New Year Progress Report, 01/01 - 21 (Patreon)

Happy New Year everyone, and welcome to the first of progress reports for 2021!

This will serve primarily as a recap and a summary for upcoming matters, as well as more thorough explanations and considerations for the projects that are both on-going and on the backburner. 2020 was a harsh year, and while we no doubt will see some fallout of it stretching into 2021, all we can do is cross our fingers, hold our thumbs, or our cultural equivalent, and hope that things turn out better this year. The rough ride is not over yet, and I hope you people are doing as well as you can considering the circumstances.

In terms of projects of 2020, I believe we made some improvements in terms of overall quality, and getting to grips with the basics of Blender really gave my work a quality bump in that respect, also as the program in question gave me lessons in animation that I feel I brought back to SFM and employed there as well. Most importantly, it seems the 2020 projects in question were appreciated by the community and the feedback I have gotten on them have been overwhelmingly positive, which truly warms my heart and energizes me for the new year :)

In terms of this patreon, it's becoming less common that people unsubscribe or otherwise write in their exit surveys that they think my content or my update schedule is inadequate, so I believe we've found something of a solid update schedule with a content mix that makes most people happy - though it certainly could do with even more variety, at times. To finally address something of an elephant in the room: I would like to provide more concepts of unfinished pieces here as I used to, but sharing them has often resulted in people expressing that content they are interested in is "perpetually stuck as unfinished", "cancelled" or the likes, and Patreon does not as easily facilitate communications as to the specifics of why many of them don't work out (I'd rather not flood my feed with unfinished pieces, and explanations as to why they didn't work out down the line), meaning they seem to have a net-negative impact on people's view of my content. I will have to think hard on how to approach this in 2021, and whether to revise my description of the backer tiers and the likes as, conversely, sharing such pieces on discord means close to zero issue owing to how easily contextualized they are.

For 2021 I would also like to do more short-term polling, 1-3 day oriented ones, regarding smaller changes and input to my work. Polling is a difficult beast, unless it's a pure opinion poll for curiosity's sake (and those can be fun and useful too), as it's community engagement without providing immediate content but rather promising something for the future, which may or may not work when suddenly put to a 3D space. I am truly jealous of (and impressed by) those who have mastered the art of 2D in that sense - drawing really gives you unprecedented control over the human figure and you can, if necessary, forsake a whole bunch of rules regarding anatomy for the sake of making a pose work, that you simply cannot in 3D animation - especially if you're then supposed to make it look good from several angles. But I digress - polling will, hopefully, become a more common phenomena in 2021 as I will seek input and simply gauge interest in various pieces and ideas, as to get a feel for the leanings of the community we have fostered :)

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Now to speak of the various projects that are currently listed as "in the works" in my internal documents:

Project: Blitzballs

Lulu's attempt to make up for her gambling husband's inadequacies (and terrible loss in Blitzball) is built entirely around the event in FFX where Wakka's team the Besaid Aurochs faces off against the Luca Goers, a fight that was renown for the time to be difficult owing to the complexity of the Blitzball system and which I reckon most of us lost on the first attemp playing the game . Google it and, to this day, you will get people asking how to win against them :)

The project is centered around that loss, where I've recorded content, personally, of my attempt to lose with as many goals as possible against the Goers. This as to give footage for the backdrop of Wakka, emboldened and cocky over having secured Tidus for his team, having drunkenly bet that "for each goal you score over us, you can fuck my wife" - of course, he didn't specify exactly how that would work, and so the Luca Goers decide to gang bang Lulu in their locker room after the game, with each goal they scored over the Aurochs translating into a creampie. Lulu, ever enthusiastic to get dicked down and eager to show Wakka what a dumbass he is, will be very happy at the turn of events.

The challenges I face with this project are multi-fold at this point. While the idea itself is still good in my eyes, setting and all, the script is truly dated and the project has the old V3 Lulu model in use. For 2021, I intend to rewrite the script as to make room for professional VAs, which wasn't planned back when this was announced, as well as rework the project itself, pretty much from the ground up, with new scene builds etc. I am still very much motivated to make this, but it wasn't long ago we had a Lulu project release, and it will thus remain something I poke away at in 2021 whenever inspiration strikes as opposed to an utmost priority.

Project: Breaking the Lineage

The story of BtL is that Shinnok, constantly thwarted at every turn by the accursed Cage lineage, has decided to stop ignoring the empirical truth, and instead settle in to play the longest game possible. Having had his plans for world domination stopped first by her father, and later by Cassie herself, there's no doubt in his mind that her offspring would show up and beat his ass in the future.

Unless, of course, he makes sure that her offspring is his own child. Cassie meanwhile, being renown for her capacity to hunt down villains for the sake of having them empty their jewels inside of her, isn't hard to convince for the matter. Under the guise of "infiltrating" his compound, she is "captured" along with a bunch of other people, including her father, and perfectly in line with her exhibitionist (martymachlia) and daddy-issue tendencies, publicly inseminated in Shinnok's throne room.

This project is currently on the backburner, as it began as something of a practice in pure stubbornness on my part, where I truly, desperately wanted to create something with Shinnok and Cassie, and pursued it in spite of the wrongful bone setup of the Shinnok model - ensuring I had no IK rig to work with. Though I managed to largely finish up a singular scene, the following ones proved difficult, and the more I worked on the project the more I could feel it fighting me and wearing me down, in spite of its tantalizing setting. Furthermore, to this day it lacks a coherent script, and has no voiced lines or anything beyond the stuff I managed to squeeze out from pure sweat and tears. I am in the process of learning SFM->Blender->SFM porting as in Blender I would be capable of restructuring the bones of Shinnok, making the project feasible again. On that, I would like to write an actual script for the piece, secure the voice actress of StudioFOW's "Daddy Issues" piece (who I still haven't managed to find out who it is) and have it all polished up into a nice, solid project. I don't know when I will get around to fixing all this, but with the slow and steady progress I am making on my technical understanding of these programs, 2021 is looking a lot brighter than 2020 did.

Project: Unnamed Tifa Blender Project

The Tifa Blender Project (TBP) is a result of community polling and has been in the works ever since. The story of this, so far in the script, is that Tifa has a nightly rendezvous with Don Corneo in her apartment, with Cloud having somehow come across the information of their meeting and is watching them from the nearby windows. The idea is that Tifa was chosen by Don Corneo in the famous "picking girl" scene, and ended up successfully seducing her in the short time before the events of the game transpired. Tifa, now aware of how great he is in bed, feels very conflicted over her own feelings on the matter, but frequently sends letters in order to meet with him, in spite of her reservations. This time, to make their meeting more "memorable", he even brought his camera equipment - fitting, I thought, considering the Remake's portrayal of him taking photos all the time. The script features her annoyed at his antics, but very much eager to sleep with him at the same time, which makes for some funny interaction between the two.

The main challenge to this project is getting a Don Corneo XPS port to a quality standard where it doesn't break away too much from Tifa's amazing model. I have a high quality naked "stunt double" of him that may serve certain camera angles, but generally, I need to put more work towards rigging his model in Blender properly before I can properly animate the scenes - better yet, I would love to learn how to graft his head onto a naked body. The script also needs to be finalized, with the scenes still somewhat ill-defined and the spoken lines not entirely up to the quality I would like them to be at. I will be working plenty on this in 2021, for sure.

Project: Continued Negotiations

Yes, the Blender sequel to "N7 Parnack Negotiations", has been in the works in the background for some time and I believe I am, at this point, comfortable enough to share its existence here. Following Miranda and Liara's escapades on Parnack, they've slowly gone, or well, boned their way up the yahg chain of command, with Liara's worries regarding their species' potential vulnerabilities and what they might be doing to the ecosystem slowly being worn away by sheer dicking - but her annoyance with her colleague's antics slowly on the rise.

The entire first draft of this script, running from start to finish, exists in a rough form, but is, in my eyes, already my absolutely best work so far. It requires a lot of polish and qualifiers, but the way conversation flows between the two, the way scenes shift and the general structure, is a significant step up from my previous projects and it is much more ambitious overall than what I have done in the past. It features truly extensive voice acting work, and will as such require a significant budget to pull off, but I hope that 2021 will bring the possibility to realize this thing and make it something of my magnum opus. More on Continued Negotiations in the future.

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These are my primary projects in the works, and I hope they, in your eyes, carry some tantalizing ideas for 2021.

Now, onto the subject of the immediate future:

Early in January, I intend to launch the SFM poll for the next, big SFM project we're going to tackle - with the 3K5K project out of the way, it's finally time to determine who the next lucky lady(s?) will be to feature in a major release. This will be done with every lady that has previously featured in a major release omitted from the poll, as to give us a chance at variety. I have considered, should the poll be a close race, to try to make it a 1-3 lady project, depending on how congruent those in the top would be to each other. If we get several Warcraft ladies, for instance, it's very possible, but with a too stark contrast it will be difficult to realize it. I know the community doesn't mind crossovers much, but I need to make somewhat sense of it in my head so as to write a script to work from. Regardless, look forward to that, and I'll be sure to announce it proper and remind people of it - chances are we'll see it Friday next week.

I am currently in the process of building a new rig, for the purposes of upping animation quality. My old one, in spite of the new graphic card, is definitely starting to lose its shine. Not to hark too much about my personal life, but in spite of my job and my patreon, my finances are stretched very thin owing to debt and being the primary breadwinner of my household, meaning I don't have a massive budget to work with in terms of my 3D work. Additionally, I am doing this work on the condition that the regular house budget not go to my 3D work - so, for instance, the money I make through commissions and Patreon is what is utilized to pay for voice acting, model work, etc, and I cannot take money from my day job to pay for such ventures. This budget, too, includes the new rig being built, so it'll be a while yet before I have it finished - suffice to say, the reasons for this are both related to my spouse and how taxation/company matters works here.

Commissions from the last time I opened are still being worked on. In the spirit of the new year, I am adopting a new approach for the remaining ones that have been promised slots in that I will tackle one at a time, with the entire system of contact->draft->deposit->concept->full payment->completion gone through before I go towards the next one. This to ensure people don't sit around and wait for their drafts or concepts or contact for ages, while I'm trying to juggle everything - a much more sensible approach that I should have adopted ages ago. In the event I contact you regarding your promised slot and you're not in a position to pay for it, your concept idea is no longer applicable, you're not in the headspace to think of it, or anything of the sort, I will consider this me owing you a slot for the future that you can cash in whenever I open again - this to ensure you don't suffer from my poor time management and bumbling of the last time I opened them up. Regardless, following the completion of all of the current commissions I am unsure when I will open up for commissions again, but since not a single day passes without someone asking me about it, I imagine it will be soon after. Besides, I have a computer to build, so there :)

TL;DR: a lot of stuff is planned, a lot of stuff is in the works, and DH is working diligently on all of it. Thanks for everything :)

Phew, that was quite exhaustive wasn't it? If you read all that, then kudos for sticking with it, and if you didn't, I don't blame you either. Thank you, sincerely, for your continued support and for all of your kind words. I look towards 2021 with a tentative optimism, hoping that we can make something out of it that 2020 didn't truly allow us to. I hope you came out of it as unscathed as can be, and that the following few months of its tentacles still being wrapped around us won't be too bad for any of you or your loved ones.

As I work this coming weekend I am unsure whether the Monday Loop will be finished by this Monday on the 4:th, though it's not entirely impossible - still, regular updates will resume sometime this coming week.

Take care of yourselves out there, keep washing those hands, and of course, also take care of each other. Once again, Happy New Year!

/DH

Edit: Whoever made 1.5 spacing as standard in the patreon text editor deserves to be slapped with a wet fish. Fixed a lot of spacing issues and stuff that made the text hard to read.