Red's Report (January 2024 Edition)

Hello everyone! Welcome to 2024! January's been a busy month for me and I finally had time to sit down and write about it. I may have mentioned it in my last post but in case I didn't, in December I lost my primary source of income. I'm a professional animator in the game industry and my team was not immune from the massive layoffs that have been going around. So I've been putting a lot of time into that hustle and trying to secure a new job.

It's made me even more thankful for having independent supporters like you, who see value in my personal work and care to help me make more of it, so thank you to everyone who's still here!

This next part affects everyone, please read carefully! As I mentioned at the end of last year, I'm rebooting my subscription tiers. You will see that the new ones have been made available, and the old ones have been hidden.

I will keep the old ones active for some time to allow you to change plans if necessary, but keep in mind this won't be forever, and any new content posted will be based on the new tiers.

Here's a quick rundown:

• Tier 1 - $1
  • Really just a recurring tip jar, still includes Discord access.
• Tier 2 - $3
  • This tier gets you access to most of my content, so this is the one you want if you've been following me for a while
  • Includes:
    • Monthly progress reports (what you're reading now!)
      • In the future, these reports will only be accessible to Tier 2+.
      • I made this month’s report available to all tiers so everyone can see the changes, what I’ll be working on, and what to expect in the near future.
    • Major game builds and updates
    • All finished art and animations
    • High-res illustration exports and all variations
    • HD video exports of animations
    • All sketches and WIP stuff
    • Previews of animations
• Tier 3 - $7
  • For those who really enjoy my work and want to kick in some extra, I can share more of my production process with you!
  • Includes all previous tier rewards
  • Downloads for all finished games and animations before they are publicly available
  • Access to my production planning service (currently Trello)
  • All WIP and standalone game builds
  • Production files like .PSDs, animation rigs, game scripts, etc

Please make your desired changes as soon as you are able to, and let me know if you have any questions about the new tier structure or content. I may make some small adjustments as I settle into the new changes, but as usual I’ll let you know ahead of time.

Ok, with that out of the way, what else have I been working on?

• Pod's New Program
  • This project is on hold temporarily, until I can get the Samus animation finished.
  • I did do some relevant work on it, by reorganizing my Trello chart for tracking its progress which I will make viewable for Tier 3 subscribers. Here's a quick preview to get an idea of what this looks like:

• Samus Animation
  • Lots of progress here:
  • I ran into some issues with the rig but those have all been solved, and I was satisfied to move on to animating.
  • At first I just had a few animations in mind, but that quickly expanded once I actually got to the animation step.
  • I decided to make an interactive player for this, like my Jessie x Arbok animation.
  • I considered exporting and compositing stuff in Aftereffects, and publish the final version as a video, but frankly I'm not a huge fan of AE.
  • I also preferred to get more experience scripting with Spine and Unity, since I intend to use them even more in the future.
  • I created the new scene in Unity and have started testing basic functionality. This video preview is taken directly from Unity:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1d-n4jH51LyvgXCcPSuA-9lRk9KOJbs9A/view?usp=sharing 

Thinking about the presentation and user experience, I came up with some expanded ideas for the animation sequence and have gone from about five animations to...43!

That probably sounds like a lot but it's all based on the same original pose, so it was less about creating new content and more about being able to transition between certain scenes, and ramping up the action a bit more.

This does mean I need to create a couple more minor assets to really tie it together, but the extra work will be worth it.

So, what's remaining?

• The new assets for Samus I mentioned are being worked on right this very moment (when this was posted, at least). They are mostly related to particle and liquid effects and shouldn't take long to produce.
• Scripting the whole thing in Unity in a way that makes sense. Some animations are meant to loop, others aren't and will need to automatically transition to the next one. The animation tree is a little more complex than my previous works but shouldn't be too bad.
• The animation and controls will need a proper UI, definitely want to go with something similar to the games, but can't decide if I want to lean retro or more like Prime.
• Sound! Mostly effects here, no dialogue, trying to keep the sound component as simple as possible.
  
• I also need to get the first round of sketch voting going, so keep an eye out for that in a later post!

Whew! If you read all of that you're a champion.

TLDR:

• New year, new coat of paint.
• New Patreon Tiers, I recommend upgrading to Tier 2 to get all the goodies.
• Made huge progress on Samus in January.
• Pod's New Program still on hold until Samus is done.
  

Thanks so much for sticking around and for your continued support, not sure where I'd be without you guys. It's a new year and I think it's gonna be a good one, stay tuned.

<3

-Red