Update 01-14 - New Year, New Fear

AY

It is Alfabusa, and it is time.

We at Ogre Poppenang hope you have had a poppenagled celebrations and we wish you a poppen continuation into the new year.

Giant, leaking thanks into all of your brainholes for sticking with us.

The weight of appreciation we feel is actively flattening us like a roadroller.

We wish to return the favour as soon as possible.

For the new year and the fact that Chapter 4 is still in the works I must go out first and say that the Updates have been and will likely continue to be a bit patchy release-wise because work has become more and more intense as we try to meet our deadline. I am sure that both you and I want to see us work to get the release out as soon as possible, and for that to work, we'll sadly have to sacrifice some consistency in our updates. I hope everyone here is fine with this state of affairs.

Nevertheless, let us go at it with our UPDATE...

Chapter 4 has been going surprisingly strong during the holidays!

Work has been consistent and we have still made progress in the days preceding, sandwiching and succeeding all our extra weekends this season.

And since the holidays ended, work has frankly been more intense than ever, with us consistently hitting our daily goals for illustration and seconds animated through sheer determination to get this shit finished.

So let's go over some of it!

As you can see, we've posted a small little clip up above.

This is an establishing shot for the building the next two Chapters will primarily take place in; The Arcanum Chapter House of Great Yarmouth.

For those of you without real context; the Arcanum is a academic organisation who researches and keeps secret and forbidden scholarship, artifacts, sorcery and fake rocks someone told them were magical.

They are not Hunters. In fact, they largely shit on Hunters.

The Arcanum Syllabus, their set of rules, states that Arcanists are never to engage with their research subjects, as they are not judges, merely observers.

This does in fact mean that if they see an old lady dragged into a lake by an octopus man, they should make sure they've forgotten what the number to the police is, and make sure to take pictures with your analog camera at a distance of at least 50 meters.

Our Hunter characters worked within the Arcanum in the past, for even if they have a zero tolerance policy against Hunter activity in place, the truly are a massive font of knowledge for those seeking to know more about the supernatural (even if you have to wade through a lot of outdated papers on fae phrenology and geocentric apologism).

And our Hunters even brought them a lot of new, fresh knowledge they wouldn't otherwise have been able to attain. But, even then, they were eventually banned because they just wouldn't stop doing that hunting thing they weren't supposed to do.

As of the end of Arc 1, as has been teased, Big-D has learned something about the Arcanum Chapter House from the vile vampire wizard Kevin.

This is what the next two Chapters will primarily be focused on; first establishing and then trying to solve a mystery, all in an enclosed mansion space during a rainy night with a whole cast of paranoid characters, with one of them likely being a vampiric servant, and an infiltrator...

☉ PROGRESS ON ANIMATION!

Progress on animation has been fantastic in the last weeks.

The two of us who animate, me and Karl, have managed to finish up 99% of the longest scene in the Chapter, AND about 90% of the third longest scene in the Chapter. What's more, what we've animated so far also feels more qualitative than ever. HTP Chapter 3 is good for sure, but this is far better. I think the only thing it can be compared with is Half-Life: Zero Viscosity 2.

We feel incredibly powerful.

☉ PROGRESS ON ART!

Art is also going forward, of course!

And, you know what, seeing is believing so I'm just gonna post some examples...

Very evil fucked up panel drawn by Eliphus, storyboarded by Cockpuncher3.

An excellent, mysterious ritual room designed by Inktooth. For what purpose are they here?

The abstract threat of the supernatural as imagined by Big-D, drawn by ironirocal.

This horrible shitty mansion illegaly built on a 12th century town wall feels like home already.

☉ PROGRESS ON SCRIPTWORK!

Oh boy, scriptwork?!?!?!

Okay, so, we've honestly been lagging behind a lot on scriptwork the last good while.

EP5 is not done yet, which it probably should've been by now.

But we've decided that it must be entirely finished before the month is out or we will EXECUTE the ENTIRE WRITING TEAM using DARDANELLES GUN.

What's more!

It's not just EP5!

We've also planned for, and written, 5 (maybe 6) Shorts that we're intending on releasing after Chapter 4, before Chapter 5. They're gonna be real short, not over a minute, and be mostly HTP-related, big focus on Kevin because we love him, one with fucking Kräkus in it, and one or two being short video essay-style things covering some WoD lore in the style of our WoD Intro video.

And that's about that for HTP for this update!

Now, moving on to something related...

『NORFOLK WIZARD GAME』

Alright, time to cover some progress on Norfolk Wizard Game!

... uh, if there, like, is any...

☉ WHERE IS THE AUDIO-RELEASE YOU PROMISED US????

QUIET YO--- no, okay, sorry, shit, big fail.

HTP took up all the time in the past two weeks, I have honestly not touched NWG even if I was intending on doing it. I just got into the HTP flow, yknow? I just couldn't break off and do the other important thing.

I am once more going to attempt to actually do a final pass on the audio for NWG Chapter 1 and release it for you next week. If I fail, you may execute ME with Dardanelles Gun.

Otherwise! Oh shit!

Our best friend Odoroshi, known for her role as Grimal in HTP and Sybil in NWG, also created the super fine logos we got for both HTP and HLZV. And now, she's BACK AT IT AGAIN, creating one for NWG!

It isn't quite done yet, we're still hashing out which one in particular we want, but we'll get back to you when we got one and you'll for sure see it in the video version of NWG when they release.

AAAAAAAAND that will be THAT for THIS update.

I will now go and freeze in the evil fucking snowy awful -20 c weather incoming again with no radiators because we've been too poor to install any new ones oh woe. We'll fix this during this year for SURE and NEXT winter we WILL have radiators. This is irrelevant I am just whining because my hands are stone frozen from having spent an hour writing this.

Until next time, have a good one!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!