October 2019 - W.I.P UPDATE

FEATURE ANIMATION #1: LIFEGUARD x STITCH: SOMETHING ABOUT FRUIT

It's done!  I got somewhat caught up in the release and only just realised that I had forgotten to do October's update but there isn't much more to say about SAF. The rendering took much longer than I expected. SFM turned kept turning the background models in the map on and off again so I had to re-render about half of the whole thing to correct this. Also SFM decided to produce a number of dead frames that crashed Adobe Premiere every time it got to them and because Premiere is such a precious little darling it just quits on you with no explanation at all. I finally solved the issue by implementing a cunning strategy I call, use Sony Vegas instead. But these were all valuable lessons learned and rendering the next video should go much smoother. I'm working on putting the behind the scenes video together at the moment and hope to get that an the director's commentary version of the main feature out within the next month. 

I'm going to release one or two more very short Lilo & Stitch animations featuring Lifeguard & Nani. These will probably be little more than simple loop based things but I have a couple of ideas for the two of them that (due to there being no room for Nani in the main feature) I never got to do. Then that's it for these models and it's onto the next one.

Truth be told I'm a little sad to see it end. Working on this project has been such a major part of my life for the last 18 months I think I'm actually going to miss the Lifeguard a little bit. But fear not because work has already begun on:

FEATURE ANIMATION #2: MEI IN: OVERCAST

Work will begin in earnest on this production in December but so far the scene build has been completed and the lighting for the first few minutes is all in place. I've really tried to build a more static light setup this time. Something About Fruit needed the lights adjusting in pretty much every shot, but this time I'm trying to use a setup that will work for extended periods of time until the actors move around the room. I've got about 7-8 camera positions setup and all I need to do is record a couple of new lines of dialogue for the opening an make one more poster for the background and we're 100% ready to go. I plan to get these last bits done by the end of the month and then in December we can really hit the ground running and commence full production. Before then a full breakdown of the project will be release on my website so everyone can see what the plan is.

Right now however i'm working on some practice animations, some of which feature will Mei so I can get a feel for her model and her weighting. The Lifeguard didn't have any jigglebones or manual ass bones so where Mei does so I want to play around with them a bit before we start. Also one of the most frequent pieces of feedback I've received about SAF is the pacing & speed of the animation so these practice animations are designed to let me get some experience moving things at a slightly faster pace.

This project was first started before Something About Fruit, but dropped in favour of the Lifeguard and all previous work has been scrapped. However, I recall that it took me 1 month to do 3 minutes worth of Mei talking, with all the body and lip sync animations and everything. I'm definitely faster now, and vastly more experienced at lip sync so I'm anticipating a much quicker production time for this one. Less complicated scene builds, more fucking.

ELDAR NARN 

Eldar Narn is going to get more attention now that the main production is finished. We've been on this scene for a while now and it's time to get things moving along. The little tableau with the street vendor is nearing it's end. We're going to do one more round of back and forth between Myrill & Meredhel and Ohmbryn & Erolith and then something's going to happen and they are all going to rush off to an incident taking place at a nearby tavern so we can introduce or next new character, who still might be called I'luin or might not, I haven't decided. I'm running out of time to pull the trigger on this though, so I'll have to make my mind up soon. Not much else to report on Eldar Narn since it's kind of been on the shelf for the last month but we should see the next pages released soon and the story moved onto something a little bit more exciting. Still no porn yet though, but we're getting close. It's looking like Chapter Seven will contain or first scene of actual pornographic content and it's going to be weird and gross!

And that's the field of play for November. We're in a transitional period with lots of little bits here and there to work on, but I'm hoping to get a nice workflow in place by 2020 where we're making good progress on the main feature, but also producing smaller animation content on the side. Ideally I'd like to find a balanced way to have something small come out every month, since we're probably looking at a year before the next feature is done. Unless of course some people actually sign up for the Patreon and we can devote more time to it, but realistically that's not going to happen until at least the Mei video is completed and I can prove I'm not just a one hit wonder.

So that's it for this month. Lots done and lots left to do.