MiraigataArts
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O-tan-jou-bi! (2025)
🕑 Added 2025-10-19 13:32:35 +0000 UTCHi guys!
Today, we're finally hitting the 3-year mark of my animation debut. パチパチ👏！
Thank you guys so much for supporting me for all these years throughout my journey!
There are definitely ups and downs that often put me on a handicap, keeping me out from touching my wacom, which in turn hinders me from making art and often puts me on hiatus. Nevertheless, I managed to persevere, and this year marks as a living testament that I managed to pace myself well and constantly make progress like never before. Considering how I hardly ever need to go for a hiatus this year, I’m truly glad how I’m finally able to keep my drive intact and keeping my patreon more active than ever. Thanks guys!
Most popular this year - Koseki Bijou
Looking back at my previous works, I think it’s safe to say that my Koseki Bijou animation is probably one of my most popular animations that I’ve ever done this year.
So much effort had been put in order to make the project into fruition. With the shining moonlight graciously lit the background into its iconic violet atmosphere, as well as how well-placed the VFX features were, it somehow turned my project into something that’s coming out from Pix◯r movies. Even I was pretty surprised at the final results. Nevertheless, I still somewhat couldn’t fathom the fact that just how popular it is, even to this day.
Expanding New Horizon - Unreal Engine
As an effort to diversify in case of emergency, I tried to get my hands on Unreal Engine by porting my previous models to Unreal Engine 5.
Though I may be no stranger to UE5, I would often straight up avoid anything related to 3D, since porting blender models into unreal is such a pain to deal with.
Ever since my workload got heavier IRL, I kinda realized that my achilles tendon couldn’t keep up with the current pace, and I would sometimes limp my way out of bed.
At that point I was like, “Yep. I gotta learn my way out of this.”
So I got myself on my bootstraps, and finally diving myself into technical art in hopes it could save me one day. I'm setting myself to be ready for the hardest roles in the industry in case I truly need it.
These are the test case that I've done from the models I made. It's merely for training purposes so I don't really expect anything ever come out of this.
Mountains to Climb - Motion Capture
Walking straight to the depths of the animation world, I finally got my hands on some hardware in order to learn motion capture.
Truth be told, learning mocap is probably one of the hardest aspects of animation, since you need to ensure that your custom rig that you had should also be compatible with the mocap rig. This is probably one of the biggest headaches that I had since I had to disable every feature in my skeletons in order to make it work (no modifiers allowed).
At that point, it’s better for me to rig the model again over ensuring compatibility.
I managed to get my hands on Sony Mocopi as one of the mediums for mocap, and the workflows are quite a mess. I’m putting my diagram here for future reference.
The early results were…pretty bad, as limbs are flying around like crazy. I tried to rig the model again and with a bit of refining, it somehow came out quite decent.
It’s still quite a while for me before I could actually use mocap on my future animation, but this could serve as a start if I’d find myself in a situation where I need to use mocap again in the future. The closest scenario I could think of is for model compatibility with VRchat, but I’d also look forward to be able to use it for complex animations.
Project Synthetic
It’s been quite awhile since I gave out any updates regarding Project Synthetic, especially since I tried to downgrade it into a literature project. To summarize, I kinda realize that it needs to go in the oven for a little more before I could make any progress on the lore. Most of the problems right now are related to syntax issues, like the excessive usage of ellipses, and also several errors here and there. So it’s gonna take quite a while before it could be resumed.
Not gonna lie though, never have I felt so alive especially when I’m working on this project, despite the massive wall that keeps me from ever completing it. Without it, I find it quite hard to ever find a reason for myself to continue on as an artist. I would probably never put an effort to make my own mascot as an inspiration for me to keep fighting in the first place.
There’s already several CGs available that were supposed to be the chapter cover. It already has 200 pages for now but its going to take some time for me in order to finish it. Nevertheless, there’s going to be a bumpy road ahead throughout the journey of the project. Hopefully I could somehow attempt to navigate the treacherous journey till it could finally land perfectly where the project belongs. Whether it evolves to a new project or not, it is yet to be seen.
Closing Note
Thank you guys so much for all your support over the last three years. I have to admit that it’s not that easy for me to run my journey alone to cover a huge swathes of aspects within 3D modeling. I’ll do my best to keep improving my works and I hope I could keep devoting myself to art as of now and also later on in the future as well. Thank you guys for supporting me on Patreon, and I wish you all a wonderful day.
Comments
PurpsJL
It's been a ride for sure! You make great work and I've been happy to be along for the ride!
