Progress Report - March 11, 2025

Hello, everyone!

As I noted last week, as of 11:59PM yesterday, the Batcat storyboard has been officially locked down!

Innie and I managed to cut the storyboard from 11.5 minutes down to 7.5 minutes. We could have gone even more aggressive, but we had hit the point where any further cuts would start to compromise Innie's vision - and since we had managed to get it under the 8-minute threshold I'm aiming for, I decided we didn't need to cut any further.

You can click here to see the final storyboard! And for posterity, here is the original 11-minute storyboard, if you want to compare them and see what all changed.

There were two major categories of cuts: redundancies and focusing. Innie and I both have very natural approaches to dialogue, and humans tend to be redundant when talking. We like to say the same thing several different ways, both to reinforce our point, and also to just thoroughly shake the idea out of our heads. Take for example, the previous two sentences. We managed to shave almost 2 minutes just by removing redundancies like that from the screenplay.

As to focusing, we just really narrowed down on the fact that this is ultimately a story of pledging commitment. Part 1 here is Barbara pledging her commitment to Selina, and Part 2 (should people want it to be made) is Batgirl pledging her commitment to Catwoman. Sequences that didn't directly contribute to that aspect of their relationship were candidates for cutting - the most significant of which was the 90-second introductory sequence that was how the two first met. Ultimately, this isn't a story about how Barbara and Selina meet - it's a story of Barbara committing herself to Selina. What's important is that they are together, not how they get together. And so we cut the coffee-shop sequence.

With all of that being said, the gears of production spin into motion. I have already reached out and confirmed the full voice cast for the video: InsideIncognita (obviously) as Selina Kyle, Milly Stern as Barbara Gordon, and SultryLamp as Frances (voice-only, in the last two minutes of the storyboard). Non-sex audio is currently in the process of being recorded, and will likely be done before I even begin the proper animation.

Next up is model work. Highest priority is building a new Barbara model - Innie personally prefers the Gotham Knights iteration of Barbara over the one I currently have, and so that is the version of Barbara the video will be using. After that is a handful of outfits for both Barbara and Selina.

I expect to have the new Barbara model fully built, faceposed, and in Source by next week. I should also have at least one of her outfits core-fitted by that time. We'll see how things fare beyond that point.

By the 24th, I should have all of the model-work done, and should be full-tilt into animation. Of course, as always, we'll play this by ear - things have a tendency to go wrong in the most imaginative and unpredictable ways possible, after all. But that is the plan, as of right now.

That's all for right now! Until next time, everyone!