September In Review - Blue Star Episode 3 Progress (Patreon)

=====

View 45-second BSE3 sex-scene preview with audio (WIP)

Hello, everyone!

It’s that time of the month again. Specifically, the end of one, and the beginning of another. As is the norm, I offer to you all a free update on what has transpired over the past 30 days.

And what has transpired? A lot, though in ways that may not be immediately obvious.

The month has seen Innie and Ivan working their way through the beast that was the Blue Star Episode 3 sex-scene dub. It was the first time either of them have tackled a project this intense and demanding, and it was a learning experience for all three of us.

Innie herself ended up recording something over two hours’ worth of audio for this 20-minute sequence. In typical Innie fashion, she scrupulously studied and memorized the project, and went above and beyond to not only provide the crisp, clear, high-production audio we’ve come to accept as her norm, and the character performance that put her in the role in the first place - but to match the pacing and synchronization of these animations, including the fast-paced and complex transitions, to provide both a smooth and immersive experience for you my lovely viewers, but to provide a simple drag-and-drop installation workflow for me as a producer.

Ivan is still finishing up his end of the performance, but seeing as I only got him the content a week or so ago, after Innie had finished her part, the amount of content he’s gotten so far is frankly phenomenal. They are both absolutely great performers and wonderful people to work with.

Innie and I have also worked to put together a handful of non-dub dialogue sequences that I had forgotten about, embedded within the sex scene. These are small sequences, serving as a transitory interface that keeps the pace of this single 20-minute sex sequence moving with meaning. Through the installation of this audio, I have extended the run-time of the episode by nearly a minute.

Blue Star Episode 3 is currently clocking in at a run-time of 25-and-a-half minutes. And it is set to grow ever so slightly as Ivan brings in the audio for those same sequences. In total, I expect a runtime just shy of 27 minutes for the final production, not counting anything added in post, such as credits and title sequences and what-not.

Blue Star Episode 3 is set to enter its penultimate stage of production in November. As Ivan gets his audio in to me over the coming days, while I am working on October’s short (more on that later), that will conclude this exceptionally-delayed audio stage of production.

November will see me installing the lip-sync for everything (not looking forward to that - I hate lip-syncing non-dialogue sex sounds), adding detail motions to all of the animation, refining the handful of rough edges to the animation, adjusting and animating the camera for the entire sequence, and finalizing the lighting on a per-shot basis.

After that, comes the painfully long render, and then post-production. If November goes well, and I do end up entering post-production before its end, then I will cancel my plans for December, and instead spend that time finishing up Blue Star Episode 3. Should this series of events come to pass, then I am hoping for a December 25 release.

That’s right, if everything goes according to plan, then Liara will be getting a white Christmas.

I want to qualify that is a huge “if”. I’m not promising that is how things will come to pass. But it is my aspiration.

That’s about it for the Blue Star news. Moving on, October will be spent finishing up the Elizabeth video. It was originally meant to be out last December, but as I’m sure you all are painfully aware of, a long series of events in Innie’s life thwarted our attempts to complete it any earlier than now. Her being thrust into not only performing in a music festival, but also managing and directing it; getting terrifyingly sick (twice); hardware failures resulting in nearly an hour’s worth of recording being lost; complications and drama regarding friends and family; and the stressful joy of being accepted into, performing for, and then spending a month filming for a high-production televised competition; all in the span of time between mid-December and really until near the end of July. Which, due to my Long/Short cycle, obviously interrupted both the Elizabeth video’s production, and the production of Blue Star.

BUT! This past August and September have been blessedly clear of hazards for her. Not only has she gotten the behemoth of Blue Star Episode 3′s recording done, but she’s also gotten all of the recording for the Elizabeth video done. This involved a lot of redoing previous recordings she tried to make while she was sick (and trust me, you can hear how weak and tired she was in the old recordings; absolutely not production-worthy), as well as redoing recordings that were destroyed by her hardware failing on her.

But it’s all done, now, and starting October 1, I can immediately plunge into installing audio and building all of the relevant animation around it. It would take something truly catastrophic for October to end without the Elizabeth video being done.

Truth be told, I expect to have at least a week, if not close to two weeks, between the video’s completion and the end of the month. The video will, of course, release as soon as it’s finished. I will likely spend whatever time I have left over pursuing long-overdue model projects, such as the DazV5 prototypes with the new Samus model.

I can’t overstate how exciting this past September has been for Ivan, Innie, and myself. While I don’t have much to outwardly show for it, I think this has been one of the most milestone-heavy months in Blue Star’s production cycle since when I officially finished the core animations for the sex scene, all those months ago.

All of that being said, my wallet fucking hates me right now, as a consequence of paying both Ivan and Innie for their work. Without getting into specifics with the numbers, let’s just say that this project alone makes Innie liable to pay self-employment taxes this year. Several times over. Oof.