Progress Report - May 6, 2024 (Patreon)

Hello, everyone!

I think I forgot to make a Progress Report last week. Oops.

I also think I forgot to mention I had an impromptu schedule conflict come up, and I ended up having to spend another week with my folks, and as such, unable to get much work done. Also oops.

BUT!

I'm back at my apartment now, and we're officially back in business.

More Overbreed

You all voted, quite unanimously, for me to spend 2 more weeks on Overbreed when I got back. And so, that is what I am doing. As such, I have scheduled my end of this Overbreed work sprint to be on May 20.

On my first full day back from being with my folks, I managed to put together this entire 90-second-segment of new footage. We're off to a good start there!

As I mentioned over on Twitter, I have decided to change the tone and pacing of the anal sequence from what the original draft was. This is largely due to the tone and pacing changes I had to make as a consequence of the pose problems I had earlier, and just a rolling knock-on effect. I intend to keep the overall direction of the sequence the same - the biggest difference is that Mercy is going to be a bit more physically dominant than what I had originally written, where she was more psychologically dominant.

I think most people will appreciate the change.

Speaking of pacing and changes, I've been putting some thought into them over the past few weeks. This project started development some 3 years ago (ugh), before my schedule completely fucking imploded and I ended up taking over half that time away from it.

Taking into account the long and protracted development time, the huge pauses in between production sprints, the separated project files making it hard to keep track of everything, and all of the impromptu changes I've had to make throughout production, and I fear that I've lost the plot in terms of pacing and what-not. I've since made a decision on what to do about that fear:

Next week, I am going to drop the entire running WIP onto Patreon - all 24+ minutes of it - to get feedback on pacing.

I'm going to drop it under this same $5 Progress Report tier, since it's definitely not at a level of polish to justify any higher tiers. Of course, it is all going to be extremely work-in-progress, as everything I've shown so far. Don't expect polished animations, voice acting (it'll all be subtitled and timed, as I always do), or even lighting.

I will be announcing this drop publicly on Twitter, to try and get some fresh eyes on it all. I will be chiefly looking for feedback on pacing - are there segments that go too fast? Segments that drag on? Segments that should be added? Segments that should be removed? That sort of thing.

The last thing I want to do is release a video that's really bumpy and kind of all over the place. My original draft was written to be a pretty tight ship - it's a big part of why it took me so long to write it out in the first place. All of these changes I've had to make to get around technical problems though have been organic - and while I love organic writing, I have a very real problem with organic writing tending to meander and ramble.

Not that you'd ever be able to tell that I have a tendency to meander and ramble, judging from these Patreon Progress Reports.

After This 2-Week Sprint

As I've mentioned before, the schedule I am going for now is alternating Overbreed sprints with working on shorter videos. Unfortunately my plans for this allowing me to get videos out more regularly has already fallen flat on its face, but in my defense, I can't exactly control my extended family members dying of cancer.

So, I'm not going to feel too beaten up over the fact I've already fallen a month behind on this new schedule. Sometimes, shit happens.

Once this sprint wraps up, on May 20, I am shifting gears over to making a short video. What exactly that short video will be however, I don't know. I currently have ten different ideas for it. A few of them I am feeling more than others, but they're all candidates nevertheless.

My plan then is to put together pitches and storyboards for all 10 ideas, and then show them off to both you all here on Patreon and the public over on Twitter, to get your thoughts and opinions, and see what all project ideas people are interested in seeing.

This won't be a democratic process - it won't be a simple majority-wins solution, where the most-liked project gets made unconditionally. At the end of the day, it has to be an idea I am vibing with. But I will take into consideration everyone's input - if I am torn 50/50 between two ideas, and one of them has 5x the popularity of the other, then that'll make it pretty easy for me to choose between the two.

You probably won't hear too much about all those ideas and their storyboards between now and May 20. Once May 20 rolls around and this Overbreed sprint concludes, I will be dedicating my full attention to writing out as many storyboards for these ideas as I can. My goal is to get everything drafted out and presentable, for all 10 ideas, by June 1.

We'll see where we go from there.

That's all for now!

Until next week, everyone!