, raises his ears, and smiles. And then the words appear above his head. And then the whole thing goes in reverse.
Of course, I had to spend a little time learning how to do all of this in the Procreate app on my iPad, too, but it was relatively simple once I got the hang of it. And I did learn a few things that I could do differently the next time to make it even easier, too.
I am not sure when I might tackle animation again, or if I will try anything more complex than this. But it was fun to do!
Procreate can output several different formats. For presentation here, I chose to use an MP4 video file. It had a much smaller file size than an animated GIF or PNG, and it was easy to set up here, too. The only challenge is that some browsers can be set not to automatically play videos. Hence the instructions at the beginning on how to play it. But that is a minor point.
