lordaardvarksfm

Progress Report - December 26, 2023

Hello everyone, and welcome to the last Progress Report of the year!

I am very excited to announce that it comes with good news, as well! The news comes in two parts, so let's split this up into two sections, shall we?

Corsair - "Another Day, Another Job"

Last week I noted how I've been struggling with coming up with a minivid, and how I was currently exploring a ...

Progress Report - December 19, 2023

Hello, everyone.

I'll be frank with you all: I am extremely distressed and despondent.

Over the past handful of weeks, in the attempt to find a good 4-minute minivid, I have animated and discarded 10 minutes of animation across 4 different projects, not counting the 3 ideas I spent full days exploring but never got into storyboarding or animating.

The most recent one was the Futashep / Diana one, as shown last week. I absolutely hated the fact I announced one project, and th...

Progress Report - December 13, 2023

Hello, everyone.

I meant to get this post out yesterday, in a bid to slowly correct the Progress Reports drifting. But by the time it was finally done, it was just too late. Then I've just been too busy today to post this any sooner.

But yeah. You might be wondering, where's Brigitte, DVa, and Zarya?

Long story short is I shelved that project for now.

Long story long is I literally rewrote it 8 different times, but I just cannot find an iteration I am ...

Progress Report - December 6, 2023

Hello, all!

I apologize for the very late Progress Report.

I've spent the past week going through a dozen or so different ideas for minivids, putting together storyboards, vibing them out, seeing what all works and what all doesn't. It's been a week where we need to have a serious discussion of what all "being productive" means.

Because if we want to describe "being productive" as me actively exploring and experimenting and, you know, doing things, then it's been a ...

Progress Report - November 28, 2023 [What Should My Next Minivid Be?]

Hello, everyone!

I apologize for this post being a day late. Had a busy weekend and ended up just getting passed-out tired early on Monday, didn't have a chance to properly put this post together.

As you can probably tell from this week's poster, my attention's been a bit more divided than over the past few weeks. Though not as much as one might think - the thoughts have still been largely about Unreal.

Unreal Exploration Update

Before getting into those thoughts tho...

Progress Report - November 20, 2023

Hello, everyone!

Finishing Up the Conditional Evaluator

Last week, I regaled you all with the fun and exciting journey that has been my effort to automate the conversation system for my Unreal Engine prototype, which naturally led into the effort of building an entire arbitrary-complexity Boolean interpreter, for the sake of dynamically linking conditional dialogue trees.

That Progress Report ended on my having about two-thirds of the system done, with my major concern bei...

Progress Report - November 14, 2023

Hello, everyone!

I apologize for being a day late for this week's Progress Report. I wanted to make sure the system I was working on yesterday actually worked before making the post, and I just wasn't quite able to get it before end-of-day on Monday.

Last week, I described how I had figured out a flexible conversation system in Unreal Engine 5, and how I was in the process of building a pipeline for automatically building up conversations from an abstract graph designer. I had got...

Progress Report - November 7, 2023

Hello, everyone!

Sorry for this post being a day late. I wanted to get this system fully functional before I posted about it.

Which naturally raises the question of "what is this system?" And, maybe more pertinently... "what the fuck am I looking at?"

Last week, I put out a list of the things I need to do next for my Unreal Engine game prototype. I very pointedly put the conversation system last, because I knew it was going to be an extremely complex problem.

Naturally...

Progress Report - October 31, 2023

Hello, everyone!

I hope you've had a fantastic Halloween. To celebrate, have a ~spooky~ bit of update news: I'm still focusing on UE5 stuff!

I said last week that I was hoping to wrap up my UE5 experiments and move back to working on Overbreed, but that didn't happen. There's always something more to explore.

Since last week's post on the 24th, I have (among other things) figured out:

Building and playing fully cinematic cutscenes, as ...

Progress Report - October 24, 2023

Hello, everyone!

Last week, I noted how I was having a rough week and how it was frustrating me. This week, I decided to do something about it.

Namely, I decided to explicitly write out a daily schedule for myself to adhere to. A big part of this schedule is because my sleep schedule has been slipping again, as you all know it tends to do. And for reasons beyond my comprehension, the later I get up, the worse I feel emotionally throughout the day.

I'm simultaneously an early...

Progress Report - October 18, 2023

Bleh.

Hasn't been a good week, if the fact this Monday Progress Report is being published on Wednesday, with a single unfinished image. That's only half the intended image.

That's really the crux of it, too. "Only half of the intent." That's been my week. Anything I try to work on, I only get about halfway through what I intend to get done, and then just lose interest and give up. I don't even have the motivation to explain the context behind this image.

Not really much to s...

Progress Report - October 9, 2023

Hello, everyone!

Last week, I shared with you all my pitch for the next on-stream project. The current on-stream Frozen project is quickly coming to a close, so I figured it's better to figure out what we're doing next now than to wait and then flounder at the finish line.

During last week's Progress Report, I noted I wasn't quite ready for pitching it t...

Progress Report - October 2, 2023

Hello, everyone!

As you all know, the Chloe/Max Minivid was finally released onto early access yesterday, and will be going public / 2160p this upcoming Thursday. I pretty exhaustively addressed it in its release post, so I will leave it as an exercise to the reader.

Earlier last week, I 2023-10-03 07:55:00 +0000 UTC View Post

MINI-VID: TAKING CHANCES

Runtime: 5:09

1080p Early Access Release Date: RIGHT NOW! (October 1, 2023

Public 720p & Patreon-Exclusive 2160p Release Date: October 5, 2023

@DornVa - Max

@BakuSatsuho - Chloe

@DeafSfx - Sound design & music

@WancesWitDolves - Subtitles

What if Chloe didn't pull away, when Max goes in to kiss her?

Progress Report - September 25, 2023

Hello, everyone!

I have officially resumed work on Overbreed Ep1 today, getting about a minute and a half of new footage put together. You can click here to check the WIP out. 

I need to properly sort out my WIPs. Like with the Frozen project, I didn't transfer all the raw renders for Overbreed Ep1 when I reinstalled Windows, so all I have to go off...

Progress Report - September 21, 2023

Last week, I noted how I was in the final stages of the Life is Strange minivid, that I had the final 4k render going and it was just a matter of waiting for it to finish, editing, and releasing. I was planning to release on Tuesday. I said that you wouldn't hear from me until either the video released on Tuesday, or on Thursday if something catastrophic prevented the release from happening.

Well, the release didn't happen, and it's currently Thursday. So what's going on?

The long...

Progress Report - September 14, 2023

Sorry for disappearing for half a week. Starfield has utterly captured me within its grasp.

Like no joke. I spent all of Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday playing the fucking game. I have 36 hours in Starfield now. I had less than 8 when I started playing on Sunday.

I wanted to get the final render started by Monday, but that didn't happen. Curse you, Todd Howard!

But yeah, the video's done now, and the final 2160p render has started. I did a test...

September 4, 2023 - Progress Report [Viewer Input Requested!]

Hello, everyone!

So I know I said there wasn't going to be a Progress Report this week. What can I say? I'm a liar.

Right up top, I have a new WIP for the Chloe/Max Minivid to share with you all! You can click here to watch it! 

After many delays, immeasurable s...

Progress Report - August 30, 2023

Hello, everyone!

I apologize for dropping off the face of the Earth for the past month.

Where I've Been

As I noted in my last Progress Report, on July 25th I went back to spend a few weeks with my folks, to help my mother as she recovered from open-heart surgery. At the time, we expected the recovery to only take a week or two, and for me to be back by mid-August.

It turns out, open-heart surgery has a 6-to-8 week recovery period. The only reason why...

Progress Report - July 28, 2023

Hello everyone!

I apologize for the much-delayed Progress Report. As I noted in the last one, Tuesday was slated for heading back to my folks' place to help with my mum's recovery from her heart surgery.

Part of that was getting up early Tuesday morning, far earlier than I normally get up. Naturally, that required going to bed earlier than usual on Monday. Such that, I found myself not having the time to write the Monday Progress Report.

Basically all day Tuesday was spent t...

Progress Report - July 17, 2023

Hello, everyone!

This week's Progress Report will be rather short.

Right off the top, I now have a firm date on when I will be leaving to spend a few weeks with my family: July 25. I might be back by August 7, I expect to certainly be back by August 14. I will try to get some work done during the 2 or 3 weeks I am, but don't expect much. I know I certainly am not.

With that out of the way, the Life is Strange Minivid has been put together. Earlier today, I s...

Progress Report - July 10, 2023

Howdy everyone.

I don't have too much to report this week, because it's been... uhh.. hectic.

Family Health Update

If you follow me on Twitter, then you're already aware of what my week's been like, but for those that don't: my Independence Day was celebrated this year by receiving a text from my dad saying my mum was in the hospital for internal bleeding.

That ...

Progress Report - July 3, 2023

Hello, everyone!

Another week, another Progress Report. And boy do I have a good report for you all this week - along with two storyboards attached for you to download and peruse at your convenience!

Let's get straight to it, shall we?

Overbreed

I've gotten the Overbreed Episode 1 storyboard up to where Sequence C begins. All that's left now to storyboard is...

Progress Report - Tuesday, June 27, 2023

Hello, everyone!

I apologize for being a day late with this. I intended to post last night, but wanted to actually get the Epilogue QTE fully fleshed out and functional, so I could show it off in a video.

I, uhh, didn't expect that to take almost 4 hours to do. By the time I was finally done with it, it was past time for me to go to bed. So, that's why the post is today!

First things first, though:

Overbreed

2023-06-27 23:03:06 +0000 UTC View Post

Progress Report - June 19, 2023

Hello, everyone!

This past week's focus has been predominantly split on the Life is Strange projects and the Overbreed storyboard.

Overbreed

I've added 4ish minutes to the storyboard, taking it from the 17.5 minutes to 21.5 minutes, and (almost) concluding Sequence B. Once I've finished the climax sequence of B, the narrative tissue between Sequences B and C will be next. After that, the narrative tissue between Sequence C and the conclusion of the episode...