Progress Report - October 20, 2025 (Patreon)

Hello, everyone!

With the albatross that has been Peasantsday finally lifted from around my neck, I have immediately jumped back into working on Overbreed. The goal is to churn away at it and get it to the point where it's ready for voicing.

More specifically, since it's been a hot minute, here is the current construction setup:

Sequence A - 3:00, Blocked

Narrative A - 7:15, Storyboarded

Sequence B - 15:45, Storyboarded

Narrative B - 5:15, Storyboarded

Sequence C - 34:35, Blocked

Narrative C - 3:35, Storyboarded

With a sum total estimated runtime of the episode being 69 minutes long (nice). And unlike Peasantsday, it will actually be properly finished. Much to my wallet's dismay.

Now, the particularly observant among you may notice a distinctive discrepancy between this layout of the structure versus the last time I shared it: Sequence A is reporting as being Blocked, not Storyboarded.

And that's because, as of last night, I have officially finished blocking Sequence A out! You can click here to watch the full 3-minute block!

And just for posterity, you can watch the full storyboard here. It contains everything sans Sequence C, which was never actually storyboarded but was just animated wholly organically, for better and for worse.

The first 2:45 of the storyboard was used as a base for this blocking. You'll notice that I changed a few things from the storyboard - added a few things, removed a few things, shuffled a few things around, adjusted the timing of a few things. That is the nature of how I adapt storyboards to animation. The storyboards aren't gospel truth, but instead just provide an unambiguous direction. If I feel like I can make something flow better, then I allow myself to take the organic approach to adjusting the storyboard. But otherwise, I try to hit all of the major points of the storyboard and try to keep the timing at least comparatively close.

I noted in last week's Peasantsday release how I am changing my original plan, which was to spend a month fucking around in Blender before returning to Overbreed, and am just jumping back into Overbreed. By the second month of working on Peasantsday, I was just chomping at the bit to get back to properly animating. This past week is the first time I've felt truly invigorated and excited to work on things in literal months now. Especially given how poorly the Batcat Short Video went.

I've mentioned before how my plan for tackling the rest of Overbreed is to do Sequence A ,just because it's so short; then tackle each of the narrative sequences, since they're pretty straightforward and should be relatively quick to block out; and then finally roll back and tackle Sequence B, which will be the biggest friction point in the production process, seeing how I'm not satisfied with the current flashback sequence and want to figure out a different one.

This is still the current plan, though I am not quite ready to jump off from Sequence A and move onto Narrative A. I want to fully build and light the scene used in Sequence A before I move on, both so that I can use it as a more complete and representative demo, and also because the scene will be reused in the Narrative B and Narrative C sequences.

I also mentioned in some previous post about how I want to use the new Sombra outfit I had put together some months ago, but wasn't quite sure how to integrate it, seeing how all of Sequence C has already been animated with her existing outfit:

I've put some more thought into it over this past week, and I think I've decided that I will have this be Sombra's casual outfit, and the classic outfit is what she wears when she's using her cloaking tech - which she uses in the Narrative B. For Narrative A and Narrative C, she'll wear this outfit, since she's not actively intending to sneak around invisible.

To wrap this post up, I want to address the state of the Micros:

Broadly speaking, I'm not happy with how things have been going. It's been extremely demotivating to have a 4-episode series that's 66% voiced and otherwise ready to move forward to completion for 6+ weeks and having it just sitting in production hell. It's been weighing heavy on me and has been negatively impacting my pursuit of alternative Micros. I have been trying really hard to find a Micro series that only needs a single main voice, to minimize the probability of another production getting gummed up due to voice unavailability, and it's just not been an incredibly unsuccessful few weeks of failed experiments.

I was considering recasting Milly as Mercy just to get it out the door, but after the past few days of working on Overbreed again putting me in such a good mood, I've had my perception of the situation altered:

The truth of the matter is, I really just work best writing multiple characters bantering with each other - it's what makes the stalled Pharmmetra Micro work so well; it's what makes the stalled Marie/Honoka Micro work so well; it's what makes the stalled Primordium Micro work so well; and it's why my Chloe/Max Micro is the only one of the dozen or so I've explored so far to have worked out. I just personally find it easier to write interesting sexual escapades with characters who are able to converse with each other.

And the perception shift is this: I now realize that my focus on trying to find a single-character narrative has been hamstringing myself. It's going into a boxing match with one arm tied behind my back. I work best with multiple characters, and so I should find a project that embraces multiple characters. Play to my strengths, and dig with a shovel rather than a rusty spoon.

Of course, that means I still need to find character pairs that I can actively pursue with this voice gap in effect. I've stated before how many character Milly voices for me, and how they are all currently unavailable to me until she gets her schedule worked out.

And so, rather than stressing about the state of Pharmmetra and trying to get it out the door, I'm just going to let it sit and instead focus on finding new projects. Right now, the leading candidate is my 8-part Chloe/Max Arc (I may or may not have written out two full Micro Arcs beyond that one, for future exploration); but I also have a strong 5-part Claire/Jill Arc as a follow-up to Refuge. I'd also really like to finally launch my Sherry/Rebecca project that I've been idly writing for years, though I don't have anything definitive figured out for it yet.

With that in mind, I'm not going to provide any more updates on Pharmmetra until it's actually started moving again. If a Progress Report passes and I make no mention of it, assume that it's still stalled. Instead, I am going to focus on the positives, as I pursue a new Micro Arc. I'm currently in the process of preproducing the Claire/Jill Arc, though I am not hard-committing to it or the Chloe/Max Arc until I feel I have sufficiently exhausted all of my options.

I've figured, the Micros are already nearly 2 months delayed, what's another month at this point. It's not like ya'll aren't used to going half a year between video releases anyways. I might as well take my time to do things right, rather than trying to shove square pegs into round holes.

So yeah. That's where we are. I hope you all are as excited as I am to see Overbreed finally back in production.