A Cold Winter's Night - Witcher Short #1 - 1080p Early-Access Release (Patreon)

HELLO EVERYONE!

After about 80 man-hours, including not only animation but also building four unique models for this project (Geralt, Triss, Ciri, and heavily modifying the bed model to be animatable), I finally present to you the first voiced project I've managed to put out in, like, 6 months or something now.

RUNTIME - 1:32

Download from the attachments at the bottom of this post.

CLICK HERE TO WATCH ; Click the gear icon, log into Patreon as prompted, then choose the resolution you want.

Technically this project was started about a month ago, in mid-June, but the lovable Milly Stern, who voices Triss in this project, was plagued by some particularly hard-hitting allergies for 3 or so weeks in June, which incapacitated her ability to record. 22 total days of work went into this project (again, including models) with 20 of those days only being in 3-hour increments (working on it on off-hours while working on Blue Star), and the last two days being full 8-hour days as a final crunch to get this release to you all today.

This short is the first in a planned series of 4. The first three focus around Triss (obviously), Yennefer, and Ciri, in that order. In each of these videos, the girls refer to a certain event that Geralt regrets. The fourth short in this series will be that event.

This short is the first of my explicit Early Access scheme, and the reason is thus: after Blue Star Episode 3 is finally finished, I absolutely want to hire a co-animator to help me with all future projects. Unlike my previous attempts, they will not work on separate projects, but share the workload with me on projects.

I want to pay a rate of $2,000 USD/mo for this co-animator, but as it stands now, I can not afford that.

My living expenses, as I have discussed previously, when taking into account my student debts and such (woo US academic system), is about $1600/mo. I pay about 35% of my monthly income in taxes, which at my current patronage of $3377, is just shy of $1200.

Throw in the fact that I pay top dollar for these projects (for example, I dropped $210 on this Witcher short; Blue Star Episode 2 cost about $1200 between voices, animator assistance, and scenebuilding; and Blue Star Episode 3 is going to cost around $1500 - $2500 in total for voices), and so I try to save at least $400 a month for funding projects.

Combine all of this together, and that leaves me with less than $200/mo excess ($1600 + $1200 + $400 = $3200). Just a bit short of the $2000/mo goal I am aiming for.

I don't have any realistic expectations of gaining another $2000 worth of Patrons, ever. I would have to shill my Patreon into something I just don't want to do, such as rape or kiddy porn, or focus purely on my beast work at the expense of my other ideas, to generate that kind of revenue. 

Frankly, I am surprised as many people support me as already do, and for that I am eternally grateful to you all.

With that in mind, though, I do have a plan for making up those funds, at least in a finite form: When Blue Star Episode 2 was released, it was in Early Access for about 3 days. And in those days, it generated just shy of $1600 in people pledging the $15 for early access, downloading, and then immediately pulling their pledge - and thanks to my Patreon being pay-up-front, I still got that hit-and-run money.

Episode 2 managed to not only pay for itself entirely, but generate a sizeable profit (I could fund a short almost twice the length of this one! with that profit!).

Episode 3 is going to be colossally bigger than Episode 2, with far more hype behind it due to its prolonged development time and constant WIP posts, and with a stronger corpus of content behind it (both Episodes 1 and 2). Combine that with my plans to market Episode 3 heavily in the weeks before its eventual release, and I am hoping that Episode 3 will similarly pay for itself, hopefully several times over.

And the way it will do that is wholly through Early Access.

The plan is as such: with the exception of this Witcher short, and the still-in-limbo BAS Liz short, all video projects I release (shorts, episodes, films - anything 1080p, basically) will be released on Patreon five days before their 720p public release. Their Patreon release will be announced with an advertising Tumblr post, driving traffic to the post for those who don't want to wait 5 days to view it in an inferior resolution.

Every penny that my Patreon generates in the time between the early-access release and the public release will be put away (after taxes, unfortunately) into a public fund dedicated solely to that co-animator salary. The hope is that, by the time I begin production on Episode 4, I will be able to afford to hire a co-animator for at least a few months, to help me get a head-start on the animation and nip the production-time in the bud.

The exception to this five-day Early Access, which is this short and the BAS Liz short, is that they will only stay in Early Access for two days. This is because I didn't amply notify people of this change before-hand. That being said, any of the Early-Access funds that either short generates still gets earmarked for that co-animator fund.

So, if you know anyone who likes my works but not enough to support me perpetually, suggest to them just doing hit-and-run pledges for my 1080p releases, to support my endeavor to hire new talent so that I can bring these ideas to you all faster.