July 2022 - W.I.P.

Hello Loyal Patreons,

It's time once again for another look back at the last month's goings on.

It's been a month of finishing things off. Lots of things have finally reached their ends this month & we're ready to see out the rest of the year with some juicy animations projects. But lets not get ahead of ourselves.

I'd like to start off with an announcement! The first tier of the MasterDan Discord is now open to White Belt tier Patreons too! The Discord has been getting a bit livelier recently and I thought it might be nice to invite a few more people to join the fun. The first tier is the General Channel we I post finished things and we just chat about whatever. Mostly Kingdom Hearts but anything really. I'm afraid you guys wont have access to the weekly WIP Channel or the Requests Channel, it'd cost a little extra if you want those too. But I hereby invite any of you who want to to use the link below and join the Discord:

FIRST YOU MUST HAVE LINKED YOU DISCORD TO YOUR PATREON ACCOUNT IN THE PATREON SETTINGS PAGE!

https://discord.gg/7SG3jNN

But that's not all! Anyone who has subscribed for a year or more at any tier & joins (or is already a member of) the Discord will receive lifetime Legacy membership to the General Channel whether  you continue to be a Patreon or not!

In Kingdom Hearts news the models are all finally fixed/finished. There are one or two girls who still need the weights painting on their boobs, but I'm sick & tired of doing that for now so I'll worry about that when the time comes to actually use them for something. The extra bones are only useful for animation so until that time comes the last of that can wait.

Skuld is now officially on the roster & I've the formal reveal of Kairi's Mom to round out the core trio of parents I think we need. Where as Sora & Riku's Moms were done based of 0lightsources's drawings, there was nothing to go on for Kairi's Mom so she was created in partial collaboration with the Patreon discord for ideas about what she might be like.

This is what I finally landed upon:

I'm very pleased with her. I managed to stick quite closely to the brief and I'm looking forward to getting her involved in some shenanigans.

In terms of models that only leaves Heartlette to properly finish & the main female roster will be complete. I have a bunch of alt versions that will require separate models too, but we'll get to those later. There are also quite a few more guys I need to get ready. Xehanort & Axel most importantly. Although my Axel base model turned out to be garbage so I'm on the look out for a new one of those. I figured I could use an anon Org XIII model where you can't see the face for easy crowd scenes. I'm not going too deep into the ranks of Org XIII though. Only if I get specific requests. Probably do Young Xehanort though.

Then once I've rounded off the roster we'll have to have a discussion about where to focus the model next. I've a few different ideas for directions we can take it in.

As you may also have seen I've kicked off the Summer Special with some KH bikini pics which will be rolling out for at least the next month. I think the total count is 23 pics so far, but there are still more I want to make so we might even hit 30 by the end. There are at least 3 more I'm definitely going to do. That has been a blast so far, getting everyone looking their summer best in swimsuits. It's been a great way to test them all for final error and apart from one or two easy to fix texture issues, everyone has passed with flying colours. No critical fails, no rebuilds required. Excellent news. Anyway, here are a few previous for future summer pics:

I think Xion's lighting needs another pass, but everything else is gold. Especially Invi.

Larxene animation is totally finished, animation wise anyway. Due to the ridiculous heatwave we have last month in the UK I didn't want to risk running my machine at max capacity all night in an already too hot environment so we are WAY behind on the render, but we're getting there. I'm going to try and put this month's Patreon money towards doing some of it on a render farm to see how that works out. Hopefully I can do the really big shot that way & save a whole bunch of time. It's DEFINITELY going to be done & released by the end of the month though. Even if I have ton render every cursed frame myself there is enough time. So one way or another, she's a coming.

Now that the Larxene joint is done it's time for the next official KH video in Round #3: Riku x Namine BJ. I'm going to want to knock up a few concept shots to show who ever it was who made the request (because I don't remember off the top of my head, I think I write them down somewhere. If not they'll still be in the original thread). Then we can get started on that pretty soon. Not going to be anything too over the top. Will have some fluid sim going on though, so we can look forward to that!

In Medli news I have finally cracked the last big issue with her, which was the shapes for her clothes not showing up in the UI like everything else. I have found an unnecessarily convoluted solution that will solve the problem, but jesus christ is it taking along time. Only one outfit left to go, a few more swimsuit shapes that can only be fixed once the UI is finalized and I also made an electric harp to go with the punk outfit. Not much else to report there. I'm trying to get her done as quick as possible (without cutting corners or fucking her up) so I can get her in the summer special in her slingkini too.

I'm so goddamn close to having this finished. I'll be so happy.

Not yet, but soon. Once Medli's done & the Namine x Riku BJ is done. Then.

And now the important news. It's done! I finally finished chapter goddamn six. I've been formatting all the pages for release & now it's just a question of uploading them all where they need to go! I did go back to make a couple of very slight changes to one page that I wasn't happy with. And I had forgotten to add any speaking to one panel elsewhere, but I have finished all that & it's on the chapter 7. It's always a bit sad when we reach the end of a chapter because of how long it takes me to do each one, it means we wont be seeing those characters again for a year. And Meredhel doesn't show up again for 3 chapters. But we do get Gizzi & Wyn back for a while.

And if you though I introduced too many new characters in the last chapter you'll be pleased to know we only meet like... six? I think it's six very important new characters are introduced in Chapter 7. But then we're done. There are only then 2 more really important characters we haven't met yet. In this book. Shit, no it's 3 because one more pops up in the epilogue. But don't worry, they wont all make it out of the first arc.

Anyway, Chapter 7 takes place on a farm. I just started building the farm set for that today. Not going to be a super complicated build. It's just a question of planting a whole bunch of vegetables. But I only need two rows then I can just duplicate the rest and we're away. Should be able to start knocking shots out for this by the time the next month rolls around.

And that's about all she wrote. Been a solid month. Models done. Larxene animation done. Chapter 6 done. Loads of beach pics done. Huge Medli problem solved. Multiple wins. Apart from the horrendously delayed render, but you can't have everything.

Take it easy my dudes.