April-May 2018 - Public Progress Report (Patreon)

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Hello, everyone! It’s the first post-Thursday of the month, which means that it’s time for a progress report overview of the last month, and a look of where this month will hopefully take us.

I’m still experimenting with the best way to format these posts. This time, I’m just gonna do a simple list structure, going from left to right on the image.

Blue Star: Episode 3

May is a Long month, and so I will be focusing on Blue Star: Episode 3. I am currently in the process of adding cues to the dub video for Blue Star Episode 3, to assist Ivan and Innie in getting their timing and delivery just right.

It’s going to take a few days, since it’s not only transposing a screenplay (which in itself takes more time than one would think), but transposing across both time (when cues start and when they end) and space (where on the screen the cues appear, what color to have them be, and how big to have them).

So far, I’ve gotten about 3 minutes of the dub video cued, across approximately 2 hours. This is roughly on par, where it took me 3 hours total to process a 2-minute video - I haven’t managed to get around to the second stage of cue’ing yet, which is why so far BSE3 is ahead. That doesn’t happen until all the cues are added.

I expect the cues to take me about a week to implement. Once they are, though, then the dub video will be ready to sent off for dubbing. I expect the dubbing process to take up the bulk of the month, seeing as the dub sequence is a 17-minute Goliath. But that works out just fine because of the four other points in this post... 

Elizabeth Video

As I mentioned last month, Innie was away filming for a singing competition she placed into, for pretty much the entirety of April. She got back around the 23rd, and has now been playing the lovely game of catching up with life-related things. Relationships and family and what-not.

Beyond that, however, she got a new audio interface (finally) and has been testing out with recording for the Elizabeth video. So far, so good.

I don’t have an eta of when she’ll be finished recording, but hopefully soon-ish. Our time schedules lately make it hard for us to catch one another, which is something I am hoping to remedy on my part this week.

Not really a lot to say here, other than Innie has started recording for it again, and I’m hoping to get it done this month.

Leliana Short

Near the start of April, I received an email from Milly saying she’s back to full functioning capacity and ready to resume work on the Leliana short. Unfortunately, I was too swamped with Jill to get the dub video to her.

I received another email near the end of April reiterating, and again, I was too swamped.

However, I have since cued together the Leliana video, and sent it off to Milly. She has verified she has received the video, and so is ostensibly working on recording for it now.

I’m hoping to get it done this month, too.

Femshep Casting, Cameo, and Micro-Animation

Throughout the length of April, I had a casting call for Femshep going on, to replace Pawsywasy for the Blue Star Episode 3 cameo.

With the end of the month comes the end of the casting call. I have decided on, and have spoken to about details already, Savillevoices. She’s an exceptional voice talent and seems both excited to work and a pleasure to work with, so I am expecting great things to come from our working relationship.

She would have made an amazing Aria, but alas, she was also my favorite of the Femshep auditions, and Femshep is needed more than Aria. Perhaps we will be able to double-cast her, if we can differentiate her Aria from her Femshep sufficiently, but regardless, she is my Femshep for the foreseeable future.

And as of right now, that future holds two things: The obvious Femshep cameo in Blue Star Episode 3′s after-credits (so stick around and freaking watch the after-credits scenes!), and a Femshep micro-animation.

We are currently working through the kinks of a first-time dub together, communicating to each other what I am expecting and why I am expecting it in that way, and her communicating back what she is interpreting my expectations as, and working out the differences between the two.

It’s a pretty run-of-the-mill operation with bringing on new voice talent, and I am confident that we will quickly work it out and get a great end result.

The micro animation’s screenplay was posted on my Patreon a few weeks back. It’ll only be about a minute long, and won’t really have any action to it - it’s predominantly just dirty-talk, and serves the purpose of introducing Saville as voicing Femshep, ahead of Blue Star Episode 3′s cameo.

I think at this point you can guess what this line will be, but I will say it anyways: I’m hoping to get this done this month, as well.

Jill Short

So there was clearly some confusion as to when I said “delayed indefinitely.” Some people interpreted that as code for “cancelled,” when I meant it in its literal interpretation: the release was pushed off, and I don’t know when it will come out.

Since that post, I have had a handful of great sound designers offer their talents to help me finish the project (recall that sound design is what caused the delay in the first place). I will be making my decision on who to work with this weekend.

Hopefully, after the announcement is made, the short will be ready for release within a week. But no promises.

Release will follow the original schedule: 1080p Patreon-exclusive release; then 5 days later, a public 720p release with the models released publicly and the project files released onto Patreon.

I have gotten back the first draft of music from the composer I commissioned for the short, and so far it’s sounding pretty solid. They are having some complications figuring out a good track for the sex scene, but I’m confident we will figure something out together.

As with everything else, hoping to get this done this month as well.

Plans for May

Well, as you can probably imagine, my plans are to get a lot of shit done this month, clear out my backlog. Finally get this train back on track.

Specifically, this is the list of things I plan to do, and roughly the order I plan to do them in:

1. Finish cue’ing the Blue Star Episode 3 dub video, and send it out to Ivan and Innie for dubbing.
   
   
2. Have the Jill short’s sound design get finished and release it and associated assets.
   
   
3. Install the Femshep cameo audio for BSE3 and finally finalize the after-credits scene.
   
   
4. Get the Leliana short dub back and installed; post-dub the video and release it.
   
   
5. Get the Elizabeth audio back and installed; post-dub the video and release it.
   
   
6. Begin preproduction on the Tina sequel.
   
   
7. Build and get dubbed the Femshep micro, and release it.
   
   
8. Get the Blue Star Episode 3 dub audio back and installed. That’s really about it. I don’t expect to finish post-dubbing, and I definitely don’t expect a release this month. How this month goes will determine how July goes, though.

As you can tell, I won’t be getting a lot done on Blue Star Episode 3 really, because I expect the dubbing process to take the majority of the month. But that works out, because I have 4 videos I want to release this month.

Will I be able to get through them all? I don’t know. Each one of them is contingent on other people being able to get what’s expected of them done in a timely manner, and history has set a strong precedent stating that seems to be a tall order to ask of others.

The release of these videos is, as their releasing has always been, at the will of others’ timeliness.

But I’ll do my damnedest to get them done as quickly as possible, while still maintaining the level of quality I pride myself on (regardless of what you may think of that level of quality).

That’s the most I can promise you, though. I can’t tango alone.