It's the last 2019 animation update! And it's good news! (Patreon)

So, this was the surprise that I had hoped I would have ready for you in November. So we're finally here. I really wanted to get this one out of the way ahead of christmas, and thankfully it's now done. The thumbnail image for this post you're looking at is... a working character rig!

Indeed, with the help of one of my friends at Affect3D, there is now a completely functional animation rig for Mari in Maya. What does that mean? It means I can start animating! Yes, really! We're actually ready to go :D I don't have just the rig. I also have the skin shaders, the environment, the outfits, everything! So that's what's coming up in 2020.

However, since this is such a big moment, and we're at the years end, I also want to spend some time looking back on this long process. If you're interested in more details than what I wrote above, here's what I spent 2019 doing, and why it took so long:

A quick recap:

I wanna do this one right, so let's start with a recap of my attempts to transition into animation. Since it was Girlfriends 4 Ever that inspired me to get started as a 3DX artist, obviously animation has been my goal since day one. Unfortunately, as I developed as an artist, I also discovered a few things about myself. For one, I turned out to be really good at rendering, and since I'm a very visual person, it's a part of 3D that I was very drawn to. Lighting, shaders, outfit design and fabric tweaking, all these things that tie into what a final image looks like.

To be a 3D artist can really mean anything. It's why the list of credits on any movie or game is so long. You don't hire people to be "3D artists". You hire them to be renderers, to be animators, to be special effects designers, to be modelers, etc. It's a very diverse field and really as someone with the plan to animate, what I was setting myself up for was becoming a jack-of-all-trades. I had to learn at least the basics of each discipline. And I thought I would.

Turns out, I found it incredibly difficult. I want to be clear about this one: it wasn't -just- time constraints. Yes, they were a large part of it. Unfortunately, it was also a huge lack of natural interest in all things not to do with rendering. How is it possible that I can sit myself down for three, four weeks on end of set design, character posing, and churning out entire image sets and turning them into comics in photoshop, but I can't motivate myself to do a few hours of uninterrupted work in a grey techy interface?

Personal preferences and interests. I can't deny that. So when I realised that this was the case, I also realised I needed to get some help.

What we achieved in 2019:

Leaving 2018, all I had was a weirdly ineffective G3F rig, sorta kinda. It wasn't even finished. Then I noticed that a new script had come out, conveniently for me, that exported G8 to Maya instead of G3. If you're not familiar, these are the base character models that I use to design my girls. The G8 script exported a far more complete, far more animateable version of Mari than the G3 script did. In fact I designed G8 Mari specifically to be exported, and began to phase out use my G3 Mari. If any of you noticed minute differences in her appearances throughout the last year compared to earlier, that is why.

Of course, even a fully functional G8 Mari was still only a G8 Mari without a dick. So then I had to figure out how to create a dick that was part of the model. Not a separate prop, but fully integrated. And this required that I spend time developing new skills that I not only had limited time for (since I had to run Patreon as well as keep releasing on A3D), but also wasn't incredibly interested in.

I had to accept that 3D work is a team effort, and so I reached out to people far more experienced in creating this kinda stuff. After already having spoken to Puppetmaster a lot throughout 2018, I now involved another friend from A3D who created the mesh for the new dick for me. Someone else who's a known quantity in the erotic 3D assets field rigged the whole thing and attached it to G8 Mari. In fact, it can be attached it to anyone. Meaning I can start exporting any G8 girl I want!

In the meanwhile, between meeting deadlines for Patreon and A3D, I worked in Maya to configure Mari's skin. I'm using a completely different render engine there, but since this is once again visual work I had a great time doing this. To remind you guys, this is what I ended up making:

Which brings us to now.

2020 and what's next:

I'm not going to promise the world just yet. It would be silly if I did. What I can promise is that now all the boring stuff is behind me, I'm going to spend January and February on creating a simple animation that involves only Mari. With this, I want to lay the groundwork for my debut animation, which I hope to release as soon as possible. It's something that I think I can now justify putting more time into, because where before I had to keep laying the groundwork between set production, this time I can treat time spent on this as contributing toward an actual product.

Honestly, I've always believed that slow and steady wins the race. People have been aching for me to animate for years now, but it simply wasn't gonna happen until I felt like it was the next natural progression in my 3D career. I didn't want to rush through it. I think now that I have a very defined style, have achieved the maximum of what's possible with renders, and have finally gotten all my ducks in a row animation wise, animation is the next logical step.

So that's what's coming for 2020. And I'm very happy that I got to share this with you guys just before christmas :)