Progress Report - November 25, 2025 (Patreon)

Hello, everyone!

The Overbreed train keeps on chugging. I have finished the Narrative B sequence, which ended up clocking in at 5:26. And with Narrative B naturally flowing into Sequence C, I was able to finally unify the Running WIP timeline I am maintaining in Davinci Resolve.

As of right now, the total runtime for Overbreed Episode 1 is 50:58. And that is with Sequence B still just being a 5-second "Sequence B goes here" placeholder, and with Narrative C yet to be built.

At this point, I am feeling confident that my original estimate of Overbreed Episode 1 being just under an hour is going to end up being a few minutes short. I am now anticipating the final runtime for the video to be somewhere in the 65-to-70-minute range, or 1:05:00 - 1:10:00.

I can also confirm that, at least to me personally, Sequence C (the main sequence with Sombra) is still hot as hell. 🥵 I ended up skimming through it after finally merging it into the Running WIP timeline in Resolve, and even without subtitles (I need to go through and regenerate them using the subtitle system I wrote sometime after Sequence C was started) it's...

Well, I'll let The Lonely Island speak for me here.

The next thing to work on is Narrative C, which I expect to clock in around 5 minutes when all is said and done. That would then bring the total run time up to 55 minutes.

Once Narrative C is done, I go back and tackle Sequence B, which I am expecting to be between 10 and 15 minutes long, which is where the final 60-to-65-minute estimation is coming from.

There are a few scenes in Sequence B that I need to figure out alternates for, since I was never terribly happy with them in the storyboard, but broad strokes the storyboard is still my guide for it, and so is why I am fairly confident in the 10-to-15-minute estimation.

On the Micros front, I am just about finished blocking out Episode 5 of the 6-episode lewd Life is Strange project. I am hoping to have all 6 episodes blocked out and ready for voicing by next week's Progress Report.

On the topic of Micros, I want to just take a moment to reflect on them. The original idea for Micros, of having a regular supply of videos coming out every few weeks, has definitely slid a fair ways. This is predominantly for three related reasons.

The biggest reason for the shift is monetization. The vast majority of my Patrons are the Early-Access ($10) and 2160p ($15) tiers, together making up nearly 50% of my total paid Patron membership and almost exactly 75% of my income. And those are the two tiers that are impacted most by the shift away from Short Videos to Micros.

Getting a week of early access to a 6-to-15 minute short video is a much more reasonable trade-off for the extra support than a week of early access to a 1-to-3 minute Micro video, in my opinion. And the trade-off I feel is even further diluted if the Micro videos come out every 4 or so weeks.

The 2160p tier I feel gets hit even harder by the shift to smaller-but-more-frequent videos.

It was through trying to figure out a better value proposition for the Early-Access and 2160p-Tier Patrons that the Chapter system (formerly the "Arc" system - I have standardized the nomenclature, to make it easier to explain to others) was born. Rather than just making and releasing Micro videos on a video-by-video basis, I would instead work on batches of Micro videos that are all thematically tied to each other all at once, and then once the whole set is done, release them over a handful of weeks.

This Chapter system comes with natural avenues of monetization, in the form of predictable and reliable early-access. Since the whole Chapter is done at once, it is trivial to release episodes early. This is where the idea of Early-Access Patrons being a full episode ahead of the public releases (alongside the 1080p access) naturally fell out, and the slightly more ambitious idea of the 2160p Patrons getting the entire Chapter all at once, in its unpolished state, alongside the 2160p access.

This Chapter system ties neatly into the second reason for the shift, which is scheduling - both my own, and my voice talents'. On my end, the post-voice polish of animation can often take just as long as pre-voice blocking. Lip-syncing, detail animation, and VFX work can take a lot of time. With episodes being staggered over several weeks, it significantly reduces my workload - I don't have to lip-sync and detail 18 minutes of video all in one block before release, but can instead lip-sync and detail 3-minute chunks of video to release as individual episodes, with two weeks in between episodes to get the next 3-minute chunks done.

On the voicing front, in my experience, the various voice actors I have worked with over the years all tend to take the approach of scheduling out a full day for a project, regardless of what that project is. Meaning that, in effect, a 1-minute video and a 10-minute video both get the same amount of time scheduled to them. This has a knock-on effect of it simply being more time-efficient to schedule larger projects. So six three-minute videos, spread over the span of weeks, would end up collectively taking up 6 days of a voice actor's time. But a single 18-minute video, by contrast, would only take up 1 day of the voice actor's time.

As such, it ends up being more time-efficient to batch projects. If I have six videos that all have the same voice talents and are closely related in content - say, for example, a six-episode Chapter of Chloe and Max getting they freak on - then it makes more sense to get all six episodes recorded all at once.

And then this is closely related to the third reason for the shift, which is logistics. There is a lot more that goes into voicing a project than the time the voice actors spend in front of the microphone. There is the matter of them finding time in their schedule to do the recording, which can in itself be a few weeks out. If I have to wait 3 weeks for a voice actor to find time to record for a project, I would rather only have to wait 3 weeks for one project, rather than have to wait 3 weeks for each episode, or 18 total weeks of waiting for a 6-episode Chapter.

Then there is the work that is involved on my end of things as well. Voice actors will often send in multiple takes of a given line, often times multiple takes of an entire dub session. Sometimes everything is separated into individual files, but often times it is all sent in through one monolithic file that has the entire recording session, including bookkeeping ("line 1, take 1", "line 1, take 2", etc) and bloopers. All of this requires me to sift through to strip out the chaff, and then line up the multiple takes and move between them (and often combine multiple takes together) to pick out the take that best reflects my intentions. It's time-consuming work, and is something that benefits from having a full day set aside to focus on it, rather than code-switching across several days.

And none of this is even getting in the sound-design logistics, which often have the same economies of scale.

So all in all, even if it's taking me a lot longer to get the first Micro videos released than I was hoping, I think it ends up being a lot better for everyone. It's easier on me, it's easier on voice talent, it's easier on my sound designers, and - once the ball gets rolling - it's a better deal for viewers.

With a 6-episode Chapter, with each episode being released every 2 weeks, then assuming every episode is a 3-minute video, then that's a self-contained feature-complete 3-minute video being released every 2 weeks across 12 weeks. That's 18 minutes worth of video being released regularly over a span of 3 months. If we take the last few short videos as a point of comparison, with 5 months in between release, then that is just 2 months going without any video releases before the next 18-minute content drip, as opposed to a single 18-minute release and then 5 months of waiting in between.

And this Chapters system is a fundamentally better experience than just taking a Short video and arbitrarily cutting it into pieces (this is my last resort), as each individual episode is explicitly written to be mechanically self-contained, and narratively self-coherent. Which is to say, each episode is written to stand on its own, and to not leave the viewer feeling like they're missing something or being led on. Each episode is explicitly written to tell a complete story in its runtime, while contributing to a larger story overall.

With all of that being said, I am extremely excited to have the Life is Strange Micro Chapter quickly approaching the voicing stage. And I am excited to see how the full process unfolds. I am confident that the release model is going to leave all parties involved quite satisfied. My biggest concern is, of course, my Patrons and my viewers. And I am feeling confident that being able to regularly expect new episode releases for several weeks and even months is going to be a great experience - or at least a far better experience than a 15-minute binge-watch followed by waiting 5 months for the next release, anyways.

Even the 2160p Patrons, who get the unpolished draft of the entire Chapter, have something to look forward to with the episodic releases - they get to see what the voiced-but-unpolished later episodes end up looking like once they hit the Early-Access release, and see just how much of a difference the few extra weeks spent on lip-syncing and detail animating does for the final effect.

I hope you all are as excited as I am, for the Life is Strange Micro Chapter specifically, for the Micro Chapters system as a whole, and--of course--for Overbreed making such major strides in progress.

As a final note, since it is Thanksgiving this week in America, I will be out of town for a few days later this week. As such, I expect to get less work done than usual this week. But I still expect to make some respectable strides to report, on both Overbreed and the Life is Strange Micro Chapter.

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