Progress Report - March 4, 2024 (Patreon)

Hello, everyone!

As is tradition for me, I took the past week off, in the wake of the release of the Corsair video. Work resumed today, and as you may be able to guess given this post's image, today begins the 30-day cycle of working on Overbreed Episode 1.

Just for posterity, let me quickly go over what my plan for 2024's schedule is. As you all know, I'm constantly tinkering with my plans, trying to figure out what works best both for you all and for me. Long-time followers are acutely aware of the fact that my ambition and undiagnosed ADHD often conspire to cause projects to spiral way off-course and past deadlines - and that's before taking into account complications that are outside my control, such as voice talent with sick kids or sound designers losing power in winter storms.

The two major changes for 2024 are that I'm tossing out the idea of the minivid and instead focusing on short videos; and I'm tossing out the idea of a rigid month-to-month schedule, and instead using more fluid and floating targets.

For the minivids, the problem is that the idea for minivids was for them to be two-to-four-minute videos that didn't have a story attached to them, just quick one-off ideas that could be made in two weeks. Well, it probably won't surprise anyone to hear that I'm just too much of a storyteller. I have a hard time coming up with videos that are worth the effort without them having some narrative attached to them. I don't make sex videos with story, I make story videos with sex. That's just the way my brain works, for better or for worse.

And the problem with the month-to-month schedule is, well, shit happens. So instead of a strict "make a video every 2 months come hell or high water", as I tried previously, I am instead taking a more fluid solution.

When I work on a short video, I just take as much time as it needs to get done. I don't try to crunch it to fit into some predefined window. And I don't stress about things taking longer than I expected. I just focus on getting the video done to the best of my ability, and making something I am proud to show off.

When I am not working on a short video, I instead slot out a 30-day chunk to focus on whatever the current big project is - so Overbreed Episode 1 right now, then Blue Star Episode 4, then whatever comes next. Those 30 days include Thursdays (my days off) and Saturdays (my stream days).

Once those 30 days are up, I get the project to a good stopping point, and then I shift back into making short videos. Which includes preproduction: figuring out what the next short video will be, writing it out, and making whatever assets are needed for it.

It's important that I make special accommodations for preproduction, because those are what ended up really killing the minivid system. December 2023 was the absolute worst of it, where you all may recall how I spent the entire month panicking and running around with my head chopped off trying to come up with a project. That all culminated in me releasing nearly 10 minutes worth of storyboards and blocked-out animation from 4 different projects, all of which ended up running too long to fit the minivid scheme.

I never want a repeat of December 2023 again, and so I am slotting out dedicated time for preproduction. And riding those coattails, I am not going to throw ideas out for not fitting the minivid mold. The videos will be as long as they need to be, though I will try to keep them less than 10 minutes in length. Corsair's 8 minutes is a good length - it took me about 6 weeks to put it together, with an additional 2 weeks of complications outside my control. That's not a bad turnaround in my opinion.

Similarly, I am going to not worry about preproduction during the 30 long-video production days. Those days are for the long-video production, and the long-video production only.

And of course, through all of that, I will continue to publish weekly Progress Reports, sharing what all I managed to get done, and what all I didn't manage to get done. Transparency is of paramount important to me. I don't pretend to be perfect. I'm not ashamed of my failings. They are what they are.

Speaking of transparency, I've put together a fresh render of the entirety of Overbreed Episode 1, and have it up for your viewing pleasure. This includes the storyboard for Sequences A and B (untouched since the last time I shared them), and the entirety of the animation for Sequence C.

Note that the subtitle timing for the bulk of the Sequence C video are off, because those subtitles were put together before I wrote my Subtitle tool which can create arbitrary timings. It'd require me to go back through all of the project files and add the proper timings. I need to do it eventually, before the dubbing process begins, but right now I want to focus on getting the whole sequence blocked out first. I can go back and tune it all after it's all assembled.

You can click here to see the storyboard, and click here to see all 16 minutes of the Sequence C animation.

As always, please do keep in mind that all of this is very work-in-progress. If you've been here for a while, then you know that my general workflow is I hack out a very rough first pass of animation, focusing on getting the core motions and the timings right, and then do several passes of refinement after the whole skeleton of the animation is made.

That's all for now, everyone! Until next week!