Progress Report - February 13, 2024 (Patreon)

Hello, everyone!

Wonderful news to report this week! All of the voice audio has been submitted, processed, and installed!

The timing was provident, as I woke up on Sunday with the plan of detailing the very last of the existing sequences, and then send Milly an email informing her that the project has officially stalled as I wait for her audio.

And then, as I was finishing up that last detailing, my phone vibrated with a notification: Milly had emailed me with her audio!

My plans immediately shifted from focusing on that last detailing to instead processing and installing her audio. With Milly's audio fully in-tact, I was also able to finally process Innie's audio during the opening scissoring sequence. I had to wait for Milly because Artemis and Medusa talk to each other, which means I needed both audio streams so I can make sure the timing is right and they don't talk over one another.

As of now, all of the lip-sync is officially done! All of the non-dub detail animation work is done as well, and most of the expression pass (minus the bits that needed Milly's audio) is done. All that's left on my end, then, is detailing the dub animation; building the expression animation I couldn't do because of the missing audio; and then a final camera choreography + jiggle-bake pass.

Which means, unless things go catastrophically wrong, I should be ready to start the render this Friday. I'm anticipating a 30-hour render, so I'm expecting it to be done by Sunday. At that point, it'll all be up to my sound designer to carry the torch to the finish line.

If all goes well, we could be releasing as soon as Monday! Though I'm going to officially eyeball Friday, February 23. Give us a little bit of wiggle-room in case things go awry, which they always do.

I apologize for this video taking so long to produce. There was just a lot of moving parts involved. Hopefully you'll all find it worth the wait, though!

In the meantime, I've decided to share the current state of the first minute of the video.

Click here to watch the first minute! 

There is no audio work done, not even proper mixing, it's all just raw voice capture. And there is no camera work or post-processing done, as well as no detail animation - meaning the heads and faces don't move at all during the sequence. So this is still pretty rough, and isn't representative of the final product - but definitely points in the right direction!

This first minute is a great showcase of both Milly's and Innie's performances, and I think you all will immediately agree that Milly's performance was absolutely worth the wait. As always, they both do phenomenal work, and I am just so excited to finally have them on a project together again. They haven't co-starred in any of my films since Blue Star Episode!

That's all for now, everyone! Hopefully, next week's Progress Report will have the release knocking on our doorstep. If the release truly is imminent, I may delay the Progress Report as late as Wednesday. So if you don't see one by Tuesday, that'd be why.

Until next week, everyone!