Progress Report, 05/11 -21

Hello everyone and welcome to another in the line of progress reports!

The Halloween Special seems to be well received so far - though it came out a little rushed on account of me not having planned time-wise for featuring two characters, I believe that the animation quality at least was up to par with my usual content. Hopefully those who voted Jill and Sheva into victory for the Halloween poll is happy with the results, regardless :)

And speaking of polls! The on-going Christmas Special Poll is steaming ahead, so make sure to go make your voice heard! Jaina Proudmoore is making a suddenly strong showing, so it'll be exciting to see who ends up in top this time. It's my hope that I'll be able to make it a single-character matter, but since I haven't given myself a paltry 1.5 weeks this time to do a holiday special, two shouldn't be impossible either!


Now, on a hot topic - poll character cooldowns:

I've occasionally mentioned a "cooldown" system for character polling, and in the past it's, let's be honest here, sometimes arbitrarily been left up to my feelings on whether enough time had passed or not since a character was allowed to compete, but I have given it some thought and have come to the conclusion that I need to formalize a system so as to assuage the concerns of some backers pertaining to our more popular ladies.

In that sense, Projects (Large, Small, and Scenarios included) will operate on a 3-Project cooldown, where if a character wins a poll they'll be considered ineligible as a poll option for the coming 3 projects. Similarly, Holiday Specials will operate on a separate cooldown axis, with 2 holiday-themed projects passing before a winner becomes eligible once more to participate in polls.

So as an example, if Jaina wins the current Christmas Poll, that'd mean she'll be missing from holiday polls for Valentines and Easter.

In that sense I'm going to have to write down a list of holidays that I intend to celebrate in some capacity, perhaps throwing in a few things local to my own country, so as to give a consistency across the year and a solid groundwork for what people can expect, and then somehow keep tabs on all this amidst all my other work :)


In terms of project progress:

Technical matters continue - as you can see in the header image of this week, I have, through the guidance of Rigid3D's and other extensive tutorial watching, somewhat figured out basic nut effects for the Cycles engine. I'm looking into more in this vein as I seek to develop my understanding of Blender to fuel these kind of endeavors - I believe many of us miss creampies resulting in some stuff leaking out of the ladies during animations, which I hope to remedy in the near future.

Looking at current projects in the works, I'm still working on getting a fully rigged Blue Suns turian for the Convict (featuring Jack) project, which means I have, through my innate resistance to simply sit and read technicalities, occasionally gotten distracted and thereby inadvertently laid the groundwork for a more sensible Tifa Blender project, once again with a heavy rewrite with the whole Male VA Poll in mind. Mustard's new Tifa model is excellent and will suit our needs nicely here, and I hope to have more to show for my efforts in the near future.

Additionally, owing to the incredibly positive response to the Wonder Woman comic, I have a sequel in the works, script writing underway there too. Naturally, I have more considerations for comics set in other universes than the DC one, but nothing I can comfortably reveal at this time :)

LordAardvark fixing up the in-game dress of Lulu from Final Fantasy 10 has also tickled the nerve to look into perhaps working more on the Blitzballs project, but I'm holding off on that for now!

Thank you, as always, for your continued support and for all of your kind words! Work and all aside, I'm in a pretty good spot right now creatively where I feel like making a lot of things, meaning I bounce between these things like a duracell bunny, and I have high hopes that the Christmas special, given the extra time I've given myself, will come out longer and better than the Halloween one. Hope springs eternal, as they say!

Take care of yourselves, and each other!
/DH