Episode 11 Update - 08/03/22 (Patreon)

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As you may or may not have noticed, I turned off the August 1st charge this month because I could not deliver an update in July. I cannot, in good conscious, charge you for a month where I gave zero updates.  I'd prefer it didn't have to go down like this, but July was a difficult month for me.  I had to deal with some personal struggles, as well as dedicate big chunks of my time to friends and family.  But even the time I designated for working, I was far less focused than usual.  Working on this series is one of the few things that keeps me happy and satisfied, so coming up this short in July just killed me.  I am slowly but surely getting back into gear with it, but I'm not yet at a pace I'm satisfied with.  I'm going to do my best this month to get everything back up to my desired level of efficiency.  Unfortunately, I have a minor surgery coming up this month as well, which is going to put me out of commission for a time, but I'll be damned if I let this month get as bad as the last.

It took me far longer than I'd thought with far more nitpicks and re-works, but I've finally completed the full audio mix for the episode.  To my surprise, the episode is going to be juuust under 30 minutes long.  It's 28 minutes as is, but I've yet to properly time out the purely visual action sequences and "trippy" sequences, which should push it to just about the 30 minute mark, if not just under it.  I cannot tell you how relieved I am.  Given that the script was nearly 50 pages, I was expecting a 40 minute episode.  But 30 minutes is completely doable.

I have now gone over the audio over and over and pretty much have the entire episode played out in my head.  The first 22 minutes of the episode are so straightforward.  None of it really presents anything all that challenging and new that I'm not used to handling.  I feel like I could practically do it all myself given time and focus.  If I can get some good help, I can definitely knock it out efficiently.  The final 8 minutes is where the challenge is going to present itself.  I'm definitely going to need help, and I'm pretty sure the majority of the budget is going to go towards perfecting the big climax of the final act.  It's going to be pretty trippy and action packed and frankly, it intimidates me.

The sets are in good shape, and I have enough here to do preliminary animations with everything.  I'm still in constant communication with my set artist and he is working with my feedback slowly, but surely.  There are still a couple of things to work on, but as soon as he finishes the current one, I'll have enough to do a layout pass of all scenes.

I've also been working with an artist on Scene X.  Currently it's not quite where I need it to be, and it has a ways to go.  Scene X is going to be a hard sell.  It's going to have to look near perfect to get across the idea that I'm going for.  Here's a snippet of art from the process that I'm definitely not using.  Make of it what you will.

I'm finally at the turning point that I wanted to be at several weeks ago: the audio is done and I can switch gears, doing a layout/storyboard pass for the animation.  I want nothing more than to be hyper-productive here and give you frequent updates, but I also sort of have to watch it for my own health.  I'll do my best to be consistent and keep you in the loop at this point.  Thank you, as always, for your support.