April 8, 2024 - Progress Report, Family Emergency, Schedule Opinions Requested (Patreon)

Hello, everyone.

As the title of this week's post suggests, there's a bit more to discuss this week than a traditional Progress Report. As such, I am opening this post up to all my Patrons (can't make it public because of the lewd). I'm also going to start out the gate with the non-Progress Report stuff. Just get that out of the way now.

Family Emergency

I mentioned this the other day on Twitter (which you all should follow, I share stuff I'm working on pretty much daily there), but my uncle died a few weeks back, and I just recently learned that the service will be this upcoming Saturday, April 13.

His death didn't come as a surprise to anyone, and frankly we were impressed he lasted as long as he did. He'd been battling terminal cancer for over a year at this point, with two failed surgeries and two failed treatments of chemotherapy. After the first surgery proved entirely ineffective, and they terminated his first chemotherapy pass less than 2 weeks after beginning because of how badly it was affecting him, we already knew the writing was on the wall. Like, chemo by its nature quite literally poisons your entire body, that's the expected outcome - so I don't even want to imagine how badly it was fucking him if they canceled the treatment.

The past few months of his life were effectively just hospice care, with him coming to terms with his reality and making peace with everything, and everyone in turn coming to peace with what was to come and trying to make him as comfortable as we could manage. As I said, him losing his battle was long-anticipated and well-prepared-for.

So, obviously, I am going to be away for that weekend to attend the service and offer what little condolences I can to his immediate family, my aunt and cousins. I know my younger cousin was taking this whole thing especially hard, so I'm hoping he's faring well enough, and will be there to help him as best I can.

I am going to end up spending a week or two with my family, since I am heading back to my hometown anyways (pretty much all my family live in the same town - I'm the odd one out, being the only person in my family to have escaped that place). I know for a fact that I am going to be spending the week between April 13 and April 20 with my family, and will very likely be spending the week between April 20 and April 27 with them as well.

So don't expect any Progress Report posts on Monday April 15 or Monday April 22.

This naturally segues into the next nontraditional part of this post, which is that I want your opinions on my schedule. As I've described before, the 2024 schedule plan is to spend 4 weeks focusing on Overbreed, and then move onto a short video, before returning to Overbreed for another cycle. Overbreed's a big project, and focusing solely on it means probably a year without any videos coming out - splitting the focus allows for a semiregular flow of content, as well as giving me something to shift gears toward in a bid to stave off burnout.

This service falls into the tail end of that 4-week cycle, and will be consuming at 2 weeks of time. Obviously, I can't predict and schedule around family members dying, so it is what it is. But at the same time, I've been long eyeballing working on a new short video in the back half of April and aiming for it to be released in May.

Well, the back half of April is now getting consumed by time with my family, which leaves just May. But it also leaves the Overbreed work cycle incomplete. And so, this is my question to all of you:

Would you rather I take another 2 weeks working on Overbreed and delay the next video 2 weeks, or would you rather I cut the Overbred work cycle short and get the next video out quicker?

Either of them work for me, I have no particular preference one way or the other. It's all up to you guys. Those 2 weeks are immutable: either I spend them on Overbreed and the next video goes delayed 2 weeks, or I spend them on the next video and Overbreed has 2 less weeks of work done on it this cycle.

You can click here to vote and let me know what you think on it. And of course, I would love to hear your thoughts and opinions in the comments below.

Right. That's all of the nontraditional stuff out of the way. Let's do the Progress Report proper.

Progress Report Proper

So, first things first, here's this week's Spreadsheet of Shame.

Was a pretty productive week, all things considered. It's a shame that Tuesday (and much of Wednesday) was spent working on that technical issue. But it was resolved, and as the note says, it was a priority.

And as the notes say, as of right now the total runtime for Sequence C is just shy of 23 minutes of animation. Which I'm pretty chuffed with. When this work cycle started, there was about 16 minutes of animation done. So 7 minutes of animation over the past 3 weeks is nothing to scoff at. Especially when you take into consideration all of the animation that was built and then scrapped, as I tried to work around technical issues, and then the narrative issues that the work-arounds to those technical issues spawned.

We're just about realigned with the original draft, though, putting us back on schedule and hopefully meaning I won't need to build and scrap any more animation and rewrite things on the fly again.

I will resume to work on Overbreed throughout the rest of this week, see how far along I can get it before I leave to spend time with my family and go to my late uncle's service. After that service, we'll see what happens. I've got that poll up above, we'll see what comes of it all.

As a final note, I've added a ninth potential project to the list for the May video, and I gotta say, I am really vibing with it. As the Sunday note in my spreadsheet says, I hyperfixated on a DVa idea, and it's actually one I've been slowly teasing out over the past few weeks.

Some weeks ago, I asked my Twitter followers that if they could have any kind of DVa video, any kind at all, what all they would like to see. I got a lot of great, varied, and creative answers, but when boiled down to their essentials, there was a very clear common theme: a lot of people want to see DVa in a steamy gangbang.

As you all know, I have my own personal predilection toward group sex content anyways, going so far as to joke that "Aardvark's Law" is that "the longer a project that Aardvark works on continues, the probability of it devolving into a gangbang approaches one." So I was hardly disappointed by this outcome, and I've been passively mulling over it.

On Sunday, I cooked up an idea that I really enjoy. To the point, I put together a little prototype poster for it.

The high-level idea here is that DVa, ever the competitive soul, sets herself a challenge: to have 100 men plow her in a single night. And to make the whole thing a spectacle. I'm talking full-on documentary crew, I'm talking interview snippets, I'm talking news anchors reporting live on the whole ordeal. Just, the entire world is watching with (mastur)baited breath as DVa sets out to succeed at this challenge.

I think the whole thing is an extremely fun idea, and I think it has so much potential. My only fear is I don't know if I'd be able to fit it all into a single 10-minute project. Especially since I want to include so much extra around the gangbang itself: like I said, interview clips, a documentary crew, news anchor reportings. I'm also thinking cutaway gags, like shots of guys just awkwardly waiting around, all the traffic caused by renting out basically an entire convention center for this stunt, DVa sponsoring energy drinks as she pounds them down in between her own getting pounded down. Just, the works.

But honestly, even if it does end up being too long to fit all in one video, I think it could work - splitting it up into different parts could work diegetically. Especially with the idea of DVa taking breaks. I think I could make it work.

I just absolutely love this idea, and I am very strongly vibing for it being the next short video. But I do love my other ideas, too. So I'm not locking it in definitively yet. But I'm vibing it. And I'd love to hear your thoughts on it.

At any rate, that's all I have for now. Wanted to let you all know about my family situation, how I'll be away for a few weeks, to let you all know about that poll for what you think I should do with my schedule when I get back, let you know how Overbreed is coming along, share that DVa idea with you all, and get your thoughts and feedback on it all.

Until next week, everyone!