Production Blog 🎬: Many Things Update (Patreon)

Hello once again everyone! I come bearing updates on things including internal matters, Sheriff Hayseed and Mike & Zach! Hopefully it will well explain why video progress has been slow.

1. Internally, Piemations is on fire

Yep, it's on fire. I have been catching up on a lot of things required of a small business as I've attempted to expand these last few months. Things like proper incorporating, payroll for the new helpers, generally having my shit in order, all while also directing said helpers and trying to make new videos. This includes rebuilding tons of assets to be better looking and easier to use by hired animators.

It's fair to say I'm a little spread thin, and there's not much I can do to "fix" that until I push through it. I'm slowly considering hiring a alternative director to finish my own videos but it's just a whole thing. Bare with me lol

2. Sheriff Hayseed and asset building hell

Above I mentioned "rebuilding tons of assets to be better looking and easier to use by hired animators." Mostly I'm talking about Sheriff Hayseed. The character rigs seen in Boomerang in a Gun Fight served me well, but they are too complicated and rough around the edges.

But more specifically they didn't even have a proper mouth template, meaning hired animators would be drawing it all by hand like I did, and it's just gonna be slower and inconsistent.

The new rigs have a drawing for every mouth shape we could need. 14 mouth sounds, each with extra easing frame, frowning or smiling, plus different versions for each of the 5 head angles. That's about 280 carefully drawn mouths per character.

To put it lightly, this process is not moving very fast.

On the bright side, once they're done they'll look great and any hired animator can figure it out. Plus there is a fully storyboarded, voice acted short ready to jump right into at full speed.

3. Mike & Zach. This one is actually fine

A Mike & Zach short called "Printer Ink" is storyboarded and voice acted as well. Despite my attention being split between a bunch of shit, this one is actually moving at a decent rate. here's some boards

It will also have some rig changes but that was taken care of with "Can I Get Uhhh Sequel" which I used to create and test the new base paper texture rigs.

Anyway, that's all I got for now. I know it's not the most exciting stuff but we're in a bit of a growth phase and boy have I got some growing pains. Just rest assured, things are moving even if it doesn't seem like it. Thanks for hanging in there y'all