Project Ramble + Survey Results (Pixiv Fanbox)

Was gonna save the survery results for later, but it's slowed down enough that I figure it's fine. Regardless, gonna talk about the animations for Cindy + April Fool's Characters, as well as my original idea/ideas for it and how it morphed into the whole Anniversary project we have now.

My 30 second wrench looks great, doesn't it? Anyway, Cindy's animations aren't anything particularly special, but I do like how they came out. And the lighting in the motel definitely helps, but overall my opinions of Cindy aren't any different than they have ever been. Very... "whatever" for me.

So, before I get into the April Fool's characters, a little preamble. This whole project started as a troll. It was originally gonna be a post on April 1st on my Pixiv as normal, with Lightning being the character featured. It'd then lead to a video I talked about a while ago of a person sitting at a computer, downloading the video only to get Rick Rolled. It'd then have a link on screen that leads to a CYOA game where you go through a dumb story written by me, and depending on your choices it'd lead to a different 'Maiden' at the end of it all. The goal, of course, was Lightning. But depending on your choices, it'd lead to other characters. At the start, it was gonna be all "Lightning" variations. Essentially different forms of what became "Lotinging". There'd be one with no face at all. There'd be one with black and purple checkboard textures, another with messed up UVs. Even had the idea to have the Garry's Mod "ERROR" model show up for one with the POV character acting confused and trying to make it work out somehow. That was my original idea.

Then, as I started to route the actual CYOA, I realized I'd need more. And simple duplicates felt... lame. So I started to think about adding actual characters. Serah was added, then I had the idea to have Serah but with Lightning's hair. Then I started adding other characters, like Vanille and Fang, then Yeul and Lumina, etc. etc. I basically decided to add every XIII female character I could, but then it spiraled out of control as I realized there are a lot of Final Fantasy characters in general I'd prefer to animate before Lightning. And with how it grew to 64 characters - with some troll picks - it became less a troll against Lightning and more just a Final Fantasy bonanza that I retooled into becoming an Anniversary idea. But in the process, I had a thought that actually made me laugh out loud: what if I removed Lightning entirely and just put in "Lotinging"? This was when it was still a CYOA, of course, with only 'one-run' per person(account), so there'd be great anticipation for Lightning to be found... but there'd only be a fucked up version of her instead. It amused me, but alas it wasn't meant to be. It's still technically true of this event, but she will be featured at the end in all her normalcy if people guess correctly enough on the following releases. 22/61, with 22/36 of the currently released characters, so it's not too many more.

Anyway, without further ado. Let's talk about the April Fool's characters.

The Cup Noodles God using his signature attack: Unlimited Cup Works.

Gladio was included because of that one poll/survey I had after Halloween that asked about Lightning. There was a joke option of "Gladiolus when" and it had 11 votes. It had to be done - my hand was forced, after all. I did, at the start, briefly consider replacing him with Snow. I was even gonna make my life easier by having Serah and Snow be a 'double-feature' so that I could just use the POV of Serah for the animations, but that's too cowardly. Still chickened out and didn't do a proper finish, which shall be my eternal shame. These were the only animations I struggled with in this entire set, and that I will partially admit is due to the rig. My normal rigify method DID NOT WORK with Gladio. I spent several hours troubleshooting, trying all the things I usually do when something doesn't want to rig properly, and NONE of them worked. Kept getting that "Bone Heating Failed" or whatever when I tried to automatically assign by bones, and I wasn't about to manually weight the damn bones myself. I was gonna hang up my hat on including Gladio at all, but I had an older method of rigging that is janky but works... so I was using that old method, and animating is a little more difficult than it is with new ones. But enough about Gladio.

I know some people have this idea there's a "Lazy Cinematic Universe", and that everything I've made is interconnected with lore and what have you. Well, I'm here to tell you this fusion dance is 100% canon, no cap fr fr. It doesn't matter if it makes no sense, it's REAL.

Honestly, this is just because I once said that I like Luna so much that "if there was a super old version of her, I'd do something with her too". So, I made it myself. Fun fact, this is just normal Luna with a slightly adjusted facial structure and textures from Camelia from the same game. All I need to do is turn off the face shape edit, and restore the old textures and it'll be back to normal. Which I plan to do as a bonus after this is over and I go back and "remaster" them with possible 4k versions and what have you. So, for those of you who really hated Elderfreya, and weren't fan of the anal aspect of normal Lunafreya, you'll get those animations in a normal form. They are all remakes of Lunafreya animations that I've done before, but still.

Yes, Hope was the very first character I teased when I first began hinting at my "Big Dumb Project". The idea that people would be wracking their brains, trying to guess who it is while it's really just Hope was funny to me. Sorry, not sorry.

The reason Hope was added was because of an interaction that almost happened(on several occasions). Since the Tumblr days, I've been asked about Lightning animations. And, being me, I can be a snarky, smarmy piece of shit at times, but I rein it in as much as I can since it's rude. Well, I got asked "can you do Lighting" and I straight up wrote "I'd sooner do Hope" before holding the backspace, taking a drink and thinking on how I can respond in a polite way. Gave my tried(though new at the time) response of "I'm not a big fan of Lightning, so it's probably unlikely to happen", but that Hope line is something I increasingly wanted to use the more I got asked. So, money where the mouth is. Pretty easy, honestly. I was never on the hate bandwagon for Hope, but I also wasn't a fan of him either. He just was. And besides, people are like "Fuck Hope" anyways, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

She's sexy and she knows it. Pure sex. My Goddess! (♥ω♥*) [whatever you feel from this comment is what I feel when people talk about Lightning like this]

Like I mentioned above, I had a lot of ideas for Lightning's 'alter-egos', but this was the simplest one to do which is why she won the battle royale. I did briefly consider removing her face like I did with those models in the ghost video I did, but that's annoying to do so I just went with this. Better, honestly. I did animate everything as 'normal Lightning', so I just have to remove the face modifications in the same way as Luna, so it's a simple matter of restoring her to normalcy. Why people would want that when you have such a perfect specimen I don't know, but it will happen.

Kaine isn't amused by my bullshit.

I've actually been asked to do Kaine for a while now. I was planning to have a 'canon' version and a 'non-canon' version for her all ready to go, but when I was 'surgically attaching' the cock and balls to her model, a procedure I do not do on the regular, I reflexively Ctrl + S'd and didn't have a backup. I just went forward with her technically 'canon' version. All I really need to do is the same procedure in reverse, which isn't hard... just tedious. But it will happen eventually for those that care. I mainly threw her in here as a relatively 'normal' character, but not everyone is into it so plausible deniability on April Fool's.

Lumina sucks.

Marle, my last April Fool's character. I'm honestly into it, so the sheer revulsion a lot of people had is funny. Threw her in again for old time's sake. At this point, she may become my April Fool's staple, as SuccubIris has become my Halloween staple. We'll see. Either way, nothing terribly special in way of animations.

Alphinaud was the last character added. His 'slot' was originally gonna be Sadu from the same game, but her Au-Ra scales were giving me nightmares trying to transfer them onto the body I use, especially since they 'end' at the underwear meaning I'd have to make the rest myself. Worse still, the way XIV does colors made her head scales not match up with her body scales and I was getting way too frustrated after a week long on/off process of trying to get all of these things to work. This was around the time Alisaie got released, and a lot of people brought him up and were like "was worried for a second." Figured I'd give those people a fright. Or not. Plenty of "close enough" responses.

As for Sadu, I regret to say she isn't in. Nor is Yugiri for the same reasons. They'll be on the backburner until I can figure out the textures issue. I'd like to do both, honestly, but I am suck with textures.

As for the survey, it's been a little interesting. I'll quickly run through the first few things, since they're a bit less interesting to me and more or less what I predicted.

Kind of what you'd expect of your fanbase/audience.

Honest, I would say. I've been pretty consistent, but there are a few that definitely stand out as better/worse, imo. But it's not a huge difference at the same time.

I'd probably say it's a 3 or 4 here, but y'know how it is.

Seems about right, I'd say.

Not much to say.

Shorties win out, but the wedding dress is more popular than I'd have expected. Was honestly expecting the apron to do better. But it might be a '2nd choice' sort of option for a lot of people.

But now, let's move onto the more interesting part. The 'favorites' and 'least favorites' of this whole thing. I think some of these aren't too surprising.

Aerith tops the chart, which in a way implies I peaked at the start and it was only downhill from there. I don't really agree with that, of course - Aerith is middle of the road for me in terms of the animations, but admittedly this is more of a 'character popularity contest' than it is an actual critique of the quality of the animations per character. At least that's how I take it, since let's be real here... of all the characters I've released so far, Aerith is definitely the most popular among them. Then Luna follows, since my core audience definitely likes my Luna content even if she herself isn't on the level of popularity of Aerith. I think Kyrie will be a surprise for some, but I've always noticed that my Kyrie content does really well so I'm not terribly surprised she's popular among my fans. Plus, I also think that set was really good in general - one of my own personal favorites. Gentiana is also popular among my audience, and another pretty good set, albeit not quite as good as Kyrie's personally. Nayo also proving to be popular once again. Still don't know why outside of my own work there is so little with her. I think too many people view her as 'discount Tifa', when she really isn't... but what can you do. I think the only slight surprise here is Ryne, but I chalk that up to XIV being popular, and her apparently being a popular character(if request count counts) and there being very little content of her so this is like giving food to someone starving. Still don't like those animations, though.

Serah's set isn't that great, but she is the better of the sisters so her being that high up is acceptable. Scarlet's, though, I do think is quite good. One of the better ones, personally. Cindy... conflicted, because I do think the set is nice, but I don't care for her. That said, I feel she is the most popular of the XV characters(in general, not necessarily people who follow me), so not too surprising.

To avoid going play-by-play for everyone, the rest are kind of to be expected. Obviously, this is all purely subjective, so I can't really say anything is surprising or unsurprising since my own feelings would paint these things for me. I will, however, say that Jessie's Mom being lower than Jessie herself is a crime. Sorry Jessie fans, but her mom is just better. Gaia is another Ryne situation, though I think the set is better personally. Fran is also lower, despite the animations being basically the same and honestly better animated than Jessie's. Beyond that, Kaine being on par with or better than a good chunk of characters is funny. She even beat out the only real 'normal' character in that April Fool's bunch. And then Hope beating out Alyssa is endlessly amusing to me. If she didn't want to stop existing before, she probably would now. Can't think of a bigger L if I tried. That said, Lotinging beating Marle, and Gladiolus being on par with Marle, might be the funniest thing overall if not for the fact that it's a travesty. Some people just can't handle a GILF.

Now, as for the least favorites, I'd say there's no huge surprises in the top 6. Gladio is too much man for most to handle, so I get it. That said, the fact that old Luna was less liked than the Lightning trolling is mildly surprising. Some people just can't appreciate an old lady. SMH. And while Hope and Alphinaud might be tied, there's inconsistency there. Some people hated Alphinaud's, some people hated Hope's, but only a few hated both at the same time. I guess that's just some people's honest takes. However, once again... Jessie's Mom being that high up on the least favorite? If I didn't have those trolls, she'd be the top least favorite. And that is unacceptable. Shame on you. Unless your plan was for me to make a second set with her after this project is over and done with, then good job because I'm gonna do it now. Queen Jayne, too! I will not stand for this! These results are bullshit! It's bullshit! Everybody betray me! I am fed up with this worl! (ﾉꐦ ⊙曲ఠ)ﾉ彡┻━┻

Beyond that, the fact the other two Lunas are almost tied(and have been tied on occasion) is funny. The ones with the least 'least favorites' are also somewhat interesting. Gentiana was actually the last character to get a vote in that category. Overall, there were less votes in that category: a lot of people didn't vote at all, and some people voted the same characters in both categories(happened quite a few times, in fact). I have a feeling the results would be basically the same regardless of whether or not I included the April Fool's characters, though. A lot of people didn't even vote on those, and used the final question for that.

I'll say this: the safest move was either not to vote, or to pick number 3. No strong reaction means the funnies for me is less. If it's especially hated, the funnies is higher for me so I'm more likely to do it again just because I'm a troll. If people like it, it is a bit less funny to me than if they hated it, but it means I'm doing something right so I'll be more inclined to do it again. In the end, everyone is mostly safe. But that 1 and 2 is causing the itch in the back of my mind again.

Anyway, sorry for the long ass post. Hope(teehee) you enjoyed the behind the scenes.