Progress Report - April 25, 2023 (Patreon)

Howdy everyone.

I apologize for this update being a day late, my Monday was a bit whacked as I woke up with a killer headache and actually ended up just taking a 4-hour nap in the afternoon, which is something I never do. It kinda fucked up my whole day and I just didn't really have the time to put together the post.

Claire/Jill

This past week I've been predominantly focused on corralling my ADHD to get work on Claire/Jill done. I only have 2 minutes left to process on the detailing pass, which I am hoping to get done by Friday and at the very latest Sunday.

After the detailing pass there are a handful of other passes that need to be done, but they're much less labor-intensive than detailing. Namely, upper-face-expression, camera animation, and tuning the lighting and making sure it looks good in every shot. Most of the shots look great, but there are a few that cast some... unsavory shadows. So I need to hunt those down and clean them up.

Once those two passes are done, then all that is left to do is a quick update to the Claire and Jill models, bringing their nipples up to the new standard I've been building models to, and adjusting some of Claire's jank neck rigging that shows up a few times in the video. Then it's baking jigglebones down and pressing the big red render button.

Right now I am eyeballing May 15 for starting the final 4k render. Hopefully it'll be sooner, but I am trying to pace myself and give myself ample room. If there's one thing I've learned, it's that when I pile too much expectation on myself, I tend to just get paralyzed with anxiety and nothing ends up getting done. I'd rather take it slow than not get it done at all, and I suspect most of you wonderful people understand and agree with that position.

DOAFACU

Outside of Claire/Jill, I've been doing a little bit of this and that. Most of it has been brainstorming DOAFACU projects, though also a bit of loose thoughts for Fumates and some work on my OCs. No storyboarding though, I said last week I need to step away from that time-sink and I've been keeping to my word there.

For DOAFACU, I've been exploring a narrative mechanism of each lady getting their own introductory solo video, tying them all together by pulling a Phase-1-MCU and having Nyotengu pull a Nick Fury, showing up at the very end of each video and introducing herself to the ladies. Toward that end I've been putting together a handful of video ideas, though I've gotten less than half of them even roughly sketched out, and none of them have reached the point of being ready to storyboard, even if I were letting myself do that.

Fumates

Fumates-wise, I've been mostly just doing a lot of high-level thinking, predominantly exploring the relationships between Viv and Sophie. More specifically, the awkward period between them meeting each other and becoming a unit.

My plan has always been for Sophie to basically just immediate crush on Viv, and Sophie is extremely bullish: when she sets her mind on something, she doesn't stop until she gets it. And she immediately sets her mind on wanting to date Viv. As a consequence, she tends to be extremely brusque and forward - subtlety is not in her lexicon - and her brash approach tends to intimidate Viv, whose generally too nervous to even engage in no-strings-attached casual sex, despite how desperately horny she is.

As such, I plan for there to be a period where Sophie is coming on too strong, constantly teasing Viv with blunt requests for sex, and while Viv is very flattered and very interested, at the same time she is just so used to being rejected that she frankly doesn't know how to process Sophie being so intensely into her, and she kind of deer-in-headlights and shuts down. Just as a brief example, one sequence I have in mind is when Sophie suggests that Viv come home with her and "snap [her] choker", Viv turns red as a fire hydrant and just awkwardly gets off the bus at the conveniently-timed stop. Except it isn't her stop and she has no idea where she is. She'd rather literally get herself lost than deal with Sophie being so upfront.

Over this period of time, I intend to grow them both as characters, with Viv's self-confidence being built up with support (of varying levels of success) from both Cass and Sophie, while at the same time Sophie comes to terms with the fact that the full-steam-ahead bull-in-a-China-shop approach doesn't always work, and if she really wants to be with Viv romantically, then she has to cool her jets and not scare her off. Eventually they meet at a crossroads, where Viv's confidence grows to the point she is willing to go on a date with Sophie, and Sophie's bullishness calming to the point she is willing to offer a proper date, rather than her usual "I want you to fuck me right now" approach.

The area I've been focusing on has been their sex lives during this time. Cass is a solved quantity, she's having sex with all the women all the time. Keep in mind she's the one who has sex with six different women, all in just the pilot episode. Three of them at once, and two of them while they're on the clock. But with the ultimate goal being to ship Sophie and Viv, the question of whether or not they bang other people in the space between them being attracted to one another and them actually dating each other has been a prickly one.

The decision I am coming toward, which I am not 100% on but am definitely getting there, is that it's not only okay for them to pursue other interests, but that it'd actually be vital for their growth as characters. Viv is a hopeless romantic, desperate to find her soul mate but so used to getting rejected and burned that she's turning away from the concept of love as a whole; and Sophie is a free spirit, looking for quick lays with no interest in learning names, let alone developing any sort of romantic attachment.

Viv needs to overcome her fear of rejection and gain the confidence to give love a chance, and Sophie needs to learn that sex in isolation is not the same as a healthy relationship. And most importantly, they need to both realize that what the other is looking for is buried in themselves - Sophie needs to realize that she also yearns for that deep romantic connection that Viv wants, and Viv needs to realize that she also yearns for that sexual confidence that Sophie exudes. And that their paths to these discoveries are built off their romantic and sexual explorations in this space in between - Viv's through learning to work through the rejection and find the positives even in failed relationships, and Sophie's in learning that casual sex doesn't fill her need for companionship the way her growing relationship with Viv does.

Kaeleen

I have a lot less to say here, mostly because Kaeleen just isn't in a good place right now. The long and short of it is, I don't like how she's looking. I've been on the fence for a while with her face and body, but putting together her main adventuring outfit, which is totally not a "we have Zegend of Lelda Wreath of the Bild at home" outfit, just really cemented it for me.

I rather like the outfit itself. But I'm not a fan of her face, or her head size, or her body proportions, or really anything about her. And it disappoints and frustrates me because I spent so much time on her.

I'm just glad I never faceposed her yet, because as it stands right now, I am strongly considering tossing her back into the furnace and melting her down to try again. I don't know what I'd do differently at this point though, and I don't want to expend the mental energy of going back to the drawing board for a fourth time with her.

Yes, this is my fourth attempt at a "Zegend of Lelda" character.

So yeah. I need to figure out what I am doing with her physical representation. Story-wise nothing is changing. I just need to find a face and body that I am more happy with.

That's all for now. Next week should, by all accounts, include me being done with detailing Claire/Jill and working on the camera and lighting, since I don't expect the upper-face-expression pass to take that long.