Episode 9 Progress - 02/02/19 (Patreon)

February is here.  A huge amount of progress has been made with slight hiccups.  The current release is set for Spring 2019, currently slated for late March.  I'm sorry if I got anyone's hopes up by announcing a February release.  This project if very ambitious for me in many ways, and I am still learning how to do a lot of this stuff.  As much as I'm glad I switched to Blender for this, the transition has, no doubt, eaten up a considerable amount of time.  But by doing so, I'm setting up a groundwork for not just the rest of the series, but every future animation I'll ever make.

Here is the current progress of the episode:  https://i.imgur.com/NB8N5yc.png

The green represents finished, the red represents rough draft, and the grey represents unfinished.  For the time being, I'm finishing all the grey bits and turning them red.  After that's done, I'm going to be turning the red bits green.   This does not include lighting, which I plan on hiring someone else for once more of the episode is in the green.   In the meantime, my other animators will be turning the more difficult red bits into green.

Speaking of which, I've been collaborating a lot with the other animators that I've hired over the past month.  The lip sync is now complete.  One hired animator in particular has yielded amazing results so far.  Another animator, however, had to drop off of the project due to a family situation, which set me back even further, because he'd already started later than we'd originally planned. 

I've also been collaborating with my composer who has been doing fantastic work.  The music makes a huge difference in this one.  We've almost got this completely scored.  I've also commissioned an artist friend of mine to do some set design pieces for this episode which I've no doubt you'll really enjoy.

I'm not sure what else to say, but I'm sure I'm missing a few things.  My biggest concern is going to be rendering, but I suppose it's a bridge we'll have to cross when we get there.  Hiring help for this episode has been hit and miss, but where it's hit it's really hit.  For once I can actually see this getting finished, which is so much more than I could say for the past few months, in which I was baffled by how much there was left to do.

Thank you all so much.  Really.  Thank you.

-Shipp