Update 26: My best work (Patreon)

Hey all!

Really text heavy - talky update for you all this month, it's going to be a long one, there's a lot to update you all on:

Chun Li Piece

OK so this is sitting at... something like 80% completion right now, I need to do her facial animation, fix some outlier issues, then sim the cumshot (minor spoilers I guess) and it's ready to render.

There two things that cropped up during the last couple of weeks that changed things: 

1: I got laser eye surgery

2: I met someone with seriously advanced technical skills who's willing to help me make my productions way better.

So the first, it's not like I didn't know about in advance, but I wasn't really expecting it to be this bad for this long, I'd explained it to them what I do for a living and they advised to take a couple days off work.

I think that advice stands for most, but not someone who has to rely on colour critical work and accurate bloom levels (basically my life looks like someone turned up the bloom really high) it's not ideal.

So mainly I've been resting and taking it a little bit at a time, As of writing this now my vision getting really good so I'm fairly confident about returning to the final polishing stages, and I'm confident we can have this out before the end of the month.

Even before the technical lead steps in It is still is my best looking production so far, through working with some other animators and people of considerable technical skill we've been able to utilise mocap data to add some extra realism and spice to the animation. 

Which brings be nicely to talking about:

My motivation and content delivery.

When I set out to make productions I've always had a high goal, I wanted to really push the boundary of what animated porn could be, I wanted to inject story, and I wanted it to look good.

But, 3D is -dense- work, you're always learning new things, and to be quite honest, I'd reached a saturation point to my technical skills, and it was really starting to sap my motivation to do... well anything really.

It's not like I hadn't learned enough to get by, but to say that final simulation stage of FX for me is a nightmare is something of an understatement.

Through therapy I've found that I'm very likely to have some variety of ADD/ADHD which makes focusing on these more mundane duties next to impossible at times, it was all fine and well doing it for the first time, because you have the excitement of learning something new driving you, but when you're running the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th person through mostly the same circumstance, the motivation starts to wane, that is effectively what 'the box' had become for me. 

It's been largely responsible for the stagnation of work that's been creeping in over the last few months, after I had what was my breakout 'hit' of sorts (the box) the goal shifted to being trying to identify the constituent parts of what made that work so well, and figure out how to keep that going. 

I was making work that people were consistently happy with, and I'm very pleased with that, but I didn't really feel like I was making the kinds of strides I wanted to, and I was definitely working too hard.

And that's why the Edging lab pieces were broken up, amongst all of those there's a lot of very repetitive 'grunt work' that I was really struggling to bring myself to completing, despite the obvious (monetary) rewards presented, I needed to find the drive that was making me produce these ideas again. 

The chun-li piece was the first project for a while that really captured my attention and brought back those creative ideas again, hence why I was holding onto it so firmly, to make it the best it could be.

And you (my supporters) have been -so good- with sticking around so I don't have to worry about keeping the roof over my head whilst I work through this and find my passion, I really can't thank you all enough!

And all of this has worked out fine for a while, since I had the passion to draw me through, but as time has gone on, It's become clear I need help with that element, and need to be accepting of where my limitations lie, and work to improve the bits I'm good at.

Which brings me to talking about:

New Staff

So, I made a new friend, who's willing to have a more active role in improving not just the FX and simulation side of things, but also help me with much more advanced rigs, and just generally smooth over my experience so I can create better looking art, faster. 

It's like finding the missing connection between what I can see and want to see in my head, and having the technical ability to bring that to fruition.

It's someone that's very difficult to acquire in this world because, when you work to a certain standard, you kind of expect that from others, and that standard doesn't come cheap, so to find someone who not only has the skills, but is excited about my project and where we can take it together, and is willing to work for reasonable rates... it's extremely exciting to me. 

On top of this I've managed to resolve a long standing schism between myself and my writing team, which is going to open up many more possibilities in the future for us to explore. (mainly about how to smoothly integrate my mainline story series to the ever expanding list of BCD content)

On top of this the new contractor has the ability to start smoothly integrating not only the mo-cap data we're getting, but also improve other aspects with exciting:

New Technology

As briefly mentioned before, this project has been my first exposure to mo-cap data, and integrating it into my productions, that had a bit of a learning curve, in it's first iteration it required a lot of cleanup, but the potential it's showing for the future cannot be understated, It was very very exciting for me to work with, as it stands at the moment it reduced about a weeks work of work for me to an afternoon of hooking up some constraints and cleanup.

It also created a really exciting base to work with, and surged my motivation again to really perfect it.

It's also going to be paying a pivotal role when I return to A414's story, because it's going to be the difference between having to cut a particularly impactful moment because it's simply too difficult or time consuming to animate, to returning to my original objective: No compromises.

The previously mentioned new addition to the team also has the exposure to the exact suit we're going to be using, and can work and create model bases for us to cover -all kinds- of eventualities.

So male, female, futa and everything in between, all mo-cap driven, with intuitive controls on top for me, I can really focus on getting the details and standard right, and I can do it all better..... once we get it all up and running of course!

It's allowing me to step more into the role I'm most comfortable with, which is more along the lines of a creative director of sorts, as I build into more of a production house rather then a sole creator.

Which leads me nicely into talking about:

Studio, not Singular

The fact is that I've not been working as a sole creator for a while now. You've probably noticed the growing list of credits and people involved with these projects with most productions (besides the small ones) 

Sound was the -first- thing I delegated out, and I'm extremely privileged to have amongst my list of contacts two very talented sound designers.

Kass has been taking a much more active role with the writing of scripts for productions and there's a couple of other people involved in the process that would prefer to be unnamed at this point.

But the fact is that it's growing to be bigger then just me, so in the coming months there will be some re-branding coming about, once we've decided on a name for it and secured the domains and such, I'm searching currently for a PHP developer that can help design a website for me to relocate these kinds of updates onto.

That's also going to be an opportunity for me to start getting into the lore a bit more, and really just bring the face of the studio together, as I believe it's important to recognise that the works that come out from me really represent more of a collective vision then that of just me now. 

I will continue to go by MJ of course, but don't be surprised if things start to look a bit different in the coming months.

About Sombra

A lot of people are asking about Sombra, I just wanted to offer some reassurance that it is still planned to take place after Chun-Li.

My hesitation to engage with it earlier was largely down to me working out how I wanted to do with it, I  needed to find a balance between re-treading new ground, and finding content that was interesting for me to produce.

But at this point that piece is, honestly more of a love letter to the fans than anything else, I think that may still employ the same production methods as I use currently, as getting everything up and running with mo-cap data and new, better and more dynamically simulated models is going to take a bit of time. 

But my motivation to produce things is back in spades, It has been written already and voice work has been requested so it's all ready for me to set to work on once Chun-Li is done. 

In conclusion

All going well we should see significant improvements in the quality and quantity of productions as we move forward.

You (my supporters) have all been so patient with me whilst I work through this, I'm really grateful for it, with a tiiiny bit more of it, we should start to see the first fruit bourne from this somewhat tedious wait.

I know it's no fun having to wait for the content, but I hope I've shed some light on the inner workings and developments that have lead us here, and hope you can see the potential that lies before us!

Bye for now!