Thanks again to everyone who participated in the feedback form last month; I've gotten some great data from it and will be writing up a more detailed review of it later this month, detailing my interpretations and some change in plans.
Before I do that though, one of the things which has come up is that some people have suggested that I share shots as I complete them, rather than waiting till the end of the cycle and releasing them all.
A second consideration is that while I have had generally positive communication results (with ~75% of supporters giving me 4 or 5), there is still room for improvement in the eyes of many.
If I were to share work as I make it, then I will be also providing extra updates and communication. I would still release rewards at the end of the cycle, but these won't have anything new in them beyond updated compilations of the WIPS and whatnot. A downside to doing this though, would be that I end up spending a little more time administering patreon instead of working (I anticipate it will take 20-30 mins to render and compress a render and upload and post it), and it might ruin any reveal factor which people might have.
But I don’t know how much you guys value these components. So, just quickly, I will ask you specifically;
The rewards cycle was active this month, so I will be delivering rewards before the end of November.
So far, I have about 9 seconds of polished animation starting at shot 151. I will add about 4 or so more, then go back and finish the blockins for 148. That is my current goal for the cycle; if I finish early I will do more ^^.
I have a favour to ask you all! I have made a fairly brief survey to help me gauge how I am doing in your eyes, and ask your opinions on some things I have been thinking about/wondering over the years. If you get the chance, please fill it out so I can get some data!
Please check back in the coming days for the scene file. It takes a little bit of time to set it all up, and this month I went down to the wire making content. My apologies for the delays!
I strongly recommend downloading the videos and watching them locally, as dropbox's playback compresses the life out of them :(
Please let me know if there are any issues, or you have any feedback!
A fairly detailed update this month, to talk about what I have been working on, and what comes next for DGA.
I disabled last months rewards, but this month’s rewards will be active, so expect a content delivery from me some time later in September. I will keep you up to date on more specific dates, but it will be in the latter half of the month.
Progress: This month I am taking a step back from focusing on polished animation, and am instead closing the largest gap in the project (between 088 and 078) through blockouts. I may end up doing some polish work towards the end of September, but I am not sure how much this will be, if any.
My estimate of 6 shots missing has proven overly optimistic. I have completed 6 blocked shots this month and am working on the 7th, and currently expect there to be a total of 11 new shots needed for this missing sequence. I aim to have this done before delivering rewards, and the new content looks likely to be a bit under a minute long. Complexity Points: As a result of this, I’ll be updating the shot list to include a number of new shots, as well as some refactoring in other areas. Because ‘closing the gap’ has regularly proven to take more shots than I initially thought, I am also adding in additional blank shots in the last two gaps in order to give a more accurate estimate on the project’s project. This will increase the amount of complexity points needed (and thus push the overall progress down)
This is NOT caused by scope creep; I am still making the same animation I have planned for. It is to account for under-scoping of the original vision. My apologies; this is all best guess stuff, and I have a clear bias to be optimistic on how complex a sequence will be. The new complexity is taking this into account so I hopefully don't need to refactor upwards again later on.
Expect the remaining complexity points to go back up to around 120 this month.
Delivery Roadmap: I’m going to continue the two months per delivery cadence, as that is how long it is taking me to get a decent amount of content to justify a rewards cycle. Barring anything unforeseen popping up IRL, I plan to release two more rewards this year after this coming delivery. Meaning there will be one at the end of August (delivered some time in September), October (delivered some time in November) and December (delivered some time in January)
The projects for the rest of the year will be DGA, though I may switch back to MLK next year
Rig Updates: I am aiming to finalize Andre’s Rig by the end of the year. The majority of that is volume corrects in his arms and legs. I need to lock in his rig for the purposes of his harness simulation, which can't really be solved until there will be no changes to his underlying mesh.
Straps: About half the shots will have straps that will need to be simulated, as well as custom maps made for Andre when they are digging into his flesh. I have loose plans on how this might come about but am blocked by the rig not being finalized yet.
Environment: The two remaining gaps (the intro and after shot 085) are dependent on a final environment as they will have environment dependent animations. It will also unblock me from making final animations for the work that has been done (each shot will need some tweaking and final polish in the final environment before I do a 4K render.)
I am planning on outsourcing this but don’t yet have anyone in mind. I might be able to find someone on fiverr, but would rather source someone from the community. So if you know any professional environment artists, please feel free to recommend them! There will be a sizable budget for this thanks to your support. I am likely to start looking to start early next year.
Reindexing: I am reindexing shots to be in order. (as a big frustration/piece of feedback I got was that having shots ordered in random indexing was frustrating and made it difficult to identify what shot I am talking about.
This will be a gradual process, as it takes about 10 minutes to properly reindex a shot. There are a lot of associated files I need to rename, as the index is the identifier of each shot. So it's something I am doing when I have short bursts of downtime. The project will be reindexed gradually over the coming months.
Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns!
Sorry I wasn't able to get the rewards out last week; I had some computer issues but honestly I probably wouldn't have quite finished even if I didn't.
I have polished up some of my rig adjustments and finished shot 041. It is rendering right now :). I will make the final changes and content this weekend, and it should be sent out around Sunday (but may spill into Monday if needed)
My apologies for the length of time between updates; this year has been unexpectedly stressful for me IRL so far; so I have not been collecting patreon pledges so far this year as I have not been able to work on my projects regularily.
However, you might have noticed I did leave it on for this past month! This means I will have an update shortly ^^
This month has been DGA; it will be about ~13 seconds of polished animation for shots 095 and 041. This is a little less than I would usually like to put out, but a not insignificant chunk of time has also been invested in adding some jiggle and volume correction features for Andre's rig, which will be visible in 041 and hopefully make him feel heavier/bigger/more fleshy ^^. After that I just want to do a little rework of the planned shots for 096 and 097 based on some of your feedback (though no there's not any oral sex or orgasms being added; though I do genuinely like that you want there ^^)
I will be aiming to have the rewards out this weekend, but might need just a little more time depending on how this week pans out for me. I will keep you updated.
Also, I have not been checking my messages for a while, so my apologies if you have noted me and are waiting on a reply. I will get back to you soon.
Hey all! I hope you’re all doing well! I have a few quick updates!
I have updated the scene file for the highest tier; sorry for the delay!
I will be pausing payments next month as I will not be able to dedicate enough time to make decent enough progress to justify a rewards cycle.
I am nevertheless continuing, from the shots which I blocked out last month. I have finished polishing shot 095 (about 3 additional seconds) and have started on 096.
I made a mathematical mistake in the complexity points last month! I added all the points I did, and subtracted the points from the new shots I did not do, which at the time made sense but in reality it meant that I effectively counted the points for the new shot twice since they were never added to the total. So there are still 100 to go :/
