Blue Star Episode 3 - Overdue Update (Patreon)

Hey all!

So, this is an update overdue. First the good news, and then why this update is so overdue.

Good news! The sex scene for Blue Star Episode 3 is currently at ~216 seconds (~3:36), from the start of the scene up to the beginning of the finale (which is more than just a simple cumshot). This is not the final time, though - I have a few interim scenes to add, some transitions to add, and then this is all just time-projected, before the dubbing is done (which always ends up adding or removing a few seconds).

Similarly, you’ll notice that there are some really long blocks in the timeline. Those are because I haven’t split them up into different camera angles - that is simply one block per core animation.

Why this update is overdue! Well, the reason why this update is overdue is simple: because I haven’t made any forward progress on Blue Star’s animation in nearly 2 weeks now, until today.

The reason for that is really quite pathetic: I’ve been suffering from writer’s block. But not on any of the major narrative (all of that’s been written for months now). No, I was suffering writer’s block on the sex-scene dialogue.

I have this thing where I find it really bad form to have a sex animation / position come and go with absolutely nothing being said. I find that uncouth, and consider it a telegraph that the sex animation as a whole is just unnecessary. And so I try to have at least one line of dialogue in every sex animation / position.

To be perfectly clear by what I mean as “line of dialogue”, consider the recently released Breed Your Queen, which I pursued as a way to flush out my writer’s block (which didn’t wholly solve the issue). In its sex scene, there are two lines of dialogue: “Breed your queen...” and “give me your seed...”

“But why would being stuck on dialogue stop you from working on it?” a curious observer may ask. The answer to that question is “time projection.” In a nutshell, the way I put these sex scenes together is as such:

1. Make the core animation loop. On the average, this is usually around 12 frames / half a second long, though with the size of the Shadowbroker, 16 frames is a closer average.
   
   
2. Begin a stopwatch and play that loop on repeat, while imagining how the audio would play out, with moans and dialogue being delivered. Stop the stopwatch when it feels it’s played its course. 
   
   
3. Stretch out the loop to the length recorded with the stopwatch.
   
   
4. Put down a handful of different camera angles.
   
   
5. Play through the extended shot, again imagining the audio placement, and work out the changes between the camera angles by feel and intuition. Make the cuts and changes as appropriate.

As you can see, step 2 of this process requires the dialogue to actually be known. With the dialogue, I can get a feeling for the pacing of the shot, which in turn allows me to determine its length. With the length, I can then determine how many camera angles it should have and when to cut between them. And with these cuts, I can then devise the flow of the overall scene.

But without the dialogue, I can’t make those time projections. Without the projections, I can’t figure out the cuts. And without the cuts, I can’t determine the flow.

And without the flow, I don’t have a film - I have a collection of loops, with no continuity between them.

That flow is critical to the construction of these projects, and without a strong sense of flow, I just can’t progress them. I had the core animations done for months now, but the dialogue was just refusing to reveal itself to me. And without that dialogue, I couldn’t get the flow needed to progress.

HOWEVER! With the help of 4 amazing individuals: Incognita, Andrastae, ThatSFMNoob, and finally Slendistry, that writer’s block has finally been overcome. The first three all provided some insights, thoughts, and suggestions that, while incredibly helpful, weren’t enough for me to break through that writer’s block.

After Slendistry and I had a three-hour brainstorming session on the issue, though, the block was finally broken. The dialogue we came up with certainly doesn’t feel like it took 3 hours to devise (let alone 2 weeks of sitting on it), but I think anyone whose ever really experienced writer’s block knows that’s just how writer’s block goes - far more effort goes into what you get out of it. That’s just the way these things go, though.

SO! With that being said, Blue Star Episode 3 is finally back on track. I’ve gotten all of the time projections done for the existing animations. The next order of business are to add in the interims, which are in most cases just a single transmutation of an existing animation (though one involves 6 transmutations...). That shouldn’t take long, since it’s not entirely new animation, but just changes to existing animation.

After the interims are the transitions, which will prove a minor challenge as I determine which are fast enough to animate, and which are too slow and pacing-killing to animate and to instead just cross-fade around.

Once the transitions are done, then the bulk of the sex scene will be done, and all that remains is the decidedly involved (and unashamedly daunting) finale. 

And once that is done, all of the core animation for Blue Star Episode 3 is done, and the project as a whole is ready for dubbing!

I will keep you all informed of when the transitions are done, and then again when dubbing begins.

This has been a painfully long journey. I know that, and I apologize for this long, long wait. The original idea of Blue Star was 5-minute long episodes produced once a month. Not 20-minute-plus episodes produced across over half a year.

 To say that this series has blown up beyond my original expectations is an understatement. And while I’ll be the first to admit it has been stressful and daunting for me, at the same time, I do not regret it. Not for a moment.

I only hope that you all will come to the same decision as me, when all is said and done, and decide that the wait was worth it.