January 2020 - W.I.P UPDATE

So it's been a while since we've done one of these hasn't it? What have I been working on these last three months? Well, allow me to explain. I want to make sure that throughout 2020 we have a regular release schedule so you guys get content more frequently and also more opportunities for people to engage with the production too.

Put simply there are going to be four arms of production: Big Feature, Middle Features, Little Features & Eldar Narn. The Big Feature is Mei in Overcast & Eldar Narn is my webcomic. These will always see constant production throughout the year and other than me devoting some time away from these projects, they should continue as expected. It's the other two I want to talk about.

The Middle Features will be shorter, 5-10 minute productions with less pre-amble at the start that focus more on delivering porn than story. It is my hope that we can produce 4 of these a year (although 3 is more likely). These last few months I have been coming up with ideas for suitable projects and testing them. Most have been started, some with 10-30 seconds animation & some with 1-2 minutes. I wanted to make sure the idea worked, that I had some plan for the lighting and camera direction and that the intended models didn't have any significant flaws. I have officially started production on one and when it's done I will have a Patreon vote for Yellowbelt $3 tier and up as to which one comes next. So if you're reading this, you qualify. I'll get to the progress report on #1 and a look at the others in a bit. But first let me explain:

The Little Features will be either simple loops or very very short pieces of about 30 seconds and still images. This is the stuff that comes out very frequently, hopefully something close to weekly to help keep up a presence on Twitter & Reddit and such. At the end of the day this is about money really, I need to grow the audience and the Patreon in order to undertake some of the stupidly complicated projects I have planned for later and this is how I do it. I have been trying (and will continue to try) to make it good. And not clickbaity, like chasing good, shit I'm actually proud of. This will be pretty much whatever I feel like doing at the time. A chance to use the latest models, some old favourites and I introduced the 2020 Headhack project so fill in the gaps when I don't have anything going and that has a poll for Twitter followers as a way to get some engagement going for people who follow me on social but don't also donate to the Patreon. That way everyone who supports in some capacity can have some input. I have all sorts of ideas for things to go in here. These won't really warrant any WIP updates as none of them should take very long.

Ok, that's a general summery of what I've been setting up since the movie came out in November so let's take a look at the actual productions.

THE BIG FEATURE

Production has officially started on this, although I did push the start back to January so I could focus on getting everything else tested and ready. I've recorded my new dialogue lines for the start and I'm underway with the animation for the interview portion of the piece which will last about 3-4 minutes. Then there is about 1-2 more minutes of SFW photo shoot & some persuasion and then things start getting lewd. 

It's shot to keep the male actor's (whose name in the thing is Rudi) face out of frame as much as possible so I don't have to lip sync him as much so it's mostly lip syncing Mei for the time being. Things are starting to move along here, there was of course of all fiddly aspects that go into getting everything 100% ready to shoot and blocking out the pre-title piece but we are actually into the meat of it now. Probably wont be anything very exciting to report here for a while though, 'did more lip syncing' will probably be enough to summarise this for the next moth or so. 

It feels good to have a big project underway again. After having spent so long just focusing on one thing so solidly it felt strange somehow not to have one sitting there. We've only just started here. I'm going to try not to let any of the other productions hamper this one too much. Entire days each week will be devoted to working on this so it doesn't end up taking years!

THE MIDDLE FEATURE

Ok, when this model got released I knew immediately that I was going to have to do something with her because how could I not. And I decided to do this first because the model is still very new and if I can get something substantial out sooner rather than later I will hopefully have something that stands out. Also the idea I came up with required some interesting things to animate that I was very keen to try. 

The basic jist is The Scout is fishing, snags Ariel's bra and she blows him in order to retrieve it. Simple, I mean at the end of the day there is a hard limit on the things she can do. The interesting bits are Scout doing the fishing, casting and whatnot and the tug of war that results in him getting the bra. Plus there is a little bit of Ariel swimming, that was fun and I was really excited to try some things where her hair transitions from being all floaty and underwater to wet and clingy above water. These all sounded like interesting and challenging things to undertake and that's exactly the kind of project I'm looking for right now. I also had this cool idea where I shoot a lot of it twice, one with a green screen right on the surface of the water so I can put in some cool effects in via Adobe Premiere to enhance the water effect beyond what SFM is capable of. The tests I performed on this came back with promising results.

And lastly this is a great opportunity to play around with custom particle effects for water ripples too. All in all this relatively simple animation presents a number of chances to push my limits a bit and try some new things that if perfected could be used to much greater effect later.

Once this one is done in a few months, I will do a poll here for you to choose what the next Middle Feature will be and I'll go into more details about each feature at that time. For now (and this is by no means a definitive list, as new ideas come to me expect it to grow & some haven't got proper titles yet), here are the ideas:

Again, I'll give a more detailed breakdown of these later once the Mermaid one is done so you guys can choose which one you would like to see next.

And finally, Eldar Narn. I actually really pleased to say that according to the wordpress analytics for my website, people have actually been reading it. About 30 people have read the whole thing! I'm impressed because I kind of do it just for me and assumed that no one will ever read it! 

Anyway, Chapter 4 continues and we're past the 'break' that occurs in the middle and the action has now shifted to the Eight Crowns Tavern. Had to do a build for both the interior and exterior of the bar which was fun. 

I love doing the scenebuilds, putting all the little bits here and there until you realise you've killed the memory and can't actually do anything with it! But that's all sorted now and we're a couple of pages into this part. They're not ready for release yet as there are still some changes to be made but everything has very conveniently worked out exactly as planned so there should be no major problems for the rest of the chapter. 

Some cool shit happens in the coming pages too, we meet our next main character (who I have finally decided IS going to be called I'Lúin), we see The Gift being used for the first time which means people will be casting some magic, a man will be thrown through a window, all sorts of good stuff. 

And there we go. As you can see I've been hard at work these last few months laying the groundwork for the year to come. Hopefully this means production on my various projects can continue smoothly and regular releases throughout the year.

Thank you for your time,