I'm not going blind. Which is nice...

I visited the eye hospital this week and was finally given the name of a visual condition I've experienced for the last four years or so. It's a type of entoptic phenomenon and is apparently quite common. I'd venture to dispute that, as in four years no doctor has ever been able to give me an explanation until this week (and I'm pretty sure the guy I saw only knew because he experiences it himself). Essentially I can see the billions of blood vessels traveling through my eyeballs when looking at brightly-lit areas, like the sky during the day or a computer monitor turned all the way up. It's one of several inner-eye visuals I am aware of, including the always creepy Purkinje Tree and vitreous floaters. Generally these aren't noticeable, or at worst nothing that sunglasses can't take the edge off. On overcast days, though, they all combine and it can be a bit like walking around in a shook-up snow-globe. 'Rosebud', yo.
The reason I'm babbling about this all is that I was initially misdiagnosed as having a degenerative condition of the optic nerve that would have led to blindness by my thirties. I never really bought into this as the symptoms didn't quite match up, but it's still a huge relief to get confirmation that what I have is, in itself, harmless. Sometimes you don't acknowledge just how much things can gnaw at you until you don't have to worry about them anymore.
So, with my vision intact (knock wood next month's Glaucoma test will be clear) I'm able to carry on boring the world with more blog entries and animation-ey crap.
Here are some follow-up sketches for the retro-style music video I'm working on, including the earlier character designs put together with textures. It really makes a lot of difference in terms of creating a faux-cutout look:


To end with, here's a quickie After Effects test to see how the Photoshop characters might work in a moving environment with visual effects. For this test the motion is very random and not indicative of the way things will look in the end, but with more attention to detail in that regard I think that there's some promise.
Hopefully you haven't clawed your eyes out.