Do you like overexcessive dithering?  Stray pixels?  Disney Princesses?

Then you've come to the right place!  

I couldn't think of what to do for this contest.  With the quote in the contest guidelines, I almost did a Conan themed fight scene.  Then I got some inspiration.  It came from nagi_rhy's recent submission Rime Sombra (Overwatch).  (It's pretty nifty, so check it out if you get the chance )  For some reason it made my brain scream "Frozen"!  Now, just to be clear, I'm not actually that big on Disney.  I know of Frozen mostly through my wife.  I don't blame her, though, because those songs are pretty catchy if we're being honest!  I knew that there was a Frozen 2 in the works and I thought about what would make for a cool (no pun intended...sorry) sequel.  

So I ended up making a Kylo Ren to Elsa's Rey.  There isn't much more to the story, just, hopefully, a fight scene as epic as "Let it go".  Of course, for a sequel, there should be some kind of resolve/character arch.  Here, Elsa learns that, sometimes, we shouldn't let go because there are so many good things that we need to fight for.  In keeping with that theme, see if you can spot the hidden phrase.   

So, on to the technicals... First, the preview.  I wanted to be fancy with it, so I made up a real neat and smooth animation... which ended up being about 58kb.  I hadn't thought much about exposure, but it's always nice to see a piece on the front page.  Even if it's just for a little while.  So I cut it up and slowed it down.  I'll probably end up putting the original back after the contest because I worked pretty hard on it and it's really what I intended.  I love to animate so this part of the project was a little disappointing that I couldn't use it right away.  Still, the one that's up should suffice for the time being.

This piece was the first time I used 3d models to get my poses down.  I used an app on my tablet that allows different body types to be posed with different hands and props and has a setting to adjust the lighting.  Then I imported 2 different pictures (one of each character in their respective positions) into Gimp and used the different brushes to get a good idea of color, effects, and clothing (mostly for the Fire King as Elsa's wardrobe was referenced from movie clips and google photos) that I'd eventually use for the final ACTUAL pixeling.  Then I went to fleshing out my palette from the colors that I liked.  It was pretty intense, but it really helped me in the coloring department since I tend to have difficulty there during most projects.

As I mentioned, the dithering isn't the best, but I was rushing up to the wire.  I do, however, believe that I used it much more appropriately than I have in the past.  If I hadn't used any, I would've blown past the 32 color requirement.  So, I'm glad the option was there to use it, but I still need to practice and experiment a lot more to use it effectively.  In all, as divisive as I used it, I'm still much happier with the result than I thought I would be when I started using it this morning.  (At least 50 *sighs and left hand to the foreheads later and we've got this piece of *work* xD)

I think that's pretty much it.  I hope everyone enjoys this one.  Leave some feedback and let me know what you think.  Thanks for looking and keep up the hard work in getting better.  You can do it!