MPL Season 2 Progress + Work Chat (Patreon)

Testing out Poppy expressions <3

If there's one thing I feel really regretful about, it's that I didn't have enough time last season to really take my time and polish up on the many details for things like artwork and lighting. AND...because this always comes up every time I talk about wanting to improve on things 😂 - no, this has nothing to do with what the audience wants, and everything to do with that sense of fulfilment and satisfaction I get from the work I do, and the challenge of pushing pass my own limits to see how much further I can go and how much better I can get. I might be athletically and physically inept, but I'm still running a personal triathlon, y'all (albeit in the comfort of home, surrounded by floofy pets, warm lighting and plush cushions...but still) 💁🏻‍♀️💁🏻‍♀️💁🏻‍♀️

Anyway. Some of you might not know this but before MPL was launched in November last year, it took me almost 5-6 months to build a buffer of episodes - which means back then, I used to spend at least 3-4 freaking weeks on just 1 episode 😳😳🤯 SO...I do consider it an overall win for eventually condensing all that into 1 episode per week, which is great.

However, one thing I've been doing (as mentioned in a previous post), has been to look into ways of improving the production workflow. Right before this break, my editor asked if I could further optimise my workflow and my stubborn ass gave him a resounding 'NOPE, SORRY'. Because (I STG, I wasn't being difficult 😂) I honestly thought I'd already ironed out and fine-tuned EVERYTHING I could think of.

But as it turns out, I was quite wrong (which is an awesome thing, of course). After a few weeks of brainstorming, I've figured out (I think), a bunch of unnecessary / inefficient processes I can actually cut down on. For instance, I used to spend almost 4-6 hours PER week compiling instructions and sending them out to my art assistants - that's almost 1 full day of work! And just to be clear, my assistants are ALL fantastic - this is really about how clunky the workflow was.

When I finally figured this out (which was a couple weeks back, after mulling over this stupid workflow thing everyday in the shower), it was a bit of a HOLY SHITE moment for me. Because there's so little margin for error with a weekly deadline, every single hour counts. And eliminating even just a few hours of work every week would free up a ton of time that can be spent in more productive ways (!!!). But...I still don't know, for sure, how much time I've actually freed up (I'm quite unfortunately a victim of Parkinson's law) so I'm just gonna cross my fingers and hope for the best.

Anyway, all this is just to say that I'm very excited to try out this new work system I'm currently trying to implement. So that's about it on my nerding-out about productivity and project management stuff. Hope my fellow project nerds enjoyed this little snippet <3