Random Dungeons & Dragons bullshittery - Update #11

Good afternoon, 'likely the most patient Patrons in the world'. It's been about three weeks since the last update post, during which quality assurance work on the latest bullshitery has progressed steadily. Glacially, being honest. Despite earnest attempts. It's gone from 83.87% to 90.71% on the worksheet of remaining tasks.

The folder that contains all of the clips awaiting the final render is now at 126 of an expected 173. (I figured it would be easier to keep track of missing .avi files on the timeline, rather than saying 152 "scenes". As some scenes have multiple .avi files.)

This table below shows each of the sequences (chapters, essentially) and the .avi files that would be needed. You can see that most are near complete, with the odd holdout. But towards the tail end of the chart is where the QA work has reached. And where things are still murky.

But I need to need to say something that I really didn't want to admit. - but I feel I have burnt myself out. Pretty badly I'm afraid. After 19 weeks my brain is....frazzled. And I'm not sleeping well.

Would you be okay with me switching to a different bullshittery project (of your choice this time) and returning to this with fresher eyes later? As I've said on livestreams a few times, I feel as though I'm pressing down on the accelerator, but not going anywhere.

The reasons for my troubles:

• Staring at the same timeline for 19 weeks and being unable to deliver anything has left me feeling pretty defeated. This feels different from a video-essay, which at least lets me switch between different phases of editing. This one feels like being perpetually stuck in one singular mode - keyframe refinements in After Effects. And it is brutal.

• Said keyframing is intensely difficult. I've gone into more detail in the previous post. But a change on one precomposition usually results in this fractal affair, where pre-compositions around it need to change in turn. And due to my exhaustion I'm making obvious mistakes.

• Since the end of the video features combat, there's a substantial number of "variants" among the character types. Meaning variations on the standard bodies that need to be setup carefully each time. For example, Lump might need to swing his weapon, Nep crush a goblin. Which slows everything down as I need to stop and plan around a significantly different pose, which might only be drawn the once.

• There's significant mounting complexity in the last 7 minutes of this particular video. This is because we've entered the combat parts of the Dungeons and Dragons stream. Meaning that whilst there's technically only 9 characters, there are often lots of goblins on the screen. Meaning suddenly one scene contains double the compositions. Even if they're just dead in the background.

Take the scene below for example. This is scene within G5. It's half finished, as really only the foreground is complete. But herein illustrates the issue.

My character is now talking, covered in goblins. But you see, it's only really Lump's body that's the original puppet. His head and two arms are now "variants", made by the artist Gwaredd. And each of those goblins have head movement, a bit of limb movement. They are their own precompositions, rotating on anchor points at Lump's armpits and neck.

Suddenly, one character has the complexity of four.

Then you've got the unfinished celebrating goblins at the back. Probably about four of them. And whilst their jumping animation can be smoothed and duplicated, each of their shadows need to be planned out individually.

And then when it cuts back, G5 already had four characters in there already. The Lump bit was just a short cutaway within another scene. So just G5 alone has 12 characters to refine.

It's such a tremendous grind. Two days working on it has not yet completed it. Just this one scene.

Said workload would be okay if I were feeling sharp, rested and ready. But I've been at the grindstone for so long that it's blunted me. And the stress has gotten to me. The inability to deliver.

Would you mind if we pivot to something more achievable? Something I can actually bring to you? And then I can tackle this again when I'm feeling eager and rested?

I'm so very sorry folks. I was desperately hoping to prove that I could do this in one sitting. To triumphantly come back and drop a banger. But I feel I need to pivot to something else and come back at this last bit with a fresh brain.

Please let me know your thoughts below. If you're interested, I'll review some of the footage I have on the NAS and then line up a poll for some potential bullshittery options? 5 or 6 different games that could be edited into bullshitteries?

Let me know if you have anything you're especially in the mood for. I can shunt it up the pile. Thank you for your understanding folks and I'm sorry to let you down.