the weekly rollercoaster (Patreon)

so before this week i was really tunnel-visioning on starlight. partly because i wasn't sure how i wanted to write the next scene i've had to for reborn, and partly because i really need to finish a couple more art assets before i can continue working on the battle system. so i drilled myself pretty hard on the art to see if it would work like i wanted it to

so my first goal was to try and make a midshot message model that i could animate properly, arms and all. i had run a test with karus before but that was limited to facial expressions. i wanted to know how difficult it would be to do the whole shebang.

turns out, more difficult than i'd like. here's my result, this time with nova.

there's a few things in the loop there; last one has a longer pause before it than is responsible so don't scroll too fast. it's also the one i would be happiest with.

keyword there being would because i was honestly pretty disheartened after finishing this. the animation itself is fine-- easy. i didn't go as all out on swinging the hair and necklace in other poses as i could have but again, just a test anyway. 

but there are two main things i'm dissatisfied with: 

• the first is the time it took to make this animatable.
  i can write some of that off because, for one, i am very much still learning how to divide the image up to animate fully, so there was some degree of time experimenting with, for instance, how do i work the scar to go over the eye, where do i need to divide the torso for her to bend forward, etc...
  however, my impression from finishing this is that those divisions are not going to be very clear to learn immediately given how different each character's outfit is going to be.. i would end up spending a fair amount of time working on where those should be each time when making these. it's more time than and focus than i'd prefer. in short, it's going less practical than i'd hoped. 
• the second is that i wasn't able to get nearly the full range of movement out of the arms that i wanted. they can certainly move a bit more than is showed in the above gif. goes forward just fine but i didnt have a pose to show that. the problem is actually the elbows. although i drew and separated them to bend, i wasn't able to figure out a good way to work and layer them so that the outlines don't get in the way when they're angled. i was expecting to not have full control over the angle of the hands, and planned accordingly, but i thought i could get at least some healthy arm movements.  i am also very sure that there is a way to do that but i feel reasonably sure that at the current juncture it also begins to venture out of what is reasonable to count on. 

if it were just a matter of the practicality or the limited arm movements i think i'd just go for it, but both together is concerning because that's more work for a less expressive product.
and if i either had an artist/animator who could handle these on their own,
or if i did not have a cast that is already climbing well above fifty characters (tRPGs always have a lot tho)
or if i did not already have to make animated battle models for everything in the game (which are easier to work than these, i think, because of the angle and level of detail (for instance no facial movement))
then i would feel a lot more comfortable just going for it.
as it is, neither of those things are the case. and at this stage, i think i need to be very conservative with how much work i make for myself since i will surely only keep making more along the way
and consistency is king for art direction.

so despite a lot of ambivalence on the matter i've decided to drop the idea of using animated message models for starlight and just take the standard VN approach of having a one or two stock character poses for each person and changing the facial expressions accordingly. it's not nearly as fun, but i think (and particularly relying on those second poses) it will just be a better compromise between practicality and expressivness for now.
it is also the more easily reversible decision should anything to the contrary work out eventually.

rest assured though i'm keeping this style of message animation in my backpocket for if and whenever i make a project with a much smaller cast tho...

and not to be content with the rather impractical do-it-all-myself style i'm very used to, i've taken a couple additional pre-emptive steps to help with the workload of making even static message models + animated battle models. so, i've arranged to train someone else as my colorist for starlight.

i'm not sure how apparent it's been but over the last however many character arts i've done i've been taking very sure to follow a specific set of steps, shade certain ways, and so on. like i said before, consistency is key for art direction, and i think that's especially true when it comes to styles of shading/coloring. whenever i'm assessing artists for commissions and such that's often the make-or-break for me-- is how compatible their shading style is with what we're already using. by outlining a specific process, i can be very sure that everything will match. and as a benefit, it becomes simple enough for me to delegate.

the other benefit of that is, when looking at the rates of external artists, simple lineart is (naturally) much cheaper and quicker to produce than full color images, and not having to worry about anybody else's shading style opens a lot of doors for me. for doing normal VN style thing, i don't really feel like my lines are as expressive as i could be. so aside from that being my next focus point when producing art for starlight, i took a scan through some posting to see what might work out if i outsourced that (also more practical!), and i've already settled on someone to try out through my usual methods. 

that is, the wallpaper for reborn.
so the thing for taka (who y'all chose with a strong lead in the poll when i asked! ...predictable, perhaps ^^ i had actually wanted to get him in before E17 for the obvious reason, but it didn't work out) is officially underway.
and if that artist and i get along well at all, i may just see if they're interested in tossing us some lines. 

of course, all of that is only something i'm able to even afford reliably because i have all of your support, so thank you so much for enabling that <3

so, it was a tough decision to let go of the animation since i was so excited for that, but i feel a lot better about what my workload will be with whatever help from others in the art department i can get now that much more firmly in my reach.

felt good even!

...and then i fell asleep basically for two days straight and woke up to my computer lagging to hell. 

because of course it was.

i woke up and was trying to work out some #business with the website because the forums decided to just suddenly have fixed a longstanding bug that support couldn't help me with??? but also broke something else in return. i swear i changed nothing, i was so confused
and then i realized that my tabs were very strangely taking way too long to load
well there had been a new chrome updated, i wondered if that was it. so i restarted chrome just to see if it would make a difference
only
there's kind of a critical part of restarting... which is the starting part... and chrome didn't exactly feel like doing that.
or anything.
open task manager, see what's up
task manager doesn't open for twenty minutes.
ok.
let's just restart the computer.
click on the start menu to do the thing
start menu doesn't load... at all. all right.
houston?

anyway it just fell apart from there. got the restart in and it quickly became apparent to me that in all but the first minute or so of my computer being on it would increasingly slow down more and more to the point that so much as right clicking on the desktop would take an hour to process. 

anyway that spiraled into waiting a few hours at a time to even try and restart after testing if various things i was doing fixed it. dan says i am "too patient" with these things. first i was called "too accepting" and now too patient. what y'all want from me :'c
i definitely tried to avoid hard shutting as much as possible though since my physical power button is broken, i'm never sure if i'll actually be able to turn it on again...
...it's just a thing
and it was just a Whole Thing three hours of having little to do besides read and play on my PS3 at a time. 

the fact that even just restarting would take so bloody long is most of the reason that it took me almost a week to fix the issue-- and i definitely should have given some kind of heads up about being gone before then.. but, well. i think i summed it up pretty well on twitter:

i was pretty sure it was a software issue, not hardware ( and i was right ) but even now that i've fixed it i still don't know what it was; i just eventually had to reinstall all of windows to kill it. i was really trying to avoid that after losing files to doing that last summer
but alas.
that said, i was able to keep files this time so i'm relatively positive i haven't lost anything. that's lucky.

...but i'm back! hi! got everything 100% reinstalled and set back in order last night so i should be full working order again, minus a few settings here and there. 

it felt really good to be able to just wake up and get back to work this morning. my time out gave me plenty of time to consider what i wanted to do with that aforementioned scene for reborn. so that was #1 on my priorities today.

and it flowed well. really well.
and then it took a sharp left. 

without going into any detail for obviously spoilerly reasons, there's a certain character in reborn who has a particular background that's never been explicitly talked about in the game or league. i've always known about it and worked with it in mind, but i had no intention of really ever bringing it up.
it's also kind of personally relevant to me as well. normally i consider that a good thing. i think the things that i can write from my own experience are the strongest.  the last couple episodes have really confirmed that for me.

tonight has been a bit trying. because despite not trying to go that direction, i wrote into a corner where i could not not have that character react based on their unexpressed background.
or maybe i  was just reacting based on that. i can't really tell which way it is sometimes.
either way this has been a problem because what i finally figured i wanted to do with the scene really needs that character to not do... that. but they did. and this coming up has really just.
thrown everything i planned for it out.
and it's thrown me out-- not the fact that i don't know how it'll proceed. at this point i have half a mind to just turn it over to the characters and let them go on with it however they like and deal with trying to make the pieces fit in the ending i'd planned
i feel like this sounds really pretentious and i'm not trying to be pretentious but i suspect anyone with writing experience can relate. i continue to read a lot of hayao miyazaki's production notes and he definitely said something like that as well so i'm just like oh that's just a thing that has be dealt with. okay.
okay.
so that's fine

but what's less fine is the fact that this character's reaction has been affecting me personally in a very ???? way. it's absolutely probably just a delayed deflection of things i've been dealing with in therapy but i was very much crying when writing their response in dialogue and i was crying on and off for several hours afterwards and i am tearing up writing this now
why???
i have no idea.

like
i'm good
i'm here i'm out here doin' shit getting stuff done i'm not unsafe it's cool, ain' tryna be dramatic or seek attention whatever but this is what up 

i don't know why i'm like this or insist on being so up-down-up-down
that's just my weekly roller coaster
admit one
ain't even gotta be high to ride this mess
but GOSH

just.
gosh.

tldr animations suck and technology sucks and emotions suck and i love everything.

especially all of you
thanks bye
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