Meet the primal Vampire Spawn -> Ben's Day on Wednesday CW18 (Patreon)

Hey you Pen & Paper Fans out there. In this weekly series of news I show what I am working on and what is happening in the beautifull world of animated Pen & Paper assets. There is so much to do. My To Do list of cool things I am eager to do Is so big and this as awesome! I am really enjoying this time. Let's get to the crux of the matter:

Webm and MP4 Fixes

As you might have noticed we changed a lot of stuff. Mostly Tier 4 Patreons are affected but also some of the lower tiers mentioned problems with the new MP4 Maps. With your help I managed to figure out the causes of the problems and was able to successful fix it. Tier 4 Patreons noticed some missing files that (by now) should all be uploaded again ready for you to use. Everything should be fixed now! Thank you so much for your help. And to all new of you: Those problems aren't usual. It's the result of a big change I made in terms of rendering, codec and computing workflow. The results are awesome! For example the Bluewater Inn 2F 4K Map could be reduced from 140 MB to 27 MB. That's a saving of 80% without any quality costs. That's a huge achievement.

Will you rerender older maps with the new and better quality workflow?

I plan to! It is not that much effort that needs to be done but I Know myself. If I open the Death house I'd fix thousands of things and get lost as always. Even though it's not that hard to make it takes time! Due to the changes render time increased by arround 80% per Map. For a Map pack like Yester Hill I'd have a start-to-end render time of like 10 hours. That's stuff that needs to be planned because I can't use my PC during render times anymore.

Animated Tokens

I finally decided to set up a dedicated patreon only for animated tokens. Why? Just because I really love to do more than "just" maps and I have so many cool assets I'd like to share. Also the revenue helps me to get closer to the "make a living as a freelancer" goal I told you last week. No worries - our maps won't suffer in any way. In fact I will release tokens here as well for free when they fit in certain maps...because why not? =) 

I won't do Curse of Strahd specific tokens. In fact I plan to do everything. From pirates to demons, to peasants, to heroes and sci fi stuff. I noticed there aren't many animated assets out there. Mainly bceause of the problems we already fixed with our maps =) Besides that  I'll plan to do both: standard top down tokens as well as isometric tokens. The clou is that every token not only comes with an Idle animation but with many different ones like attacks and death animations. And in the future I also plan to release a FoundryVTT module Update that allows you to easily controll the animations your players see without editing paths and file hierachies. So you can add cool attack animations to your attacks or death animation that leads into a corpse token for more immersion. But thats future stuff. Let's get back to vampires :P

This is the "Primal Vampire Spawn" I am working on. Leon, who is a very good real life friend and a fantastic story and NPC creater helps me with the tokens and future adventure modules. All of the tokens will be 100% foundry vtt ready and will always come with a character sheet with new abilities and stuff. The goal is to provide tokens you can use as they are with unique "homebrew but good" creatures or as tokens for standard monster manual ones.

This beautifull guy in fact fits in every strahd campaign. He is a CR7 vampire spawn berserk that senses heart beats and gets advantage on attack rolls if enemy creatures arent at full life. He also inflicts bleeding debuffs that untreated do Damage every round and stacks. Although they can be sadistic tyrants who feast on their victims' desperate screams as greedily as their lifeblood, vampires are able to sustain an aura of nobility. They act within a set of rules, as they may not enter where they are not welcome, can't cross flowing water or set ablaze under the gaze of the sun. Even their unholy spawn is bound by those shackles. But sometimes a vampire imparts the questionable gift of spawndom upon the wrong soul, stirring primordial horrors from their cursed sleep. Some vampire spawns regress to a primal state, a bestial horror of the distant past detached from the rules that even compel their creators.

This is just a test but i love to share my ideas and plans. You always know me as a generous honest guy and I really appreciate your support. Once the Patreon goes Live the first 100 Patreons will get acces to everything for the lowest price. Forever as long as they stick to this limited patreon tier. 

Discord Server

I keep it short. Are here People willing to help me building up a discord server? I could do it but as you see I have so much (more producte and tbh important) things to do. But i really think It would help me getting more feedback. I'd love to see you more involved in the production process. It would also help us with troubleshooting and newbies getting used tour cool animated assets =)

Next Release?

Little not so sneak peak :P

Stay Healthy
-Ben

P.S.: Please excuse the grammar and the thousand and one typos. I'm not stupid I'm just german :P