Progress Report - June 12, 2023 (Patreon)

Hello, everyone!

With the public and 720p release of Refuge on the 10th, my vacation officially ended. With the 10th being a Saturday stream, I returned to work on Overbreed Episode 1 formally on the 11th.

Storyboard Progress

My first order of business is to finish up the storyboard. As a brief overview of the storyboard, here is a convenient little checklist. X means it is done, ~ means it is in progress, _ means it has yet to be done, and O means it is being omitted from the storyboard. I'll talk about that a bit later.

• [X] Sequence A (cold open)
• [X] Sequence A to B narrative
• [~] Sequence B
• [_] Sequence B to C narrative
• [O] Sequence C
• [_] Sequence C to end narrative

Sequence C is being omitted from the storyboard, because it's the one currently being animated. Recall that when I paused production on Overbreed Episode 1 to instead put together Episode 0, as the narrative primer for the series, I had about 12 minutes of Sequence C animation already done.

I figure that I might as well just keep going with Sequence C the way I have. No point storyboarding what's already animated, and I don't want to jam up the flow that's already established by abruptly changing the production style. So Sequence C will continue its path of following its reference collection, without a storyboard to properly guide it, and just winging it whenever a technical difficulty comes up. It's worked out well so far for the sequence.

Runtime Projections

Now is the time we play fast and loose with numbers. Put on your hardhats and get out your picks, because where we're going might as well be a salt mine, with how many grains of salt you'll need to take the projections that follow.

As of right now, the storyboard is clocking in at 17.5 minutes. I'm about 2/3 the way through the reference collection for Sequence B, with what all of Sequence B starting at about the 10-minute mark in the storyboard, meaning that about 2/3 of the collection is taking about 7.5 minutes.

From that, we can roughly extrapolate the full Sequence B storyboard will be (7.5 * (3/2)) = 11.25 minutes, adding about 4 minutes to the current storyboard and leading it up to just over 20 minutes.

I won't even bother trying to extrapolate the B->C and C->end narrative times, but with the 20-minute storyboard runtime and the 12-minute existing animation runtime, that already puts us over the 30-minute mark.

Now taking into account that the Sequence C animation is 12 minutes long so far, and is approximately 1/3 the way through its reference collection, we can play especially fast and dangerous and predict that the final Sequence C will run (12 * (3/1)) = 36 minutes in time, adding about 24 minutes on top of the existing runtime.

Taking out existing 30-minute prediction and adding another 25 minutes, that puts us right square with about an hour runtime total for Overbreed Episode 1.

Now, I cannot stress this enough:

These numbers are not at all reliable!

This can be considered at-best a wide upper-bound. The storyboards virtually always run longer than the final animation, with Primordium's running almost 15% longer than the actual video (storyboard predicted 8.5 minutes, video ended up being 7.5 minutes).

And I have a hard time believing that Sequence C would run almost 40 minutes by itself. Then again, I had a hard time believing it currently runs 12 minutes. But I would expect it to run at least 20 minutes, and 25 minutes I think is reasonable.

So realistically, I'd take that 60-minute upper limit and cut off a solid 25%. I think somewhere in the 40-to-45 minute range is more appropriate. Overbreed is a tightly woven story, with each episode having 3 individual plot threads that all resolve independently while each contributes to the episode's individual thesis and the overall plot.

An argument I have seen people make in response to these long runtimes (and, more accurately, the long production times) is

"why don't you just cut it up into smaller videos?"

And you know what, that's a valid argument. I've already clearly established that these episodes are split into 3 individual sequences. It very well could be split into 3 videos. Or it could go even more extreme, I've seen people call for explicit "split into 5-minute videos". That is viable. There is nothing technically stopping me from doing that.

The heart of my counter to it is "I don't want to." But to put a bit more weight to that, I counter the "why not split it into 5-minute videos" suggestion with this: why don't they just cut TV shows into 5-minute videos?

The reason in both cases, to me, is because it disrupts the flow and the artistic intent of the episode. And that's really, honestly, the only argument I have for you all. At the end of the day, I have no better reason for why I am committing to this 40-to-60-minute runtime for Overbreed Episode 1 than "I feel it's the best way for viewers to watch it." It is my artistic intent. I wrote the episode this way. That's really the end of discussion here. I don't have anything profound or objective to say beyond that.

With that in tow...

The schedule is restored!

The Claire/Jill video was, as I think you're all aware by now, a very much unintended collision of the on-stream and off-stream schedules. It was never supposed to be an off-stream project at all. It also wasn't supposed to be any longer than 3 minutes total. But what's done is done.

However, with Claire/Jill done, the wreckage from the schedule collision I think has finally been cleared. I have firmly decided to lock down the off-stream production cycle. My next two major projects are going to Overbreed Episode 1 and then Blue Star Episode 4. I will not be putting any other big projects into the off-stream schedule. All future on-stream projects - such as the current ongoing Frozen project, future Primordium videos, and any other projects we may come up with (such as the Maid To Facefuck or Girls Night Out videos) - will be done completely on-stream, including working the churn.

I am not making any plans after Blue Star Episode 4 right now, because of how far out that is. As we already projected, Overbreed Episode 1 will likely be somewhere in the 40-to-60-minute runtime range. And I expect Blue Star Episode 4 to fall somewhere around the 30-minute mark as well.

Between those two projects, I think it's fair to say that is going to lock up my production schedule for at least two years.

Once Blue Star Episode 4 near completion, I will start looking toward future projects. The fate of Rabbit.Hole depends squarely on how people feel about the idea of having two completely unrelated Overwatch projects - and how producing both of them means they will both take longer to be completed. Or if people would prefer I suspend Rabbit.Hole to focus on Overbreed. Overbreed is not on the chopping block. It will be made, unconditionally.

Other projects will also need to be considered. For example, my two Elizabeth projects, Liziverse and No Gods No Kings. Chances are NGNK will get axed in favor of Liziverse - it's just a more open project, with greater storytelling potential. I love NGNK and the more dramatic atmosphere, and I had some fun ideas for it, but ultimately I just think Liziverse and its more whimsical nature is a better avenue to pursue. But I won't make the final decision until BSE4 is done and dusted.

Then there is the question of the Phazon series. The series in its current form will not be continued, since I just don't want to poke the Nintendo bear anymore, and as such I am not working with Samus anymore. As I have shared before, I have taken my characterization (and voice) of Samus and transplanted her into a new character, who will be her spiritual successor. I have mentioned before that I am unsure if I will continue the Phazon hexalogy with this new spiritual successor, or if I will instead build new infrastructure to lead her into the Hiveship storyline. I am still unsure. Again, after BSE4 is done.

That finally leads into the discussion of my various original IPs. Some of them you already know about, such as Fallen Throne, with characters like Queen Nualia of the Dark Elf empire Vael'Aser. And then many other IPs you have only seen glimpses of, if you've seen anything of them at all. That particular discussion segues nicely into the next section of this post, however:

Minivids are returning!

When Claire/Jill crashed head-first into my off-stream project schedule, I decided to suspend the bimonthly minivids, and focus solely on Claire/Jill. I just wanted to get it done and get the schedule back on track as fast as I reasonably could. As much as I love making minivids, they do take a few weeks of production time, and those are a few weeks not spent getting the schedule corrected.

And good God did the schedule need to get corrected. Thank god it finally has been.

But now with Claire/Jill done, I can return to minivids. Starting in July, the bimonthly release schedule is returning. Now, I don't know when exactly in July it will be returning. The next minivid might release in the beginning of July (not likely), the end of July (much more likely), the start of August (let's be honest if I am for the end of July it'll be the start of August), or the end of August (I don't see it being any later than this).

Whenever it releases though, the bimonthly schedule will begin ticking off from them. 8 weeks between minivids is the goal.

I don't think it will surprise anyone to hear this, but the next minivid will be a Life is Strange video. Specifically, it will be a purely lesbian video, with Chloe and Max, because I have never actually done a lesbian video yet.

I've spent the past 2 weeks or so trying to figure out exactly what the video will be. It's been an awkward dance, because on the one hand I don't want to step on Epilogue's toes, but at the same time there's no guarantee Epilogue will ever actually see the light of day. And then on a totally separate axis, I aim for minivids to be less than 4 minutes in length, meaning I need to come up with a compelling self-contained story start to end within that timeframe. And then on a third axis, I would like to explore Max's time-manipulation ability, but not in a way that requires too much exposition to properly establish.

But I think I've figured out the minivid, at a high level. The core premise is simple: Max rewinding her first time having sex with Chloe, each time pushing her boundaries and exploring both her own sexuality and Chloe's patience.

This exploration is instigated by Chloe playfully egging her on - their first time around, they never get past Chloe fingering a virgin Max to orgasm. Chloe teases her about being a lightweight, and muses how she would have liked "a bit more fireworks." Emboldened by the implicit challenge, Max rewinds back to mid-fingering, and asks Chloe if she'd be willing to "use [her] mouth." Chloe very playfully agrees, and eagerly tongue-ties Max's cherry stem to orgasm.

I haven't decided if Chloe commenting an implicit challenge will be a continuing staple, or if just the first time around will be enough to encourage Max to continually rewind, each time suggesting more complex sexual acts, until eventually they end up scissoring their way to mutual orgasm.

I don't know exactly how it will play out, or what the final runtime would end up being. I am planning to storyboard it out on Wednesday, and then take things from there. But, as of right now, that's where things are headed.

As a final brief note, sadly I have nothing to report on Epilogue specifically. I have spent the past few days of my vacation working on the Life is Strange character models. Their outfits will need to get exposed eventually, and so that's what I put together. I've also been working on adding all of their outfit variations, the different shirts and what-not they wear. They're almost ready for an update release, I just need to finish all the outfit variants, but I ran out of vacation time before I finished them off.

Since I'm now back to working on Overbreed Episode 1 full-time, that means that finishing off the models will be joining Epilogue as a moonlighting project. And since I've been burning full tilt this past week on the character models, I've just been too tired and it's been too late to work on Epilogue.

I'm working to remedy that this week, get the models done over the next few evenings, and then finally progress through this gas-station-interior sequence. It's a pretty complex sequence, and I think I am going to end up drafting it out at a high-level in a graph context, just so I can keep track of all the different images that I am going to have to flatten out to make linearly in SFM.

On that subject, I have been contemplating two additional modifications to the existing editor infrastructure. The first one would be a massive undertaking, and I have ultimately decided against it. But the idea behind it is that the whole philosophy of Epilogue's prototype is making and playing the game are done in the same tool, and needing to use SFM to make the images breaks that ethos.

So yeah, in a nutshell, I briefly considered basically rewriting SFM, from scratch, by hand, in Javascript, for my prototype. Yeah. I don't think I need to explain why I dropped that idea.

The other idea is more feasible, and that is to implement the graph drafting I am planning to do directly into the editor. I'm not sure if it would be an extension of the current graph system, or it'd be an entirely different one, but the basic idea is that I make all the branches and what-not in the graph view, and then it auto-generates all of the steps in the game engine itself, and wires up all the jump, branch, and conditional logic necessary by itself.

I don't think I am going to implement that for the gas-station-interior sequence, but if the translating the external graph draft to the game engine ends up being a chore, then the next time I find myself wrestling a complicated web of interactions like this, I might bite the bullet and do it.

I think that's all for now.

Until next week, everyone!