Progress Report, Plans, 07/01 - 22

Hello everyone and welcome to 2022! I hope everyone's had a good time, and by now have regained their footing while, just like me, following tradition by already having broken a few of their new years resolutions :)

It'll be a few months yet before written reports and papers stop being smudged with an erased 2021 date, but we'll all get there eventually.

Now, onto the business at hand. What's DH got in store for 2022? Only the gods know exactly how the year will look, but I mean to delineate what things we have in the works below, their present status, and what the short and long-term goals of the year is so as to give you a hint at what direction I hope to wrestle the darn year into. It'll also serve to refreshen the memory of veterans while enlightening those new to backing me, and also remind myself of what the heck I am supposed to be doing. So get your belts in order, and let's see what we've (technically) got cooking below!

Stuff currently in the works, in one form or another:

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Name: Blitzballs
Engine: Source Filmmaker
Category: Project
Main character(s): Lulu from Final Fantasy X/10

Status: Pending.

The work on Blitzballs has been pending since it lost out to the Lady of the Woods 2 project in polling. Since its inception and announcement, it has failed to garner any larger support in the community polls and have as such fallen a bit by the wayside. Onto this, multiple new versions of the Lulu model for SFM has since been released, which means the project, when finally addressed, will necessarily be entirely remade. Still, the script remains in a pseudo-finished state, and all that is required is the prioritization of time and work to make it a reality. While I still want to see it done, we'll simply have to see what the community prefers this coming year.

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Name: Continued Negotiations
Engine: Blender
Category: Project
Main character(s): Liara and Miranda from Mass Effect

Status: On hold.

Continued Negotiations is, in my eyes, the project with the potential to be the greatest, most ambitious piece of work I've ever made. Once I had finished the script, I quickly realized that the budget and the technical know-how needed to make it a reality wasn't feasible at that moment. Since then I've gotten significantly closer in my Blender understanding to make it a reality, but I still lack some crucial parts to feel confident I'll be able to pull the matter off (liquid simulation effects, for instance). Suffice to say, this is a project that is always on my mind, but which will have to wait until such a time where I feel I can give it the attention and depiction it deserves.

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Name: Planetfall
Engine: Source Filmmaker (Pending)
Category: Project (Pending)
Main Character(s): Ivy Valentine (Soul Calibur) and Ashley Williams (Mass Effect)

Status: Script writing in the works. Subject of potential rework.

Planetfall is the result of a community poll for what the next SFM project to be added to the work schedule was meant to be, where Ivy and Ashley came out on top owing to having extremely similar numbers. I have since struggled to make a comprehensive script out of it, as I am prone to whenever there's heavy Crossover themes and the likes, but have managed to make a rough outline of what "works" in terms of its story and overall themes. Another conundrum here has been my impulse to convert the project into a Blender one, if anything because we have two great Ivy and Ashley models in the engine that far outperforms their SFM equivalent (even if Lordaardvark is an absolute wizard with his models), but also to limit its scope somewhat into something I find conducive to my creativity. It remains to be seen what happens with this project, though I intend to follow through on my promise to feature these two in some larger sized work capacity. Believe it or not, simply animating a gang bang scene for its own sake can be mind-numbing, and I have found my creativity requires more sustenance than that. In that sense I believe the community would prefer to get something out of the poll results, rather than nothing, which is why I am opting to look for different avenues rather than announcing any cancellations.

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Name: Laying Low, previously known as Underground Fundraising
Engine: Blender
Category: Project
Main Character(s): Tifa from Final Fantasy VII/7

Status: Script finished. Scene builds in the works. Budget allocation in the works.

Initially known simply as the "Tifa Blender Project" when Tifa came out on top in a surprise victory against our eternal titan Liara in the first ever Blender project poll, it has since seen at least three revisions, two which required an entire rewrite of the script where the first was discarded in response to community feedback on the use of male voice acting in projects. While it certainly was a struggle, its script was finally done by November of last year, and I have since looked into what I'll need in terms of time, work and money to make it a reality. Needless to say, the project bloated into something much larger than initially intended, but I genuinely believe it'll be much better for it, even if its scope makes it more difficult to pull off. I have high hopes that 2022 will offer the opportunity to see it realized.

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Name: Breaking the Lineage
Engine: Source Filmmaker
Category: Scenario/Short Project
Main Character(s): Cassie Cage from Mortal Kombat (MK9 version)
Status: On hold.

Breaking the Lineage is about as old as Blitzballs, if not older. It started off as a display of pure stubbornness, of sheer willpower on my part, working with a Shinnok model that lacks a functioning IK rig. It eventually devolved into a display of steadily diminishing willpower, until it found itself perpetually skipped over in favor of other project work. Initially planned as a Project length piece, I rewrote the script to better suit a less ambitious endeavor, and have since effectively left it at that. I still like the idea, I still like the script, and I still want to see it made, but my soul screams each time I try to open up the session file. It remains to be seen what I do with this, in the end.

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Name: Dossier: The Convict
Engine: Blender
Category: Scenario/Short Project
Main Character(s): Jack, aka Subject Zero from Mass Effect

Status: In the works.

The Convict began as a discarded wallpaper in the discord WIP channel, turned into a pseudo-loop owing to massive, positive feedback, and eventually morphed into a Scenario/Short Project. Its script is not entirely finalized with the project mostly strung together by loosely connected gang bang scenes, but I've found that each time I return to this project to poke away it, it seems to take on a more comprehensive shape. It is another project I have high hopes for, and may just become the first one to see the light of day in 2022.

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Name: Corporate Merger
Engine: Blender
Category: Comic
Main Character(s): Wonder Woman

Status: In the works.

The sequel to the first attempt at a comic from yours truly. I began working on this immediately after an outpouring of positive feedback to the first one, and I cannot emphasize enough how happy it made me that people enjoyed it so much. In that sense, the sequel is longer, more ambitious, and dirtier than ever, with a community poll having decided the "victor" of Wonder Woman's risky little games. Suffice to say, I am in the process of rigging a massive amount of thugs, prison escapees, criminals both well-known and nobodies, and villains to attend Diana's little club adventure and beyond. As usual, I will be working on this in parallel with the animated content I make, projects and loops both. Look forward to hearing and seeing more of this in the very near future.

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Phew, there. That's quite a lot on my plate, isn't it? I would still say that I managed to reel myself in last year in terms of spontaneously taking on new projects, and even managed to meet a bunch of holiday deadlines with animations. With the growing support we're seeing, I am beginning to feel that doing this full-time might not be impossible one day after all, which certainly would make all this easier, but that is a consideration for the future.

As stated previously, Comic work will be undertaken in conjunction with regular animation work, meaning I have some creative outlet to rely on even in times when animation is becoming a pain in the neck. I feel it in my bones that this will ensure the longevity of my creativity and motivation, as it's significantly freer medium to channel it into whenever I feel a bit stuck trying to animate the same boob jiggle for the 14:th time. In this sense, I hope that 2022 will see a rise in Comics featured with different universes as well - with a poll coming up for the next main character to feature once this Wonder Woman sequel has concluded. So be on the lookout for that :)

In terms of commissions, I am yet to rework my approach to them in a way that makes them feasible in the present. I could see, in the event I start doing this full-time, them becoming a more viable matter, but in the present I am simply at a loss for time, energy and motivation to work on them, meaning I am extremely unlikely to open up for them anytime soon. Having done the math after seeing the reality of my finances, I would also have to significantly up my prices from last time, which I abhor to do but is necessary to give myself even minimum compensation. Sorry to those who have their hopes up, but I don't want to instill any false hope here either.

And that, as they say, is that for this time. Thank you, everyone, so incredibly much for your continued support and for all of your kind words. 2020 and 2021 were rough years, and 2022 is off to a rough start, but I have some hope that things will begin to brighten once the months begin to churn at their usual pace. Regular updates will resume from today onward, so look forward to the Monday Loop and the stuff I've got in the works above :)

Take care of yourselves, each other, and once again, Happy New Year!
/DH