Episode 9 Progress - 3/31/19 (Patreon)

Hello.  I guess March is over now.  So here's the progress over the past month:

As stated before, the episode's animation is divided in to four parts, BEGIN, SMASH, SHOOSH, and END.  As of this week, BEGIN and SMOOSH are now complete.  In my last correspondence with one of my animators, he's finished with the final leg of SMASH and is carrying out my final notes.  I expect them to be completed within the week.  Then, I can tweak his work and  integrate it so that the entire first chunk (12620 frames) will be complete.  I think it's safe to say that we're now past the half way point in terms of animation.

For the past few days, I have been working on the ending sequence, the entire beginning of which consists of a huuuge group of Caterpies moving about a hive.  When I wrote this episode out in my head, I took little consideration with how many characters I'd have to be animating, I just knew that I wanted the ending to be "Charmander Vs. The Caterpie Army".  I suppose now I'm paying the price for it.  I have been dealing largely with the logistics of getting the first 300 frames of the ending sequence and the hive to look right.

The past week has been much slower than the last two in terms of productivity.  Upon returning from the desert, I immediately remembered why I'd left.  Working conditions are less than ideal for me here.  I have been getting very poor sleep and been having back problems since returning.  I cannot continue to work like this.  So, in a few hours, I'm going to be traveling to Colorado and staying with family for a while.  At least a week.  In that time, I plan on isolating myself and throwing myself in my work once again so that I can finish this END sequence.  Hopefully by next week, I will have better news for you.

Thank you very much.

Shipp