Episode 10 Update - 06/15/20 (Patreon)

Hey friends.  Things are going pretty smoothly.  A lot of progress this week.  Here's what my whiteboard looks like right now:

I'm starting to get back into familiar territory with numbers on a whiteboard.  The numbers, by the way, are the frame count.  Starter Squad is rendered at 24 frames per second.  I'm currently about 1/3rd of the way though doing layouts and slightly ahead of schedule.  I'm currently the middle of doing 'G'.  As expected, 'D' and 'G' are pretty simple.  I can confidently animate both of those scenes myself in a short amount of time.  'A' seems pretty straightforward, and I'll probably need someone else to do a lot of the more action-packed parts.  At this rate, I should be able to finish C by next week.  The only thing I'm unsure of at this point is 'F' and I suppose we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

The "SB" by each section stands for "Storyboard".  There are three sections that are a little more complex, and I'm working with a storyboard artist to plan them out.  We're currently doing 'B' and planning on meeting tomorrow to discuss the current version.

The 3D artists I've hired are still working on their current projects and I've been corresponding with them as necessary.

One of my animators has completed the set dressing for scene 'D' and has now moved on to lipsync.  The other animator is still doing the second round of assignments from last week.

My sound editor got back to me and is now implementing all of the revisions and corrections that I've laid out for him after carefully analyzing the last version he sent me over the past week.

After this week, I'm a lot more confident in how a lot of this is going to go down.  I feel really good about the smaller sections.  They're entirely manageable.  But the "F" sections still loom in the distance, and will likely take a huge chunk of disproportionate effort and attention similar to how "Rock Smasher" did in the last episode.  Nonetheless, things are progressing so far, and I give it about two weeks before we have a comprehensive outline of everything and can dive into actual character animation.

Thanks for sticking with me,

Shipp