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Progress Report - April 4, 2023
🕑 Added 2023-04-04 22:42:38 +0000 UTCHello, everyone.
I intended to make this on Monday, but as is so often the case, I flew too close to the sun. It was 3am when I decided to start making these posters, wanting to share them on the progress report. Was nearly 7am when I finished. I was way too exhausted to write up this post then, and promptly collapsed into bed with the sun daring to shine on me as I tried to sleep.
My sleep schedule is incomprehensibly fucked.
This past week was one of tangents. Rather than one project making lots of progress, it was several projects all making small but respectable inroads.
Let's do a day-by-day summary. I liked that style when we did it last week.
Tuesday: Obviously, the biggest thing to happen Tuesday was the release of the Primordium Episode 1 early-access cut.
Truthfully, I'm not certain if that was the best move from a financial perspective, since I have had several people tell me that they're going to wait on watching the video until the final audio is installed - and since I am releasing the video publicly once that is done, that effectively means they're skipping the early-access altogether.
But I really didn't want to hold onto it indefinitely. I'd rather take a financial loss on it and actually have the video available for people to watch in its mostly-complete state, than hold onto it indefinitely until it's fully finished. Perfect is the enemy of good, after all.
I've spoken with my sound designer, and he's chomping away happily at it. Once again, he is composing a soundtrack for it, though he's not going as full out for it as he did for the title sequence. So if you like the Witcher 3 OST, and you like the music he made for the title sequence, then expect more of that.
We've also made some adjustments to the title sequence's diegetic audio, since there are a few elements in it that we didn't really like. So all in all, once the final audio is done, pretty much everything will be touched for the better.
I'm not going to bother giving an ETA on that. Just know that he's whittling away, and I'll give updates as appropriate.
Beyond that release, I spent most of Monday brainstorming the previously-mentioned Raven/Starfire idea. I know exactly where I want to go with it, but the problem is how to get there. I've written out and scrapped 4 different versions of it now - they always take too long and meander off into the bushes.
This latest revision is starting to wander again, but so far it's the most focused. It has a Beast Boy interjection (in the not-Patreon-friendly way), so I can't share it right now. Eventually I will juryrig a public system on my website for sharing it, and then I will simply redirect people to that - since it'd be publicly available, it shouldn't step on any toes.
I tweeted on Monday that failure is as important to progress as success. This was definitely not just me venting my frustration of spending an entire day constantly writing and tossing out storyboards for this project.
Wednesday: The only day where I actually made progress on Claire/Jill during the past week. Finally started the final project file, which is roughly the last 8 minutes of animation. Not much to say in this capacity.
Beyond Claire/Jill, I worked on more original characters. Specifically, I faceposed Cass, Sophie, and Viv.
This ended up getting streamed because why not. I used to stream model-work on Wednesdays around 3pm my time; it was around 3pm my time, it was model work, and it was Wednesday. Someone suggested I stream it and I said "sure fine fuck it why not."
Not much to say there. It took about 6 hours to facepose the three of them. Sophie well and away took the most time, because her choker, chest tattoo, and face jewelry all needed to have ancillary support for her faceposing (nose flexes for nose ring, mouth flexes for lip ring, and throat flexes for choker and tattoo). We also detoured into rigging up her hair, where it was split into something like 16 individual pieces to get rigged.
In total, Sophie took 3 of those 6 hours to get put together. Viv and Cass already had their hair fully rigged, and neither of them have any ancillary pieces that needed to be faceposed, other than Viv's sweater needing throat-bulge support. So I was able to get both of them done in the same time Sophie took by herself.
Thursday: My day off, though in usual fashion I ended up getting work done on it, too. Specifically, I finally got around to rebuilding Sherry, the counterpart to Rebecca in my creatively-titled Sherbecca project. Rebecca was rebuilt a while back, but Sherry was left behind and she really suffered for it.
Rebuilt from the ground up onto DazV5-5, much like Rebecca was. I decided against retopologizing her face, since her RE6 face is already decently high-poly, compared to Rebecca's RE1make face. It's borderline, I'd like a few more loops here and there, but I think it'll be fine.
Retopologizing faces is a big endeavor, and there's no guarantee it'll be for the better. So for now I think I'd rather play it safe, and only retopo her face if I absolutely need to.
She still needs to be faceposed, but her hair is rigged and she has 3 outfits (or 4, if you want to count the jacket's undershirt as a separate outfit) so far - her winter jacket, her light shirt, and a club outfit (to go alongside Rebecca's leather outfit).
So that was fun.
Friday: Friday was spent streaming, since I was going to be busy all day Saturday (see below). We worked on the Frozen project, made decent progress there. Not much more to say, really. I tweeted the results of the stream. Feel free to check them out.
Saturday: My parents visited, and we spent the day doing stuff. Saw the new Dungeons and Dragons movie, it's better than it has any right to be. If you're a fan of fantasy stuff in general or Dungeons and Dragons in specific, consider giving it a watch at some point. Was pretty obvious to me that the directors (who were also writers and executive producers) are pretty big fans of the game.
Sunday: You know, every time I sit down to write, I always think I can get more done than I do. It happens every week with these progress reports "oh I'll spend 15 minutes writing up a progress report" next thing you know two hours have passed. And every time it disappoints me. And I don't know why - I know better by now.
Sunday was spent writing up character bios for my various original characters. The original plan was to write up a single page bio for all of my original characters, so I can release them all at once.
I got through three: Miya, Tammy, and Nataly, from Parawhores.
I pushed their bios public. You can click here to read them. These bios aren't complete (they're being strictly restricted down to one page per character, when in reality I could easily fit three or four pages per character), and are completely ignoring backstory and lore, to focus purely on character traits.
Here's a small excerpt from Miya:
Her ego is wrapped up entirely in her huge breasts, of which she is extremely proud. She takes every opportunity she can get to flaunt them. She loves being ogled, groped, and fondled, and finds great amusement in distracting men with--and making other women jealous of--her body.
She is a complete size queen and an eager cock-sleeve. Her body was magically altered to firmly fit any size cock, no matter how large, and she loves the indescribable sensations of having her body magically rearrange to accommodate a massive penis, be that her internal organs shifting or her jaw distending.
She is extremely petty and spiteful, with a massive superiority complex. If she thinks she’s better than you, she’ll make sure you remember it every second you’re within earshot. And if she isn’t, then she’ll hold a grudge against you until the day she dies.
Which likely won’t be long, between all the alcohol, smoking, drugs, and challenging large cryptids to angrily fuck her unconscious—also known as her favorite way to get to sleep.
Also, reading through today's progress report, between Miya's bio and the Raven/Starfire storyboard preview, you might be picking up on a pattern. It's a pattern that I think has existed pretty much since I started making my art back in 2013, but just to be perfectly clear and alleviate any suspicions people might have:
Yes, I love size queens. No, I won't be taking questions.
Monday: I spent most of Monday returning my attention to DOAFantasy. It's a glacial project, in both size and speed. I've reported over the past few months my progress on it from time to time.
I don't recall if I ever shared that I finally completed the outfit matrix. 42* unique outfits, plus some more than didn't make it into this matrix.
*Not actually 42, some are reused; this is just napkin math of [14 characters x] 3 [outfit types per character (casual, professional, kink-play).]
Which led to the posters that delayed this post being made on-time and now grace the top of this page. I'll probably put together a few more of them over the next week. Will it impact my forward progress on Claire/Jill? Probably. Am I happy about that? Not at all. Will I try to mitigate that impact? Absolutely. Will I succeed? Tune in next week to find out!
That's all for now. Until next week, everyone!
Comments
J Arco
Must have the Hitomi scene!! :) Also, thanks for the update. It is very much appreciated that you take the time to make these in depth progress reports and I hope you know it is not lost on your supporters. LOVE your work and am always excited to see what you're cooking up and what we have to look forward to. Mass Effect and DOA are my two favorites of your stuff, but honestly everything you do is fucking hot and very technically great. Keep up the great work, and good luck on your sleep schedule. As someone who works nights, I totally understand having a messed up sleep cycle. Cheers!
