CODE BLUE

Well, I can finally call this entire release complete*.

I also have a compressed version available in case you have issues watching this version

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vN2mrfJERgt4cK5l42Qq-ZaS1w0RVRbU/view?usp=sharing

https://mega.nz/file/Y6BAAYBS#8JAPOfePrel-L118r2D3oN24-jEX6vGC4_8wmwp_VEQ 

Finally finishing this animation and having a public release that I'm really happy with is genuinely a relieving experience, especially after it taking a couple of months to finish after a lot of hiccups, but overall, I think it turned out great with what I had.

Obviously there's room for improvement, and finishing this means I can reflect and analyze what I did good and what I did poorly on.

For example, the model looks kinda stiff when moving like around the joints, it doesn't bend and squish like it would, but adding that would take a lot of time and effort, but I think it'll be worth it, so I'll be looking into that for the next animation.

And the hands look terrible, I butchered them, but I have a solution for the next animation, if I can get it working right.

My main gripes with this animation is mainly from the armature and rigging as you can tell, but I can also improve on the shading and lighting.

I also don't think the displaced underwear looks great, even though I tried to spend enough time dialing it in. I think it looks okay for what it's trying to accomplish, but I'll be spending a lot more time on this for the next animation.

I've got a lot of new hardware to make this new animation with, and I'm taking the proper steps to make sure it comes out the way I want it to

The biggest thing honestly might be my updated workflow. For this animation, it's one big (aside from previous versions and backups) blend file containing all of the assets and animation, and it's a non-stop continuous animation. As I'm moving to an animation only workflow, this kind of workflow is hell. If anything goes wrong in the stack, it could inadvertently affect the entire animation. For stills and really short form looping animations, this is fine, but for long form animation, it just complicates the entire project and opens the door to more and more error. So I'm starting to do shot based work, where instead of one big continuous animation like Code Blue, it'll be segmented and planned per shot. This should also improve efficiency as I can finalize and render shots for the animation way sooner, rather than rendering the entirety of the animation in one go. This should also simplify tasks like cloth, hair, and softbody simulation as the simulations will be isolated to their specific shot, rather than interfering with the entire animation.

*Now that this version is finished though, honestly, I'm not happy with how the NSFW Version came out compared to this one, and I'm tempted to re-render it yet again with some much needed improvements that the Standard Edition got like the reflection, subsurface scattering, and displacement improvements.

I'll probably end up re-rendering when I go on my small break, and just get back to it when it's complete and I'm rested, I feel it wouldn't be a huge issue to re-render and quickly replace the versions compared to the standard release.

But as for the next animation, I'm currently storyboarding it right now, it's currently up to about 30 shots and I need more space for sticky-notes, but the change in scenery definitely helps with this next animation, I have some cool ideas in there already that I hope will make it into the final.

I really need to step up my production quality if I want to pull some of these ideas off, and because I need to upgrade my models and resources to do so, this animation will most definitely release sometime early next year. I'm gonna try to have some content available in the mean-time, and not turn them into full-fledged animations, but the next long form animation will take a while to make.

And it takes place in an Office, there's lots of cool, unique ideas possible there, I can't wait to show all of you! I'll probably end up posting some of the storyboard ideas, I'm not a great sketch artists so they range from "I put a lot of effort into this one frame" to "sketched really fast just to get the idea across without regards to quality of the sketch"

I'm going on a small week long break to relax and enjoy some time to myself for a bit, I hope you all have a good Thanksgiving, and until next time! :)