2018: The Year of the Long/Short System

[Original post from Tumblr]

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Hello, all! 

The new year is around the corner, and while some may consider this post a bit premature, I think now is the perfect time to make this particular announcement:

Starting January 1, my schedule is being normalized into what I call the “Long/Short” system

What this system means is, in a nutshell, I am reorganizing my time table for a consistent work schedule. What does this mean for you, as the viewer, though? Well, among other things, it means guaranteed* film releases every two months. (*excluding extenuating circumstances, which will be given as much advance notice as I can provide!)

More accurately, it means that I alternate between major productions, such as Blue Star and Hiveship, which are the “Longs” in the system; and smaller, simpler productions, such as the Miscellaneous Expenses or Alternate Advertising, which are the “Shorts.”

This alternating is on a month-by-month basis, meaning that I spend a month working on the current Long project (a “Long month”), and then the next month is spent working on and releasing the next Short project (a “Short month”); the month after, I return to the same Long project, and so the system continues.

With all of that being said, strap in, boys and girls. This is going to be a long post.

As a brief example of this Long/Short ssytem (THIS IS AN EXAMPLE - IT IS NOT A GUARANTEED RELEASE SCHEDULE), it would look something like this:

• January - Work on Blue Star Episode 3
  
• February - Work on and release Leliana short
• March - Work on Blue Star Episode 3
  • Blue Star Episode 3 finished and released! (AGAIN THIS IS AN EXAMPLE DON’T TAKE THIS AS GOSPEL)
• April - Work on and release Jill short
• May - Work on Hiveship
• June - Work on and release Tina short
• July - Work on Hiveship
• [...]

As you can see, this is actually the realization of two completely independent schedules, being interwoven: my long-term schedule, consisting of projects like Bluestar and Hiveship; and my short-term schedule, consisting of projects like the Tina short.

There are a few important impacts that this schedule yields:

• Guaranteed* releases every two months. This hiatus I have taken has proven that I have the ability and consistency for putting together shorts within a month. Phazon Addendum A, Miscellaneous Expenses, and Alternative Advertising were all put together in a span of less than 60 days, meaning that in 2 months I released 3 shorts, with a cumulative runtime of just over 8.5 minutes.
  
  I am confident I will be able to keep that going, and I have far more ideas than I know what to do with, so running out of ideas for shorts isn’t likely to be a problem any time soon. As of right now, I currently have 18 shorts outlined in my logbook, and that’s without me spending more than an hour trying to really rack my brain for new ones. So running out of shorts shouldn’t be a problem in the near future, especially since that covers the next three years (12 months in a year, alternate month-to-month, means 6 months of shorts a year).
  
  
• Guaranteed regular work on Long projects. Raw crunches, like the 6-month-solid run I took working on Blue Star are great. Until they’re not, like the 3-ish-month break I took from Blue Star after utterly and completely burning out on it. By having this structure, I can guarantee that I will always be making some forward progress for Long projects, without having to worry about going long stints without releasing anything. And that is something that plagued me as I worked on BSE3. I don’t think I released a single animation, beyond the occasional loop, in that 6-month crunch. And that stressed me out.
  
  
• A constant intake of new (short) projects to avoid burn-out. Let’s face it, spending all day every day for 6 months at a time working on the same thing over and over again, that’s a grind that I think can wear down even the strongest-willed of us. And I am far from the strongest-willed person.
  
  I have a short attention span. I get distracted easily. I constantly forget things. My mind is always aflutter with shiny new ideas beckoning for my attention. None of these things are news to anyone whose really followed me for any amount of time.
  
  I’ve tried fighting against it. I’ve tried battening down the hatches and forcing myself to work. I did that for 6 months. And, as I said in the previous point, it worked great. Until it didn’t.
  
  I have shown, though, that I can easily put a month into a single project without getting too restless. Hell, I can safely put in two months. Maybe even three. But after about 4 weeks, I start to get the itch to work on new projects. I can suppress it, but the itch is still there.
  
  So this schedule is trying something different. Rather than fighting my attention deficiency, I will nurture it. That’s why every other month, I work on a new project. It gives my brain a breather, a chance to explore and wander and try out new things. It allows my brain to get up and stretch, before the next month rolls around and it huddles up to focus and work on the current Long project again.
  
  
• There will be occasional bursts of 3-for-3 months: 3 releases in 3 months. These are just a natural result of this schedule. There is the guaranteed release every 2 months, but then the off months are working on Long projects. And those Long projects do eventually get finished - and released. And so there will be occasional times where I release a short, then a Long project, and then another short. And then I pick up a new Long project, and we’re back to the release-every-2-months schedule.
  
  
• This allows me to realize my visions for Longs uncompromised. I don’t like neutering my ideas. I don’t like artificially cutting them down to fit arbitrary runtime lengths, or cutting ideas because they would take too much time. For someone whose been a creator their entire life, it hurts me to amputate my ideas in the crib.
  
  I also don’t like working on projects and watching the months go by without releases. It makes me anxious. It stresses me out. And it eventually leads to either burn-out or break-down, and long-time followers of me will likely remember seeing their share of both.
  
  But the fact that these two schedules are totally independent means that I can take my time on my Longs, and realize them to the full potential as they rest in my mind. And I can do it without fearing “this is taking too long, I need to release something,” because the independent Shorts schedule keeps rolling, no matter what. If a Long takes 4 months longer than I expected it to, that doesn’t affect the Shorts release schedule. Similarly, if a Long takes 4 months less than I expected it to, that doesn’t affect the Shorts schedule.
  
  The Shorts schedule is completely independent of what I do in the Long schedule. And that means I don’t feel caged, and I am free to explore my ideas the way they are truly meant to be explored.
  
  
• I still have time to pursue my other endeavors, such as models. This one isn’t intuitive, and I will admit it took me a bit of figuring to realize that it’s a byproduct of my own work schedule.
  
  In a nutshell, I am giving myself 4 weeks every other month to start and finish a short video. As I said before, in 2 months, I released 3 shorts. That averages to only about 3 weeks a short, which feels intuitively right to me.
  
  That leaves, on average, 1 week between a short being finished and the next month - and so work on the current Long project - from beginning. And that is time I can use working on models.
  
  In reality, I wouldn’t wait until the last week to crunch on models. I’d sprinkle it into the usual work schedule, two or three days every two or so weeks.
  
  And as for the Long months, they’re a lot more lenient. They’re very flexible, because I intentionally designed them to be free of deadlines - the only timer on them is when I stop working on them for a month. No deadlines on releases.
  
  This means that I can also spend two or three days a Long month working on models. I suspect that many of these efforts will be doing preproduction for the next short, which is usually building models (such as Leliana’s model for the Leliana short). And of course, naturally, whatever production is necessary for the Long project - I can’t very well work on Hiveship, without having a Samus model to work with, now can I?
  
  
• An obfuscated schedule gives me the freedom to adjust my projects as I see fit. This isn’t really inherent of the Long/Short system itself, but it’s a consequence of how I am going to be doing it. Basically, I will be giving periodic projections of my schedule. In reality, my schedule is far larger than what I make public, but I keep most of it hidden from the public eye.
  
  Why? Because, as I’ve mentioned earlier, I have a short attention span, and new ideas catch my fancy often. Long projects very rarely change order, but Shorts are much more... mercurial. More fluid. They’re prone to have their order tinkered and moved around, as new ideas come to mind that I think would be more interesting both for me to make and for you to watch.
  
  As such, I will only be releasing my schedule in bursts of “3 on 3″: the next 3 Long projects, and the next 3 Short projects. Obviously, the new Shorts will be announced far more often (every 6 months, to be precise!). The new Long projects will have a far, far slower update rate.
  
  I want to make it clear that I will not have a sliding window, where once I finish Project 1, I announce Project 4; once Project 2 finishes, I announce Project 5; and so on. I will not be doing that, because I feel that puts the intermediary projects (2 and 3 in the first; 3 and 4 in the second) in the air for too long. And more importantly, those newly announced projects are still a long ways away, and I may find myself wishing to move them around as the months go by.
  
  By the time I announce a new list of projects, especially Long projects, it is as after a very long time (often many months) of ruminating on them and deciding that is the order I want to do them in.

With all of that being said, HERE ARE MY FIRST THREE LONG AND SHORT PROJECTS:

WORK ON BLUE STAR EPISODE 3 (the first Long) BEGINS JANUARY 1, AND WORK ON THE LELIANA SHORT (the first Short) BEGINS FEBRUARY 1.

Long schedule:

• Blue Star Episode 3
  
• Hiveship*
• Blue Star Episode 4

Short schedule:

• Leliana “Spymaster”
  
• Jill “Tentacles”
• Tina “Detective” (sequel)

*This was a decision that took a lot of thinking. Ever since Blue Star was first conceived, I have been saying that Hiveship will be done after Blue Star Episode 5, the Season 1 finale.

However, consider the fact that Blue Star has exploded, with Episode 3 going from an intended 8 minutes to a staggering 27 minutes, and Episodes 4 and 5 looking to be comparable in length. And that’s after Episodes 1 and 2 pushed 9 and 12 minutes, after their planned 5 minute runtimes for each.

Then, consider the fact that I have firmly cemented the lovely InsideIncognita as the voice of my Samus, whom has been more or less universally adored in the role. Mix in that I have now firmly cemented the character model I am using to portray everyone’s favorite bounty hunter, whom most people seem to be universally in support of (sorry Sarah Bryant fans! I didn’t mean to usurp her! It’s not my fault people like her as Samus more than they like her as herself!).

Finally, combine all of those with the fact that I have been iterating on, discussing, and teasing Hiveship for something like 3 years now. And when I wrote its first draft, and I first teased it, Blue Star wasn’t even conceived of. It was planned to be a 20-minute project, which at the time was a staggeringly huge undertaking for a nubile me who was recently celebrating their first 3-minute project being completed. Now, in the shadow of a single series episode being longer than that projected time, at 27 minutes and not even finished yet, that measly 20-minute projection isn’t nearly so daunting.

With all of that in mind, I came to the conclusion that it’s been long enough. I have been constantly iterating the project’s writings, fleshing it out and developing it to be truly deserving of a “film” label. At this point, I think it’s more or less matured. Tinkering these days is less developing the idea out, and more pushing things around.

So I think it’s time for the Hiveship to finally rise. And with Blue Star Episode 3 being very close to being finished with principle animation already, it shouldn’t be more than 2 or 3 Long months before Hiveship begins with earnest.

Well, I think this post is finally done! I didn’t anticipate it to be so long. It took me nearly an hour to write it all. But I guess that’s fair, since I have been sitting on, tuning, and refining this system and its schedule for a few weeks now.

I had a lot to share with you all.

As always, I expect a change of schedule to result in a change of attitudes, and if you decide you don’t like this new schedule and don’t want to follow or support me anymore, I fully recognize and respect your choice to do so.

That being said, I hope that for however many people who decide to leave, there are at least as many people who are at least half as excited with this new schedule as I am.

There’s a lot of fun stuff I’ve got planned in the next year. Let’s make it a good one!