Team Fortress 2 - Update #3 (Patreon)

Good evening everyone. Here's another update on progress for Team Fortress 2 bullshittery.

It's editing day 16 of a scheduled 35 days. And I've successfully added most of the text and keyframing work. The current task is to start adding the custom-made Source Filmmaker animations that serve as cutaway gags for the episode, ahead of the quality assurance to polish the whole thing.

Here's a shot of the timeline in Adobe Premiere:

So keyframing itself was relatively straightforward and therefore presented few obstacles.

I mentioned before that there were far fewer opportunities to do overhead tracking this time, unfortunately. Owing to the nature of Team Fortress gameplay. So that did speed things up a bit by making it mechanically easier.

Towards the tail-end of the video there are lots of scenes that require Source Filmmaker. So this lets me dive straight into that.

So, Source Filmmaker.

Wrestling with it over the weekend, it's clear that it's a powerful (if slightly unwieldy) tool. Though thankfully there seems to be a wealth of guides to read when things aren't being cooperative. It's well-travelled ground for editors before me.

I've no doubt I can ask questions in various subreddits if I get stuck.

I have seven cutaway scenes that I need to try to animate.

1.) My medic character reacting in horror to the sound of my clanmate whipping each other and moaning with the riding crop unlock.

2.) Quebec introducing himself as a Spy Main. A contrast - because he's seemingly the only one who knew the game intimately before playing.

3.) Gary panicking as he eats a chocolate bar in front of Quebec. Knowing he's helpless as the eating animation plays and can only scream in horror.

4.) A medic shaking congratulatory hands with his teammates. Only for them to repeatedly stab him in the hand because they're all just Quebec.

5.) Quebec appearing in my bathroom as spy paranoia takes hold.

6.) The TF2 Announcer staring at Miss Pauling with contempt on listening to us capture our own intelligence.

7.) Very large finale comp in which we finally achieve victory over Quebec and his spy shenanigans. (?)

So there's lots to do there! And I've no doubt that some of the animations will require a do-overs in order to get things just right.

I'm afraid we'll be entering hand-wavy time estimates territory now. Because my experience  here is lacking. Nevertheless, I'll try my best. And keep you updated if I start running into problems.

Hell - worst case scenario - I can just outsource this SFM stuff to someone with much more experience. And then pivot directly into another project in the meantime. It wouldn't be ideal. But it remains an option.

So this week I'll jump straight in to these seven and see how far I get :)