Progress Report, Poll Reminder, 19/04 - 24 (Patreon)

Hello everyone and welcome to another in the line of progress reports!

First off, a reminder that we have an on-going comic poll for the setting for the next comic:
LINK

I know certain favorites are already pretty well ahead, but know that when you vote for other options that don't win it still does give me an insight into what people might want to see otherwise, so it's never a wasted vote to put one in there for your favorites. This is mainly to determine which of these go first, and whether the others are of interest at all - polls tend to be sneaky like that.

On another note I actually got some decent Ivy work done today. The core animation for Scene 1 has now reached the creampie stage, where I'll have to get that and the post-creampie chatter and the likes sorted, but after that it'll be a matter of details like lip sync, some lighting tweaks and camera motion to resolve, and then Scene 1 will finally be sorted. As I've mentioned before, we've got Scenes 2-5 left to sort, but they are not nearly as demanding as the intro and Scene 1 was, and should be made in shorter order.

Part of being a creator means you're continuously getting new insights into your own motivation and how your brain works, requiring a certain creative spark to make things work smoothly, and I believe I've finally found what in the past has been the killer of a lot of projects, which is the propensity for me to feel guilty over working on something that I, in that moment, feel a strong desire to work on, instead of doing "what I should be doing" at every juncture. When you give in to the guilt and force yourself to sit down with what you've deemed "proper" to work on at that moment - a project for instance - it often works to actively kill motivation and, sometimes, slowly makes you resent the project in question.

The way I've began to alleviate this is to pose and, in the time I have outside of the regular update schedule, begin to animate larger, more ambitious scenes featuring multiple characters, something I know many of you have missed (as I have), but which do not have any set deadline. In that sense, instead of jumping between various projects as I've done in the past to keep motivation high, I simply put some of my creativity into this "hobby" animation, for a lack of better word, which makes me feel like I have an outlet for that spark without the pressure to make it into something "big", allowing me to more easily then go back to do project work. A distraction, of sorts, something mainly for myself but which I will eventually share down the line, once it's sorted.

DH's maze of a mind aside, I've once again jumped into fluid dynamics, realized its limitations for what we do here, and have subsequently spotted a potentially promising candidate in a comprehensive Blender addon that I might just purchase come next month in conjunction with my tax filings. I've heard good things about FLIP Fluids before, and endeavor to check out the demo version of it more in the coming weeks to make sure I don't regret my purchase, as it's a quite hefty program in terms of cost.

I've rambled enough this week, so I'll cut it off here - thank you, as always, for your continued support and for all of your kind words. Honoka posing will begin this Saturday, with the Scenario release on the 29:th, so keep your eyes peeled for this DoA movie star making her proper in showbiz.

In the meantime, take care of yourselves, and each other!
/DH