Progress Report, Poll Results, 05/06 - 20 (Patreon)

Hello everyone and welcome to yet another progress report for what we do here, this time a bit of a lengthier more exhaustive one. Sorry for the slight delay incidentally - Fridays, it seems, have been reserved lately for a lot of trouble at work, where the weekend shift folks are suffering terrible personnel shortage meaning the rest of us gets held up until they can scramble and find replacements. Just the nature of a pandemic, I reckon.

My groggy status is thus a perfect time to write up an extensive view into what's going on with my work. If I miss anything, do comment, and I'll try to answer to the best of my ability. I might not answer everyone or every comment on my normal posts, but rest assured that I try to read every one of them :)

First things first, the poll has ended and in a surprisingly strong showing Tifa eventually eked out a victory over Liara for the first Blender project we'll do! Liara has always been a staple and is arguably our flagship lady with unquestionable popularity, which is why she tends to crush whenever there's polls involving her - knowing this, I still included her since Blender is, in my eyes, breaking new ground for the content I create. Still, in spite of all this and the history of my work, Tifa managed to come out ahead in the end, though it looked extremely close between them at many points :)

In fact, the nature of just how close they were means I might have to consider giving Liara a minor role of some sort in the project, depending on what I can conjure up and if I can fit her in somewhere. Perhaps as a background character, for instance - in the end, Tifa did win fair and square and will thus get the honor of being the focus of the first Blender mini-project we'll make.

In LotW2 news, animation continues. I've also received the VA work from Midnight Datura, all of which is damn excellent and I can barely wait to get into the animation. While lip syncing inevitably is a painful endeavor, it works well enough when you've got very clear lines to follow instead of trying to improvise it in post, and the end product becomes significantly higher quality. In terms of Ivan, he's got a lot on his table right now, but has agreed to the project in question - it's all a matter of when he gets the time to do the voiced lines for a multitude of various characters. The man's got range, for sure.

The 3K twitter celebration piece is currently on hold while I work on LotW2, courtesy of me wanting to finish Lulu's adventure up as soon as possible. LotW2 is arguably the project we've had the longest in the pipeline, and which has seen several revisions, reworks, and have been unlucky in polling owing to more popular alternatives.

All things considered, if I get blessed with the time required to work on it and I get all the VA work in time, I tentatively aim at a release of Lady of the Woods 2 the end of this month of June.

Let us hope the planets align.

In terms of other, small projects, Breaking the Lineage is still not abandoned, though working with it is a pain on account of Shinnok not having a functioning IK rig. I have, in desperation, considered trying to port the models in questions into Blender as to allow for smoother and easier animating, which is saying something. As of now, we don't yet know how this project will shape up, but it's still something I want to make. We all love Cassie in the end :)

Commission work is coming extremely slowly, but it's still moving. Thank you for being patient with me on this - it's a matter of time, in the end, and next batch I'll definitely constrain significantly in terms of the amount of slots I open up so people don't have to wait months for their pieces to be finished up.

Alright, let us have a quick delineation of the coming times ahead:

1: Finish up Lady of the Woods 2.
2: Finish up Twitter 3K Celebration Piece
3: Community Poll for the next major SFM project, lacking previous winners.
4: Work on the project resulting from the poll in tandem with the Blender project.

In between all this, of course, I'll be poking around with the smaller ideas and whatever else I have in the works. My hopes is that I'll also receive my lady orc model commission this year, which would enable me to start the creation of my WoW comic. I'll naturally maintain my regular update schedule in the meantime :)

Phew, that was quite the wall of text. Thanks to those who stuck with me and read it through, and if you couldn't be arsed, I perfectly understand as well! Either way, I'd like to thank you, as always, for your continued support and for all of your kind words! These are pretty crazy times we live in, so stay safe out there, and now that the heat is rolling in, stay hydrated.

Take care of yourselves, and each other!
/DH