Progress Report - March 8 2018 - First Week of Blue Star Episode 3 (Patreon)

It's Thursday, and we all know what that means: Progress Report Day!

I could lead into the highlight of today's progress report with some nuanced flowery language, but honestly, I think the video this post has attached to it gives it away.

Yes, indeed, most of this weeks efforts have been related to the fabled moneyshot, with Liara getting that pretty face of hers made even prettier with some love juice.

The video clip only shows the first 3 shots, because I wanted to keep some of it a surprise. Needless to say, by the time he's done, Liara is sufficiently covered, and her line of "fucking drench me" will not be spoken in vain.

Animation on both sides of the facial have been worked on, leading into and transitioning out of. As of right, BSE3 is sitting at 17:50 of sex scene (23:00 total).

I am still shooting to have the whole sex scene ready for dubbing by Sunday evening. It's gonna be close, but it's the goal. I'll be really surprised if it isn't ready for dubbing by next Thursday.

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Tangentially related, there is a very real possibility that Pawsywasy will be recast for Femshep's cameo in BSE3's after-credits scene. I don't want to get into details, so we'll just keep it at being solely a business decision.

Femshep will definitely be recast for her BSE5 cameo. I am hoping I won't have to recast her for BSE3, but I am just letting you all aware now that I may have to. So if you see me put up a casting call in April for Femshep, that'll be why.

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In other VA-related news (I have a lot of that for this week), I'm still working with Milly to get that last line of audio for the Leliana short, that's preventing me from getting the timing finalized for the dub sequence.

I am in communication with her still, and the elements that are indisposing her are persistent but temporary. She's hoping that she'll be back to full functioning come April, but I am going to keep pressing her to get the audio before then. Cuz, I mean, that's a whole bloody month past the projected release date. I'd rather not do that unless I have to.

So far it's an uphill battle, though. She apparently thought she sent the line to me, so she went to send it to me again. She was going to message me through the IM we use when she had it resent. And, well, that never happened.

Once that audio comes through, I'll let you all know. Trust me when I say that she does a great Leliana, but also trust me when I say I'm getting tired of waiting.

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In better VA news, Innie has finally been able to make measuring progress on the Elizabeth video:

Her progress has been impeded by technical difficulties, though, as the first few file titles may suggest to you.

This is the second time she's recorded this audio, and she's going to have to record a batch of it for a third time. The first time, she recorded 21 minutes' worth of audio, BUT her recording software had set to "Default microphone" - meaning it recorded with her Macbook's crappy built-in laptop, rather than her high-quality professional microphone. So all of that audio was scrapped.

The second time around, she got it recording properly, and managed to record another 20 minutes' worth of audio, BUT her audio interface glitched and destroyed the last 9 minutes of it. This all is from the first 11 minutes she managed to salvage, but the latter half she is going to have to record again.

This isn't the first time her audio interface has glitched out and destroyed recordings. Indeed, almost every single project she's recorded for me has had this happen. This is actually the first time she's managed to salvage any audio from a glitched session, so believe it or not, it's actually good news compared to the rest.

Needless to say, she's looking to replace her audio interface.

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We're only a week into March, but I've already began working on preproduction for the Jill short.

I've discussed the scenebuild with one of my scenebuilder associates, have sketched out a rough draft of exposition and events, touched base with my Jill VA (new blood for me, though she's already familiar with the scene, and does an amazing Resident Evil 1 Jill impression), talked to the affable Ivan about voicing Chris Redfield (he only has a minor expositional role, but I still need him), and have put together a mental roadmap of what I need to do for it.

The first thing to do for preproduction will be done on this Saturday's stream: building a 3d mesh of this mansion, for an establishing shot:

Without going into too many details, the short takes place in the 5-year interim between RE3 and RE5, where Jill and Chris were with some nondescript anti-bioterror organization. This is a throw-away location to fit into that canon.

And, as Jill says in the exposition, "Why is it always a mansion?"

I am hoping that the VA I've scouted for Jill won't give me problems. Between the (completely understandable and actually-mostly-because-of-good-news) delays for both Innie and Milly, and the unfortunate problems with Pawsywasy, I don't think my heart can take having to delay another project for a VA.

So far, though, things are looking up. After having not spoken to her in 3 months, I touched base with her and just let her know the short is going into preproduction this weekend - and she got back to me in less than 2 minutes to say that she's excited for it. That sort of rapid response is always a good sign, especially since I didn't even know if she was online at the time.

I'm hoping to bring her into the fold as a regular voice in months to come. We'll see how this short goes, before making any commitments, though.

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Any regulars to my Saturday streams likely knows that I have social obligations that take up huge chunks of my Fridays and Saturdays, and restricts me to only streaming 2 hours on Saturday.

Well, as of March 31, those social obligations will be absolved. This means that I will have Fridays to work (meaning more productivity per week! Yay!) and, more importantly, I will be able to extend my Saturday streams to 4 hours, instead of 2.

This has two ramifications:

Firstly, it means that the DOAFantasy model series will pick up speed (and go about twice as fast as it has been, amazingly). After Mila, whom we will be finishing up next Saturday, there's only 4 models left. I expect that we will be finishing the DOAFantasy series in around June.

Secondly, it means that we will have more time to work on SFM animations. I don't intend to tackle longer animations, which means that we should have about 2 hours free (since we've been making these animations in about 2 hours).

Both ends move to a singular point: after the DOAFantasy model series ends, I will be replacing that biweekly time block with a start-to-finish made-completely-on-stream fully-voiced SFM video. It will be functionally identical to any of my other shorts, but all of the work will be done on stream.

Any spare time we will have after normal SFM animations, starting in April, will be spent on this project as well, meaning that will potentially be putting in 12 hours a month on the project (4 hours one week, 2 hours the next; repeat this for 4 weeks total in a month). Not a whole lot, but slow and steady wins the race.

And, more importantly, the project will be done entirely on stream, meaning that anyone interested in the full stack of effort that goes into these shorts will be able to watch the streams (either live, or recorded on Picarto) and watch a video be made from nothing to post-processing and release.

I'm very excited for that project. More details on the project will be released as it begins to swing into motion.

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This Sunday's text is going to be rather underwhelming, especially in the coattails of the Blue Star Episode 4 draft and then the Liz game design documents.

It'll be a long-planned Nualia short, which I hope to put into production late this year. No promises. It will finally describe the last aspect of Nualia's personality that I've wanted to demonstrate for a long while, but haven't (and technically still don't) have the resources available to do.