April Preview

Dear Patrons,

As always I hope you're doing well! March flew by so fast, and now we are already in April! I had the pleasure of actually going on an Easter Break for once, so that probably sped up my time perception quite a bit as well. Anywho, so the most part things are progressing just the same as in my previous update, but here are some further insights.

TALES OF ZALE WEB-EPISODE 3:

We've now passed the 90% done mark for animation, and the 80% done mark for clean-up. To be honest, it's been going a bit slower than I'd like this month. I'm afraid that I might at long last be starting to burn out on all the clean-up work, especially while juggling with the writing job. I think it reflects in the output quality. I might shift gears into doing some backgrounds and compositing soon to counteract this. But hey, in the meanwhile, here's one more scene that I've finished most of the clean-up for!

TALES OF ZALE (TV) WRITING:

It's been a LOT of fun writing on Tales of Zale's sample scripts, season arcs etc. I've spent this time reading and studying as much as I could, because telling a full finished and cohesive story with meaningful and clear intent is something I've always found difficult. Well, I guess even most fully fledged Writers may find it difficult, but still. I think I have a habit of rushing through it, especially in early work where I would be eager to get to the animation part as quickly as possible. But here, all we are being judged on is the writing. There's no masking it with fancy production techniques and lens flares. I've really had to think a lot about how best to tell this story for the sake of the story. I think it has allowed me to grow leaps and bounds, although I would still only consider myself at the starting line of what it means to write. Sounds vague, eh? Well, that is because as usual this whole thing is under NDA, so vague is all I can be! But since it's taking up so much of my time and thought space it wouldn't feel right not to include in some way in the update...

Oh, and one more tease on this front: we are going to be sending off our first pitch to a broadcaster pretty soon! So that's going to be interesting. Don't get your hopes up, this is probably something we will have to do a bunch of times before maybe possibly getting anywhere. But the important things is that we are moving forward and looking into a few different options in terms of where to go with it next!

FRENCH PROJECT:

Speaking of NDAs - the development of the TeamTo project I was hired to direct last year has finally concluded! Even into 2021 it's been taking up a good bunch of my time here and there, but now all things development-wise are finally approved and the project has entered the further funding phase. I've really enjoyed working on it, albeit directing remotely had its challenges. Fingers crossed that all goes well for it!

SMALL PATREON CHANGE:

I think I need to go through the Patreon page and give it the yearly re-haul soon. But for now one small change that I've made is that I've removed the $10 tier offering a 2019 Patreon art zine. The reason being that it feels kind of outdated to offer a 2019 zine in 2021. And I didn't get to make one for 2020 because that year mostly involved production, which doesn't translate as well to print. So, hope those of you who got it enjoyed it! Because it's limited offer has now concluded. 

I'm pretty sure I sent out to everybody who were supposed to get one, but if you have been a $10 patron and for some reason not received yours, do feel free to reach out to me.

ROUNDUP:

All in all... well, things are still just progressing at a steady phase as usual. The writing is going to conclude around the end of April and in the meanwhile I'll be preparing our first broadcaster pitch. Meanwhile, I also continue on episode 3 as usual, maybe shifting gears into some background illustration. If I do end up going into comp, perhaps I'll be able to show you a shot breakdown in the next update. We'll see!

All the best in the meanwhile! Happy spring time!

- Sif