One Month until Premiere! (VvD Speedpaint & Updates)

Hi Patrons!

Here is an update from myself and the team about Violet vs Dummy's progress and news about the premiere (December 21st)! Please read on!

Speedpaint & Gala

Firstly we just uploaded a new speedpaint for you all! Despite doing quite a bit of commission and illustration work over the summer, it's been awhile since we've made a time-lapse video. It contains some fun facts about Violet vs Dummy and footage of the upcoming GildedGala interactive event. So you'll definitely want to check it out.

This is actually the first speedpaint compiled by someone other than me - it was done by one of our supporters, Agent Eldin! Since we have a fair bit of illustration footage from commissions, I'm considering uploading those (as speedpaints) to the channel as well.

(!) Let me know if this idea interests you by leaving a comment below.

By the way, the GildedGala is feature complete! We'll be doing a couple more beta-tests in the upcoming weeks to prep for the big premiere in December.

Production Progress

The project is swiftly transitioning into the Post-Production phase. The main battle animation is 100% done, with pre-compositing following soon after. The ending sequence's animation is over 50% complete as well!

The 3D backgrounds are 99% done, we just need to insert patron cameos! If you are a super cameo supporter, remember to use the following link to submit your cameo.

And since we'll be working on the credits soon, the name credit survey form is also available for eligible patrons here.

Compositing Optimization

I want to shed a little light on the process behind our compositing, since I recently made an improvement that I'm quite happy with!

Compositing is one of the final steps in the pipeline where separate layers of effects, backgrounds, and character animation are combined to form a final polished look. While most studios use a dedicated program to do this (such as After Effects), we composite within the same program we use for animation (Adobe Animate).

Adobe Animate is good at basic filters, but to achieve more advanced effects, I've had to really push the software to its limits. Over the years, this has caused the compositing workflow to become somewhat cumbersome.

Throughout this project (and some of Story 8), I've leaned more into using batching and automated keyboard strokes to speed up compositing without sacrificing quality. I use a free-scripting language called AutoHotkey, which lets me pre-program keyboard strokes for repetitive tasks.

Look at it in action!

The script pastes and replaces the appropriate graphic symbols, and sets up the layers for repositioning.

It may not look like much, but this single script automated over a dozen mouse clicks and strokes at the press of a button. For a series of actions that we'd be doing hundreds of times, that's A LOT of time saved. A composite that would have taken a month can now be done in ~a week.

Growing in art usually comes with a certain "time inflation" - a sort of curse where the rise in quality causes a rise in production time. Optimizations like this make me happy since it staves off the curse...for now.

If you do repetitive tasks throughout your day, I highly suggest looking into keyboard macros and mouse movement recorders. It may take some learning, but it's much more fun than familiar tedium.

Merch Updates

A new batch of keychains will be arriving at my place shortly, so we'll be all stocked up to fulfill merch orders!

A friendly reminder that most patrons are currently eligible for some FREE merch via Store vouchers, found on your membership page. Full directions about the merch offer can be found in this post.

That's All

Thanks for checking in on this update post - we have 34 more days until the premiere so it's back to work for us! Really excited to share our first GG tale with some fresh characters.