March 2024 MoEx Update! (Please read!) (Patreon)

TLDR: I'm okay. Mar 2024 MoEX is being extended into April. Incremental updates on large projects. Secondary poll.

Hey everyone! I know I've been a little silent the last week or so I wanted to check in and let everyone know how I'm doing. Don't worry I'm fine <3 Thank you to everyone who reached out personally, I truly appreciate the care and support you all give me. I've been really busy crunching to try and get this month's moex done on time and the short answer is: I over-scoped a little XD I won't be able to finish it to the quality I prefer within the remaining time in the month. At least, not without sacrificing more of my sleep and sanity than I already have.

Needless to say 10 shots in like 8 days is ridiculous. Especially for one person. Some of these shots are more complex that I had originally planned and while I could probably do it, it would be a lot easier on my mental health to break this up into 2 parts that I'll finish up for next month's exclusive. That also gives me more time to get the sound design and VA work together too. I've currently got 5/10 shots done and I've already put in around 70+ hours in the past 6 days, and probably have another 60 or so to complete this one which is NOT sustainable until I'm fully supported here.

In the mean time, there won't be a MoEx poll/vote next month BUT I've been thinking about other polls that are intended to be small. I mentioned in the last Battle Plan that I wanted to start up a secondary poll for fan art animations and this would be the perfect opportunity to figure out how I want to run those. Stay tuned for a proper post on the upcoming In The Loop Polls.

I also wanted to talk about how I post content too. Since I've been working on larger and larger projects recently, I've been looking into ways to improve the experience for patrons as I work on big projects with lots of down time. The way I like posting now where I post the WIPs then the final once its completed does not work for big stuff. So I've been thinking. To better represent the progress I've been making, I'm going to start posting the individual shots as I complete them. I'll post the WIPs like normal, but post the completed shots either individually or as a single post that I update and send out pings for whenever new content is added to them. I had tried out something similar a while ago for the Alex animation but I think that was too granular of updates so this is a nice compromise of posting more incremental progress while still showcasing completed works. I'll set up a proper progress post for the current MoEx and some of the other larger items I've been working on soon.

I think the same goes for public posts too. I've been noticing that all the smart animators post their longer projects incrementally and make like 8 posts out of a single project which is how it should be done. I'll be sure to keep Patreon content ahead of the schedule for that early access benefit to still feel valuable, but this should hopefully put a little less pressure on me to destroy myself for the sake of a silly posting schedule.