Beautiful and heartfelt fan animation called Lullaby For A Princess.

[DanielEricIverson]

I usually very much am apathetic whenever people make fan-based animations of this show, especially when people try to play it up all seriously. Despite the fact that some of them take multiple years to animate day-day-day frame-by-frame, I am usually apathetic about them because the subject matter is too trendy.
Not this, this six-minute musical video by someone named Warpout is very sincere and impressive. It is the single most impressive fanmade anything I have ever seen.

This was uploaded to YouTube on May 31. I was directed to it on June 3.

[Noedig]

... ... ... ... ... Beautiful.

I got goosebumps all the way till the end.

Thanks for sharing this!

[CaptainMcDerp]

I saw this a little while ago and really adored it to be honest. I like how it's a real thing that happened on the show and this animation further explored it in a really beautiful way. Not that I dislike new stories, it's just a neat little detail. I also like how Celestia was the central focus rather than Luna since we already have plenty of Luna focused animation. And I LOVE the fact that Celestia was reflecting on Luna's banishment while lowering the moon. It makes it feel like a daily thing she had to go through for years and years. In my opinion, the song, voice, lyrics, art, and animation all tie together gorgeously. It's very possibly my favorite fan creation.

[Noedig]

I saw this a little while ago and really adored it to be honest. I like how it's a real thing that happened on the show and this animation further explored it in a really beautiful way. Not that I dislike new stories, it's just a neat little detail. I also like how Celestia was the central focus rather than Luna since we already have plenty of Luna focused animation. And I LOVE the fact that Celestia was reflecting on Luna's banishment while lowering the moon. It makes it feel like a daily thing she had to go through for years and years. In my opinion, the song, voice, lyrics, art, and animation all tie together gorgeously. It's very possibly my favorite fan creation.

Don't forget that it also took two and a half years to make. That's some dedication.

[DanielEricIverson]

Don't forget that it also took two and a half years to make. That's some dedication.

 

The BTS (behind the scenes) video claimed that they averaged 12 frames a day.

Well, is that like.... 4 hours a day or something? Does it take only 20 minutes to draw a whole frame? That would be rather quick to draw in 20 minutes even with digital fill buckets and whatnot... I think.

It seems to me like it could have consumed multiple hours per day, every single day. Enough for it to be a big chunk of Hanssen's waking hours and free time, for over two years.

 

 

Parts I especially liked:

1:11 to 1:19, that was a good scene transition idea. to take Celestia into that void-plane thing.

The excellent choreography of the flying fight scene. That must be very daunting to come up with the decision of how precisely to portray that stuff in hand-drawn animation with all those dipping and diving and swooping angles, especially because all this stuff has to be slowly hand-drawn, meaning the animator could risk being halfway done with a scene before realizing whether or not those swerving action shots look good, when fully animated, or if different poses would've worked better. A daunting thing to plan.

3:26 the diverse way that the dust cloud moves around is very impressive. Warpout definitely did not opt for some cheap Zelda Wind Waker-style flat swirly plumes. Stunning that a fan animation has such production values.

each scene transition and choice of what types of shots to use are brilliant, including the spinning Element of Harmony (magic) on the floor at 3:31 as well as the overall decision to leave the camera still on the side shot of Celestia conjuring up the blasting force field. The animator could have been cheap and opted to switch to more close-up shots not showing it in full view, or even just made a generic beam, but instead made this brilliant amber orb field that helps to tell the story by setting somber color-based tones and stuff. Much more interesting and ancient-scary-magic than a rainbow beam.

4:35 did they just animate a hand-drawn mouth moving while the head is turning? I don't even see that in big-budget hand-drawn animation. Usually a character stops moving their mouth, then moves. Maybe there is some of that in some Renaissance Disney movies. But this is a horse character with a long face, very tricky to do something like moving the mouth and rotating it as the same time. It is not exactly walking and chewing bubble gum at the same time.

4:37 to 4:39. And they even managed to remember that the decorative top pieces of Princess Celestia's horseshoes would shift away from her hooves as she moves them around.

The tense humming of the violin(?) during 5:32 to 5:37. The chills and feels. Also the landscape as the moon goes down, it is brilliant how it is concave curved instead of a typical flat horizon. It gives me an IMAX vibe (I've only seen like one or two movies in IMAX, the last one being a Louis and Clark movie in 2003, and yes, it was real 70mm IMAX considering that "Digital IMAX" wasn't developed yet.)

[ToothpasteThy]

Worth the years of animating. I've never seen a more beautiful animation in my entire life.

I might have complained that the scene where Celestia peeked into Luna's bedroom felt a bit too sped-up, but seriously. Look at that animation. LOOK AT IT. MMMMMMM, SO GOOD!

Also, when you're trying to finish a whole scene like that within the timeframe the music provides, I guess there has to be a bit of off-tempo adjustments. And even then, it was all so miniscule that it might even go unnoticed by most. Maybe I'm just a nutcase xP