Progress Report - February 5, 2024 (Patreon)

Hello, everyone!

Don't have too much in specific to report. Last week I laid out some napkin math as to how long things will probably take me, and this week has pretty much followed it square.

I've gotten all of the lip-sync done for the audio I have, both dub and non-dub. The gesticulation and expresses passes are similarly complete. All that's left at this point, really, is detail animation, as well as building the handful of screen assets I mentioned last week.

And, of course, the elephant in the room, which you may have picked up on with my verbage in the previous paragraph:

I still haven't gotten Milly's audio. I've sent off an email before I sat down to write this post, basically explaining that I'm running out of things to do and if I don't get her audio by Thursday, it's going to end up stalling the project. I hate doing that, I hate being pushy, but as I explained in that email, that's just how the cards have fallen on the table.

Similarly, I've spoken to my sound designer, and he is hoping to have a first draft of the sound design ready for me to review by tomorrow evening. He seems conspicuously less distraught by the fact he has an incomplete sound solution (and he is being kept in the loop about Milly's audio as well, since it is directly relevant to his own work) than I am, but I'm just chalking them up to him being a better sport about it all than I am.

Assuming I do get Milly's audio by Thursday evening, which would be February 8th, then I should be able to get her audio installed, mixed, and lip-synced by end of day Sunday February 11th.

Last week, I had a hopeful eye on being ready by February 7th. But, uhh, I completely forgot to take into account the fact I take Thursdays off, and Saturdays are spent on stream days. Indeed, last Saturday's stream ran a whopping 9 hours, which we haven't done in a very long time. Was a very productive stream indeed.

So realistically, that February 7th should've been February 9th, and then that February 9th release date (taking into account render times) should've been February 11th.

With those adjustments in mind, and with the lingering delays with Milly's audio in perspective, we're definitely not hitting a February 11th release date. But I do want to be done and dusted with this project by Monday February 12th.

So short of something going catastrophically wrong, which would likely either be continued delays on Milly's part, or delays on my sound designer's end, we should definitely be ready for a February 16th release. It will hopefully be sooner than that, but I like to aim for Fridays just as a matter of tradition.

It's later than I wanted it to be, but honestly, seeing how this is an 8-minute video being built in about the same amount of time as I normally reserved for 5-minute videos, I think the production schedule could definitely be worse. It's not great, but it's not terrible. Something something graphite on the roof.

Speaking of the Saturday streams, and how the last one was so productive, I figured I'd give you all a little update there:

I honestly don't remember how much I shared with you all as to what we're doing on the Saturday streams. But we're making a sexy game in Unreal Engine 5. Right now we're still putting together the infrastructure, but as you can see, it's all coming along rather swimmingly.

If you're interested in those, feel free to catch the Saturday streams, either when they go live, or played back as VODs. You can find them over on Picarto.TV/LordAardvarkSFM/. We have fun. Or at least, I do.

That's all for now. Until next week, everyone!