Progress Report, Future Plans, 06/01 - 23

Hello everyone and once again happy new year!

Welcome to the first of this year's progress reports, for which I figured it would be prudent to make a quick rundown and summary of what projects I have in the works in the present, so as to give you insight into my plans for the future. We have a lot in the pipieline in the present, so the plan for 2023 is to bite off more stuff than I end up starting, but more on priorities below the short summaries below.

Things presently in the works:

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Long Projects:

Title: Blitzballs
Engine: Blender (Formerly SFM)
Starring: Lulu from Final Fantasy X
Status: In The Works

Blitzballs, a heavily gang bang themed theme with human partners has been consistently voted as a non-priority by the community, often losing out to more monster-focused projects. It remains to be seen if this project can be brought to the fore in 2023 as it is highly dependent on the aforementioned community vote. This said, I am still highly motivated to make the project in question, and thus consider it as being "in the works".

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Title: Continued Negotiations
Engine: Blender
Starring: Liara and Miranda from Mass Effect
Status: On Hold

Continued Negotiations is, by script alone, my absolutely largest project I've ever considered. Not only does it suffer from requiring an immense voice acting budget, but the script itself is so long and have so many intersecting lines that I am yet to figure out the logistics of actually assembling it. I've been telling myself this will probably be my magnum opus, but it is such a monumental undertaking that I've wanted to be more familiar with Blender, particularly its more impressive features, before attempting to work on it. With the heavy load required, I've also realized I probably need to wait for my new GPU purchase in order for my rig to be able to manage the sheer amount of characters involved at any given time. All in all, a project considered On Hold for these reasons, but still very much in the plans.

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Title: Local Customs (Formerly "Planetfall")
Engine: Blender (Formerly SFM)
Starring: Ashley Williams and Ivy Valentine, from Mass Effect and Soul Calibur
Status: In The Works

Project: Planetfall has been refurbished into Project: Local Customs, featuring Ashley Williams becoming familiarized with the customs of a frontier planet population with the help of the firm but gentle hand of Ivy showing her the ropes. Previously an SFM title, the props needed for the original project never quite materialized, and I realized by the point I was porting things from Blender into SFM that I may as well stick to the engine in question, having superior models already available there as well. While the project hasn't seen much in the way of actual animation work since it was voted into existence by the Patreon community, it's seen several script rewrites, and I finally believe I have found something that actually works and is interesting to make. In this sense, it is in the works.

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Short Projects or Scenarios:

Title: Breaking the Lineage
Engine: SFM
Starring: Cassie Cage from Mortal Kombat
Status: Backburner, Pending Cancellation

Breaking the Lineage spawned out of me playing the MKX campaign through back in 2015 and, after beating the final boss and everything, really wanting a project featuring her and the corrupted form of Shinnok. The Shinnok model I managed to get my hands on suffered immence issues like strange texture glow that didn't apply uniformly, requiring a lot of lighting magic to make him look somewhat passable, but most crucially it came with a skeleton of wrongful bone parenting setup that never made SFM able to apply proper IK rigging, meaning I had to animate, painstakingly, using the FK. For the uninitiated, this effectively means a hand (as an example) does not move the whole arm when moved, but rather detaches and stretches the entire wrist into infinity when you move it, requiring the animator to go back and "correct" every single motion, however small, by animating every single bone down the chain back to the very first one which is often the pelvis. Want to make a small correction on the second spine bone? Congratulations, the character's arms now clip into their partner's torso - time to correct that entire section.

As you might imagine, this was me painting myself into a corner. While I somewhat managed to finish one singular scene, to some extent, in terms of actual work the project itself mainly saw further scene poses added that effectively had me, over and over, enthusiastically pose and then immediately fret the idea of having to animate what I had just made. While I held out for hope that the MKX scene would be reinvigorated at some point over the years it simply never materialized, and as time went on and the redesign of Cassie was revealed for the sequel it's sadly become obvious that I'm extremely unlikely to get my wish for this project. As such, it can be considered stuck in limbo between cancellation and permanently being on the backburner, unless some kind of miracle occurs.

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Title: The Convict
Engine: Blender
Starring: Jack from Mass Effect
Status: In The Works

The Convict was born entirely out of a very well-received WIP pose I made over on discord, eventually becoming a small project in and of itself. Tackling issues such as the subject matter potentially having Patreon TOS-breaking undertones initially led to several rewrites, which thankfully resulted in something that was well within its bounds, only to once again have the project thrown into turmoil when a new Mass Effect 2 model version of Jack became available. As it is right now, the project is still in the works but subject to another rewrite, where I intend to be on the correct side of all things necessary to bear in mind for this line of work, while at the same time being a tantalizing prospect for viewers. Keep an eye out for that Jack booty in the near future as I'm highly motivated to get this one done.

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Title: Unnamed Ivy Valentine Project (20.000 Twitter follower celebration)
Engine: Blender
Starring: Ivy Valentine from Soul Calibur
Status: In The Works

Ivy Valentine eked out a surprise victory in 2022 back when I hit 20.000 Twitter followers, with you Patreon backers voting her to the fore. Several pose ideas and subsequent thinning thereof later, a dungeon scene featuring Ivy and her Lizardman lover emerged from the recesses of my mind. A simpler, smaller project more in line with the Widowmaker Christmas Special, but none the less a small project, it is considered to be in the works owing to it, well, actually being in the works. While I've hit 25.000 followers since, I've realized follower growth kind of works along exponential lines over on Twitter and I therefore have opted to save the next project poll for 30.000. Owing to the setting and characters though, I feel fairly confident I will :)

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Comics:

Title: Corporate Merger
Engine: Blender
Starring: Wonder Woman
Status: In The Works

The sequel to the surprisingly well-received Undercover Mishap, which was my first attempt at some kind of comic-style storytelling, Corporate Merger took a backseat last year in a bid to push some animation projects out the door. The script is already set from start to finish, and while I tend to modify some wording a little bit while I make the actual renders, all this project needs is simply for me to sit down, pose, render and then set up the comic panels. Highly considered to be in the works, with me being particularly enthusiastic to get back to working on this. Wonder Woman's going to be really busy in 2023, I believe.

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Priorities:

While it's early and I haven't slept well tonight, I believe these are all the projects that I presently have in the works. If I missed anything that you can draw to memory, please do not hesitate to note it in the comments and I'll be sure to address the matter.

In terms of priorities, what sticks out to me as needing work for the very near future come in two forms. First is the 20.000 celebration piece, which is technically something of a time-sensitive project which becomes more awkward the further away it's released from its goal being met.

Second is Corporate Merger, the Wonder Woman comic, which has been in the works for a long time now and have suffered being relegated to secondary priorities all too often owing to my insecurities as pertaining to its popularity - I'm still of the mind that most people back me for my animations and projects, so whenever I've had the extra time for it I've ended up trying to work on those over anything else, which has been something I've been a bit sad about considering how much I enjoy doing comic work overall. In that sense, for my own sake, I ask you to have patience with me as I wrap up the comic and get it out the door, working on it in parallel with the 20k Twitter animation so as to get some variation in my schedule. I know my comic stuff has some rather ardent fans too, and I hope to make up for the lack of their favored content this way as well.

Once this comic is finished, I intend to poll the community on the matter of its relative popularity so as to see how I should prioritize matters in the future. While I definitely do want to make comics, I wouldn't want to alienate my backing either, so I'll do like any old university student when facing overwhelming decision making and simply opt for polling.

TL:DR: 20k celebration piece with Ivy and Wonder Woman comic will be the most immediate priorities going forward.

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Model Updates:

On another note, I've realized that some ladies in the gallery have suffered under what effectively is a Curvacious Power Creep, meaning that characters like Liara have been left a bit in the dust pertaining to the model rework I did and have been doing immediately following the old breast size polling. In that sense, alongside all my project work and so on, I also endeavor to bring these forgotten heroes more in line with the current models, which means Liara for instance has gotten some more meat and tone added to her while still retaining her more soft form. More characters are also being added to the gallery, with Mustard's Dead or Alive lineup slowly making its way into my folders, and all of them naturally subject to the same rules I have for others in terms of model design - which is why Honoka, our title image of this post and ostensibly the bustiest in the DOA lineup of girls (according to the wiki, no less), has breasts larger than her own darn head.

A promise is a promise :)

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If you have any questions then please do not hesitate to either write them in the comments below, or simply message me in person here on Patreon, over on Discord if you have that role, or even on Twitter if you prefer that. If you use Twitter for communicating with me however, I ask that you preface your message with your backer name here on Patreon since the spambots and similar have increased significantly lately and I tend to be pretty zealos when cleaning my inbox these days.

2022 was an incredibly hectic, harsh year, and I am honestly quite glad to put it behind me. In that sense, thank you, everyone, so incredibly much for your continued support and for all of your kind words. I've got high hopes that my schedule is calmer this spring than it was last, so keep your eyes peeled and before you know it, the DH content machine has begun churning things out once again. Regular update schedule is resumed officially from last Wednesday, so I'll see how Monday again for the next loop animation!

Thank you again, and take care of yourselves, and each other!
/DH