Thrifty Scenes: GTA: SA: How It's Always Been (Patreon)

Hey guys! So I'm trying something new out with the "let's play" format. Previously, I chopped up pre-existing cutscenes into silly parodies, but over time I got a little tired of the method. It works, but it's restrictive because you still follow what the scene did, plus or minus however much banter you can muster. I started thinking about what more I'd like to do with it, and how I could make the whole experience more transformative, and I decided to try animating my own scenes.

This is my first run at it, and it did wind up being a lot more work intense than I'd hoped. Rather than the two days I thought I'd put into it, the work hours stretched on for most of the week. Granted, it's not the only thing I've done all week, but I can't belt these things out as fast as I did with the Jaycartoons. 

The rigs are pretty simple, modified from a proof of concept I did while testing out the animated vlog format (they say there's no such thing as wasted work, after all). The test vlog went by without much of a hitch, but I think that adding backgrounds, special effects, and moving obstacles, however mild, really adds cost to the work that all those white voids didn't prepare me for!

In spite of that, I really like the potential this has. In a lot of games, the cutscenes don't reflect what the player is doing. Neither does the dialogue. You can perform the most outlandish stunts, and everyone carries on like it's nothing. GTA: SA is no exception to this, going so far as to portray the protagonist, Carl, as being misunderstood and trapped in a bad neighborhood to some extent even as he flies stolen airplanes into little old ladies for the giggles. If you want to change that, you have to just re-do the scene yourself!

So I'm posting this here seeking opinions from patrons on it. What do you guys like about this, what do you dislike? It'll be combined with a let's play, which won't be finished until next week. What I'll likely do with this format is finish the animations early, upload and claim them on Patreon, then finish the let's play portion and claim that as well. Patrons get early access to the animation, and everyone else sees the public version when the let's play is live.

I'll need to break my time up so I don't wind up devoting every week to "Thrifty Scenes". I'm just kind of feeling this out still. Feedback will be appreciated!

In additional news, Pencils is working on a comic featuring the Simiantelligent cast. We'll be putting into print the story ideas that were too long for animation. The plan is to post pages here in advance of the completed book. More on that when it's ready! But so far it's looking good and I think you guys will all be pretty pleased once we've made a little more progress.