Progress Report - May 20, 2025 (Patreon)

Hello, everyone!

Batcat Production Update

So right up top, let me be perfectly candid in saying that this past week was not as productive as I had wanted it to be. I had hopes of getting the gesticulation pass done, followed by finalizing the lighting and fixing up some outfit clipping issues, the final detail animation pass, and getting Batcat to the threshold of its final 4k render.

Unfortunately, my ADHD had other plans for the week, and I only ended up getting the gesticulation pass done. It's unfortunate, but I like to be an optimist, and so I will say that if my brain chemistry simply had to get in the way, I am glad it was the ADHD side and not the depression side. The physical inability to focus on anything for more than ten minutes is definitely annoying, but it at least doesn't come with the hopeless death-spiral of self-hatred that the depression episodes tend to come with.

On the plus side! While I was not able to really focus on much this past week, I was able to redirect that restless energy into solving an extant issue that I have brought up a few times over the past few weeks: the question of sound design.

Sound Designer + Marie Micro Update

As you all may or may not be aware of, the sound designer whom I have worked with over the past few years, Tonedeaf Lewdness, disappeared without a trace in the middle of TO BREED & BOND's production cycle. When we last spoke, he was about to finish up his shift for the night and drive home, wherein he was going to send me the first draft of his audio pass for the video. I never heard from him again, and ended up having to do the sound design for that video on my own. It's been about six months now, and I can only hope he is doing well.

Over the past few weeks, I have mentioned how I have extremely low aspirations for my ability to do the sound design on my own for this video, and how my attempts to sound design the Marie Micro video were extremely discouraging.

Well, over this past week, I had put out an open call looking to hire a new sound designer, and I got so many applications I actually had to shut things down within a day of the post just to have a chance to process everything. Which is just about as good an outcome as one can expect - and a far better result than the previous two times I made such a call to hire a new sound designer, neither of which had received a single response.

I ended up having a few different people take a swing at the Marie video, and as I result, I will be releasing two different mixes of the video! I have already decided which of the many sound design applicants I'd like to work with for Batcat, though I am not going to announce any names until it's done and dusted.

Both mixes of the Marie video should be released either tomorrow or Thursday. As I've mentioned before, there will be no Early Access for the video - instead, the public 720p and the Patreon-only 2160p versions will be released simultaneously. The Patreon-only version will be released as an attachment in a relevant post, which means you won't be able to directly stream the 2160p version. The expectation is you can watch the public 720p version released on Bluesky to see if you're interested in grabbing the high-quality 2160p version off Patreon.

The video will not be going onto my Films page, because I don't want to clutter it with Micros (I ideally plan to release a Micro every few weeks, though we'll see how that goes in practice - it took far too long just to get this one off the ground). I will eventually make a new page on my website that will provide 720p streaming as well as links to the 2160p Patreon releases, but that won't be for a few weeks yet. I have more pressing things to focus on for now.

Batcat Production Update Part II

Yes, that's right! A second Batcat Production update!

I decided to split this update up, because Part 2 rides off the coattails of the Sound Designer update.

Specifically, Batcat is getting packaged and sent out for sound design! Now that I have found a sound designer to work with again, I can utilize parallelization, and have them work on the sound design while I do what work remains to be done: lighting and outfit finalization, detail animation, and the final 4K render.

As of right now, I haven't actually sent it out yet. I rendered out the last of the WIP footage last night, and I decided to write this post before assembling everything for the sound designer, because I know from experience that can take a deceptively long time. And seeing how it's now Tuesday anyways, I prioritized getting this Progress Report made today over getting the sound designer set up.

Overall, while production hit a rough spot this week, I'm not letting it me deter me! Finding a new sound designer has really lifted my spirits and reinvigorated me. I won't lie, I was getting pretty stressed as the final render came nearer and the crushing reality of having to do (and fail at) the sound design was coming nearer. It's one of those things I can technically do, but I will be the first to tell you that I do not have the artistic skills that make a good sound mix.

But listening to what the various sound designers were able to do with the Marie Micro, compared to the absolutely tragic work that I had done on it, has gotten me supremely optimistic. In fact...

To Breed & Bond Remix?

I've been considering doing a complete remix of the latest Pharmmetra video, TO BREED & BOND. I did the sound design myself on it, and while I will admit it actually came out a lot better than I had expected it to (it's probably some of the best sound design I've done, second maybe only to Blue Star Episode 3), I also know that it could sound so much better if it had an actual audio artist working on it, rather than me just flailing around blindly hoping for the best.

The question is, would people be interested in a remix of To Breed & Bond?

If I were to do it, it would get a new Patreon post announcing it, but it would replace the existing 720p/1080p/2160p release on my Films page. It won't have any Early Access, with all 3 new versions of the mix being immediately available simultaneously.

I will also archive the original mix versions of the video that I had done. I don't know if the Films page supports multiple versions of the same tier video, I'd need to ask my web dev about it, but worse comes to worst I will simply provide direct download links to the old public 720p version, and the Patreon posts would contain direct download links for the old 1080p and 2160p versions.

Would people be interested in that? Or would that just be a waste of (your guys' and gals') money and of the sound designer's time?

If so, it would be done after Batcat is released, while I work on my Blender pipeline and furthering the Frozen video.

Which actually serves into a perfect segue, actually:

Potential Prequel Frozen Video (VERY EARLY TALKS)

I've mentioned several times now over the past few months (honestly years at this point, but let's not dwell on my glacial timescales right now) how one of my biggest regrets for the Frozen video was the commitment to make it low-narrative. Mimi is an absolutely fantastic actor, and she does fantastic as both of the Arendelle ladies. It feels like such a colossal waste of her ability to relegate her to a token two minutes of dialogue and 50 minutes of non-verbal sounds.

I've also mentioned how I've been wanting to put together a prequel video to Peasantsday, something that actually has some narrative structure to it and really explores the Curvy potions and the ladies' depravity. But I've been having a hard time figuring out what form that would take.

Well, by total coincidence, Mimi reached out to me out of the blue last night to ask about the Frozen video, and to voice her own interest in exploring more videos with the ladies. I explained to her my own interest in that, as well as the creative problems I've been having with it, and she expressed immediate interest in trying to figure it out herself.

We spent some time last night, and more this morning, batting ideas around and seeing if we can't figure something out. We haven't come to anything conclusive yet, but she seems pretty invested in solving the puzzle. And I think at this point it really is more a writing puzzle than anything for her - I think she wants to figure it out just for the thrill of the challenge of figuring it out, more than actually building together another project.

So, there's nothing really substantive to share here. But I just felt like bringing it up, because it is something that is currently being churned behind the scenes. If we manage to figure something out, then it will become a candidate for the next short video.

And speaking of candidates and videos:

Micros Update

As I said earlier, the Marie Micro now has a full sound design solution, and just needs a final 4k render before it will be released, hopefully tomorrow or Thursday.

The next Micro after that I think is going to be the Witcher Micro, I just need to finish out the core animation for it and then reach out to Bordeaux to see if she's interested in returning as Ciri for it.

After the Witcher Micro, the Claire/Jill Micro is next. It's fully built and just need voices - I intend to ask Sultry and Silky if they're interested in returning as Claire and Jill respectively. I've also asked Ivan for suggestions for an Ada voice, and he gave me like a half-dozen different recommendations of people he thinks would make a good Ada. So while the Witcher Micro is in post-production, I will be making an executive decision on that and reaching out for an Ada casting as well.

I also have two other potential Micro ideas in mind. One of them is actually a recycling of the Moxxi video idea I had as a contingency for a Short video, before TO BREED & BOND was finally chosen. The other is far too nascent for me to discuss right now, beyond it being a Liara project.

Primordium Update

The last thing to address for this Progress Report is that I have been returning my attention to Primordium. It's been two years now since the last video, and I haven't been able to figure out how to make the second episode actually work.

I made a thread on Bluesky a few days ago about my considering rebooting it, because I wrote myself into a narrative dead end. The long and short of it is that I want Episode 2 to be a preview of what the end-game is, and that requires the ladies to have magical shenanigans that they could not experience without the titular Primordium substance. Something more fantastical than anything shown in the opening sequence of Primordium. And as it turns out, I wrote some pretty fantastical things for that opening sequence, and it's hard for me to come up with three different things (one for each lady) that all top those.

I have also had people provide some potential ideas of how to salvage Primordium in its current state. I am currently exploring those ideas, and genuinely have no idea if they will work or not until those experiments are done.

In the event those experiments don't pan out, I have devised an alternate plot for Primordium that I think will work perfectly well: a mysterious anti-magic material that is able to spread its anti-magic properties to anything it touches, a sort of "contagious Dimeritium". Given how critical magic is to the geopolitics of the Witcher universe, as well as the ladies being directly involved with the Lodge of Sorceresses, the threat of an anti-magic element being able to spread like uncontrolled wildfire is existential and self-evident. I already have in mind a broad-strokes path for the plot: taking a sample of the element to a Dimeritium scholar to identify, looking for an aloof alchemist who tends to wander off in search of his exotic ingredients, acquiring and assembling the pieces required to revert contaminated materials and undo their anti-magic properties, and finally confronting and neutralizing the ultimate source of the material.

It is important to note that the primary plot of Primordium was never essential to the actual shenanigans of the series. Be it a search for the most powerful magical substance in the world, or a mission to stop the destruction of magic altogether, the ladies would end up having the same sexual side-quests and salacious shenaniganery. The plot was always just a vehicle to justify the ladies moving across the world and getting themselves into sticky situations.

Nevertheless, for as secondary as the plot is, I still do take these things seriously. While the plot is ultimately irrelevant to the shenaniganery of Primordium, I still want it to be cohesive and compelling. Unnecessarily-well-thought-out-plot-in-the-porn is kind of my niche, after all.

Conclusion

Anyways, that's all for now!

Like I said, while the ADHD demons had their claws in deep this week and I wasn't able to focus, it doesn't mean nothing got done. Just that my attention was scattered and rather than getting a lot done on one thing, I got a little bit done on a lot of things. It was what I like to call a sideways week - stuff got done, just not the stuff I wanted to get done.

Expect the Marie post in a few days, and hopefully next week's Progress Report will be of Batcat being in the middle of its 4k renders!

Until next week, everyone!