January Update (Thunderbolts Progress)

 Hi gang!

 A lot going on at B-Towers at the moment, largely on the Thunderbolts project. This has lead to a lack of video this month, but it's all been to the benefit of getting this project completed, as you'll see in the rundown of what i've been up to below (without giving anything big away, of course!).

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 25 Scenes Completed

 I’m happy to report that after months of testing and editing, we’re finally seeing finished shots come through the pipleline. It’s taken a while to figure out how the voice acted scenes were going to be depicted as I wanted to break the constraints of the FF video without going crazy, but I’ve come up with something that is not only feasible for me to produce and look right, but that's getting faster and easier to make. There's still things I need to figure out, but as of two weeks ago I've gotten into a good rhythm for getting these done and I'll be following it as far as I can until I need extra help.

 Doing the math, I’d say this now represents about 35-40% of all the scenes devised, not including the much easier rest of the video to edit, and that’s a good place to be at. I'm working on even more as we speak!

 New Artists Employed

 Our number of employed artists adding their own flair to aspects of the project has risen from three to five. Two had been working very casually in their spare time on a few extra assets to add flavour to the video, and one was doing the same while also assisting me with small details in the actual scenes, which I am currently completing alone.

 Now with the proceeds so far we've hired an animator working on one very short segment, which has been approved and is entering final colour and cleanup, and another illustrator, who has so far produced some incredible drawings for another section of the video. I’d love to share anything from either artist properly but I can’t without giving anything away- but it’s made a big difference and I think they’re going to look great in the final product!

 I have a couple more things I need to commission this month but it’s truly great to see as much of the vision come together as possible like this.

 The Final Episode Recording

 On Saturday the 18th, we finally managed to get a bunch of the core cast together to record for the last planned video in the series. The idea was that, if the first video caught no traction and I didn't get anywhere near the funding I expected to continue growing the series the way I wanted, I could at least have the entire story recorded to tell with no bells and whistles whatsoever, so you'd always have an ending to the story. I was extremely nervous- I’ve never directed so many actors before, certainly not in this format, and had no idea how it was going to go.

 Well, it turned out amazing. Eight of the most incredible voice actors, some who’d literally never spoken to each other before, turned up and gave incredible, committed performances and brought the story to a close beautifully. This was mostly a readthrough- meaning we went through the script from top to bottom with stage direction notes included, so I didn’t pause us and direct several takes of a scene or line, and as it turns out, I didn’t really have to. These guys had been doing the parts for so long now they were able to pull off all the inflections and ideas I had in mind, as well as bouncing off each other and using each others energy perfectly. It was a blast, and I could not be prouder of this terrific cast coming together for my weird little Youtube thing.

 The entire session was recorded and you’ll be seeing this way later down the line, eventually, likely with snippets in the final video as well. But yeah, an incredible experience- would love to do this kind of thing again. 

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 And of course, again, I have you all to thank. All of this was paid for with both my Ko-fi and Patreon funds, and every extra donation means the video gets that much better. We still have a a few more things to commission- there’s one or two scenes and additional actors to wrap on in the final episode, a few retakes here or there, as well as the final pieces of art for the first episode, but I’m really hoping everything I need will be done by, at the latest, the first half of March, and then it’ll just be about the final edit and polish for a month or so after before the first episode finally debuts. Gunning for an April deadline, but anything could happen between now and then.

 I am sorry that this lead to a lack of video this month, I did have something written that I wanted to produce fast, but given that I’m racing the clock with the MCU I felt it was important to make as much of that time as possible. It’s rough because the videos in-between do help the cash flow and I do have projects outside of this I want to pursue (I tightened up a lot of drafts in the first half of this month) but right now I’m just doing as much as I can on this video to ensure we beat the deadline. More and more news comes out about the film concerning things they want to introduce to the world that I am very keen not to be (in principle) second on, if my instincts are correct. It’s like they made certain sneaky choices to scoop me, personally, speedrunning so many talking points and connections from my entire series behind what originally seemed like a largely MCU specific team! But it is what it is, and hey, maybe I'm wrong and they won't surprise us with those things at all. Luckily I have a lot of work taken care of already to see this particular version through.

 We’ll catch up again at the end of February and I’ll let you know how things have progressed. Til then!

 -B