Progress Report - March 5, 2021 - DVa Comic Prerelease ; Future Comic Release Schedule ; DVa Comic Release Schedule ; Fallen Throne Geography & Creation Myth (Patreon)

Hello, everyone!

DVa Comic Prerelease

So, as I am sure you all expected, editing the comic is taking me longer than I anticipated. It's taking me about an hour to edit a page, and at 30 pages... Yeah, it's not much a surprise.

So far, I have 8 pages edited. And since this is taking so much longer (on top of how long it's already taken - more on that in a moment), I have decided to pre-release the 8 pages that I have done so far. The rest of the pages will likely be prereleased next Progress Report.

I want to make this very clear about the pre-release: the panels are not finished. If it isn't immediately obvious already, these renders are not final. There is no lighting, and the posing is very barebones and minimal. The plan is to edit all of the pages, and then go through and finalize all of the renders. The toolchain is written in such a way that I can simply replace the underlying renders, and all of the layouts and pages will update automatically.

Additionally, there are a few minor bugs in the layout generator I need to solve. The biggest issue is that 1x3 panels (the really skinny ones) have a messed up ratio, resulting in thicker borders on their tops and bottoms than they should. I need to look into solving that. It hopefully won't take long, but I'm not going to hang any clothes on that hope to dry.

In regards to the production length of this comic, I will be the first to admit I severely underestimated how long this is taking. When I first set out to make this comic, I didn't anticipate it to end up being 30 pages long, consisting of 170 panels composited from 246 individual renders.

The whole idea of making comics was to get ideas out faster. And while it's technically true that an idea of this length only taking a month and some change to produce is faster than if the same idea were put into a full video production, it's not exactly what I meant.

Future Comic Release Schedule

So, I have decided that, starting with the next comic, I am going to change my approach to comics. This comic has been built in distinct phases: Make all of the rough principle shots in SFM -> generate all of the layouts off those rough shots -> edit all of the pages with those rough shots -> finalize the shots in SFM -> update all of the layouts and pages with the final renders.

The end result of this pipeline is that an entire comic is released all at once, but at the cost of the comic only being representative of its final form at the very end - it is not until the very last step, of updating the layouts with the final renders, that any of the pages reflect their final appearance. And at that point, they're ready to be released.

In the future, I am going to try a rolling release. The goal is to put out a few pages every week. I am eyeballing spending a few hours every Monday posing and rendering 10 final shots (full posing and lighting and everything), and then a few hours every Friday generating layouts and editing pages from all of the shots. Then, on Friday, releasing every hitherto-unreleased full page made so far.

I am thinking that I will use the $2 tier for 1 week of early access to the pages. It'd only be 1-2 pages per week, with maybe the odd 3-page release, depending on how many panels per page it ends up being. This comic ranges between 4 and 9 panels per page, so with 10 panels every week and 4 panels per page, that'd result in 2 pages (10-8=2) one week, and 3 pages the next week (10+2 = 12; 12-12 = 0), and then it keeps alternating between 2 and 3 pages.

Each comic will get a single release thread on Patreon, which will be linked back to on the public release's description. Every time new pages are published, that thread will be updated, using the "Notify Patrons of this change" option that Patreon provides. Hopefully Patreon's image-gallery system will allow me to just cleanly append the pages to the end without it getting annoying to use while scrolling (EG not showing all the pages on the main page, but only when expanding the thread), and I will also be updating the attachment with the latest archive of all of the pages released so far.

For comics that Patreon wouldn't approve of, they will bypass the early-access and release directly to my website. Since comics don't have production costs (don't need to hire people for voicing or sound design), their production isn't touched by Patreon - and by keeping them off Patreon entirely, they bypass Patreon's production / funding stipulations.

The exception to the "1-week early access" rule will be the first release. These will release simultaneously on both Patreon and publicly, to generate peoples' interest in the comics. Subsequent releases will have 1 week early access, meaning that Patrons will get the next pages after 1 week, and people waiting for the public releases will have to wait 2 weeks to get the next pages. Then after that second release, both sets of people get new pages every week, with the Patrons being 1 week ahead.

The reason why I only use Mondays and Fridays to work on the comics, is that, unlike the DVa comic, I will not be dedicating my entire schedule to them. Once the DVa comic is done, I am returning my attention to working on the Rachel project. The plan is to work on the comics while working on video projects. Hence why the only get two partial days, and why I am only aiming for 10 shots (shots, not panels!) a week. I am hoping that by keeping the workload really low, I should be able to consistently get these shots made and panels released without cutting into the video production too much.

DVa Comic Release Schedule

I am going to start this production cycle immediately, with this DVa comic. On Sunday, I am going to go back and finalize the first 2 pages worth of shots, and then I will release them simultaneously to the $2 tier and publicly. Then I will continue my original trajectory of production, working my way through the pages as they are now. In the event I don't have them ready by next week, then I will finalize another 2 pages and release them.

Once all of the pages have been edited, I will go back and finalize them all. And once all of the pages are released, the pages will all be released simultaneously, as I originally planned. In effect, I am using a hybrid release strategy, using the planned trickle to hold people over as I finish the unplanned flood. The full release will also be on early-access for 1 week.

I mentioned earlier that the DVa comic will be fully prereleased next week, and I do intend to commit to that. I can't promise it will be "fully" prereleased, but all of the pages I have edited will be released on this $5 tier. The only way this won't happen is if the full, final comic gets released by that time. Which, since I am currently going full steam ahead on this comic, might happen.

I don't expect it to, but it might.

So either way, you guys are getting the "full" comic next week. Either as an unfinished prerelease, or as a finished full release.

Fallen Throne Geography

My co-writers and I ended up making a fairly significant decision for the Fallen Throne lore. I have mentioned previously that we are working on it quietly behind the scenes. Consider this the first peek behind the curtain.

The decision we made was to flip the main continent vertically. This means nothing to you all, since I never publicly revealed the original continent, but it's (quite literally) upended much of our existing worldbuilding.

The primary motivation for the flip was we just couldn't get the geography to agree with the narrative. Locations and cultures had and did things that just didn't make sense, given where they were positioned in the world. After some experimenting, we realized that by simply flipping the continent upside-down, and making what was once its northern region be equatorial, and its equatorial region be northern, it actually solves most of the narrative problems.

Of course, with flipping the continent around, the climate changes significantly, and a lot of the cultural details need to be reworked.

Regardless, I have decided to share with you all the new continent. This is very much an internal map, as evidenced by the complete lack of prettiness. It also merits some discussion, which will follow. But here is the new map, with the equatorial zone specially denoted:

I am going to skim over a metric fuckton of lore and details here, and instead just give a very basic rundown of the cultures and their general biomes. Do also note that there are actually two different major time periods in the Fallen Throne universe, and they both cohabitate this map currently. For simplicity, the older timeline is referred to as "the antique time", whereas the newer timeline is referred to as "the modern time."

Humans are pretty straightforward I'd hope. Their primary biome is heavy woodlands. In the modern time, they cohabitate these with wood elves, and their domain is expanded to include the northwestern Serian lands.

Demians are an extremely savage and brutal race with immense magical capabilities, and spent as much time, if not more time, warring amongst their own tribes as they do pushing into their neighbors' territory. Their primary biome is a volcanic wasteland. In modern time, their domain is expanded to include the northeastern Serian lands.

Guerral are a proud and nomadic people, with a strong and very extensive family/clan structure. There are only a handful of clans across the Geurral Steppes, opposed to the literal hundreds of Demian Tribes in the Demian Wastes. Their primary biome is a grasslands. In modern time, their domain is expanded to include all Serian land south of the equator.

Serians are what other fantasy universes would likely call High Elves. They are the progenitors of all of the modern elf subspecies in the modern times. The strongest of all magic-users on the continent, with their already considerable affinity further amplified by a lodestone that their capital was built around, they maintain peace between the races on the continent through extensive trade and exporting cultural homogeneity. Their primary biome is a fertile breadbasket that provides an excess of food unseen anywhere else on the continent. The Serians only exist in the antique timeline, having been wiped out in an event known as the Ransacking.

Polaini are a massively reclusive and isolationist culture of tinkerers and inventors, keeping out of the geopolitics of the main continent and instead focusing their energy on exploring the endless ways that magic can be exploited to build and power ever-more-impressive machines. Their primary biome is polar ice cap. Their domain did not change between the antique time and the modern time.

Aserians are what other fantasy universes would call Dark Elves or Drow (depending on the flavor of fantasy you're looking at). Queen Nualia, the most popular Fallen Throne character to date and whom this entire universe was built around, is an Aserian. Her empire, Vael'Aser, is named after both their name (Aserians) and their location (the Vael, a massive mountain range that splits the northern continent in half, separating the Demians from the Humans). The Aserians only exist in the modern timeline, and the domain is predominantly the Vael and the immediately surrounding areas all around.

I am not going to go into the lore of the Ransack, because I could write a small novel on just that event. For now, all you need to know is that the Serians were exterminated, and the survivors were split among their four cohort races (Humans, Demians, Guerrals, and Polaini) as slaves, eventually evolving into four distinct subraces uniquely molded to their host culture and biome. Some Serians escaped into the Vael mountains, who would later become the Aserian dark-elves, and the only elves who maintained their freedom from the antique time to the modern time.

Fallen Throne Creation Myth

And while this isn't directly related to the continent-flip, I decided that, if I am sharing Fallen Throne lore, I might as well share another tidbit. This is a very high-level of the world's creation myth, which is shared between all major races of the main continent, and the gods discussed are worshipped by all of said major races except for the Aserians. Again, there's a whole novel to be written there that I won't get into now.

Firstly, if you can't tell already, these character images are just placeholders. They're taken off Google Images for different types of DND characters, and are just meant to be tokens of the characters.

With that being said, in Fallen Throne, there are a set of six gods: Aenirgos, who created the universe; and his five children, who populated it. The tree suggests that their mother was a celestial anvil, just roll with it, creation myths be like that.

Firthanos is the eldest of the Cosmic Children, and is associated with fury, competition, and war. Seranah is the eldest Cosmic Daughter, associated with beauty, harmony and nature. Kalutos is the middle Cosmic Child, associated with learning, knowledge, and self-improvement. Maelignos is the youngest Cosmic Son, associated with greed, jealousy, and madness. Aylinah is the youngest Cosmic Child, associated with childhood, innocence, and wonder.

The creation myth asserts that while Aenirgos was busy forging the stars and the planets that revolve around them, Seranah picked a particularly beautiful planet and chose to use it as her personal sandbox. She populated it with beautiful flora and fauna, before finally crafting a sentient race in the image of what she considered to be perfection. These perfect beings would be known as the Seranians, or the High Elves.

Enamored by what her elder sister had accomplished, Aylinah joined in, and forged her own sapient race to be a broken-mirror reflection of her sister's. Where Seranah's elves were perfect, Aylinah's humans were intentionally flawed, believing that imperfections give them room to grow and explore new ways to harmonize with their world.

Jealous of the planet capturing his sisters' attention, and always wanting to prove his superiority, Firthanos created the brutal and twisted Demians in a corrupt inversion of Seranah's elves, and the proud and familial Guerrals as a foil to Aylinah's splintered and paranoid humans.

Curious by the decisions and ingenuity of the mortal races his siblings created, middle-child Kalutos chose a separated land to craft his own people. Like the Seranians his sister created, the Polaini were crafted after Kalutos' personal values, with a deeply inquisitive mind and a desire to learn all that there is to know about the world. Just as he was uninterested in the competition of his elder brother and his sisters, so too were the Polaini uninterested in the greater geopolitics of their world.

Maelignos was the only Cosmic Child in alignment with his father's opinion of these idle machinations. He considered building and guiding these races to not only be a waste of time, but a spit in the face of the beauty that Aenirgos had created. The structuring of matter into such fickle and precise arrangements was disgusting to Maelignos, and he set out to do what he can to undermine and unravel his siblings' work.

Before the Cosmic Children could spend much time (in God terms, anyways) with their toys, however, Aenirgos grew tired of his childrens' apparent laziness, and pulled them away from the world to help with the task with which they were born: to help him forge the universe. And so the world was left to its own devices, having to make do with what cards their Creators had given them.

One day, though, the Creators would return, and they would finish their masterpieces, and bring the world to its Final True Way. And so the races wait, praying that their Creators will finish their Fathers' tasks and return to their wayward children.

In Conclusion

So, yeah! I hope this little peek behind the curtain instills some confidence that whenever I say there's a lot of worldbuilding going on behind the scenes for Fallen Throne, it's not just hot air.

It's a big, robust universe. And I only get so much time to work on it, in between all of the other projects I do to keep all of you wonderful, beautiful people entertained.

Similarly, I hope you all like what all of the DVa comic the prerelease has so far. Remember that this is only the first 8 pages of the 30-page beast, and that while the story and editing are final, the panels themselves are not.

The formal, final releases will be rolling across the next few weeks, and comics will be taking a less-focused roll once this one is released, being delegated instead to a consistent and steady trickle of new continent in between the gluts of full video-production releases.

Until next time, everyone!