Random Dungeons & Dragons bullshittery - Update #8

Good evening Patrons. Thank you always for your patience, for it's now the 10th week of work on this video and it's currently 62% complete. Now I'm entering the tricky bit.

Here's a link to the tracking checklist:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/19tOipWj8X3P8nNhxRY9jWX5xB8hi-gK450FbOfdButo/edit?usp=sharing

What you might notice is that a lot of the checklist is absolutely dominated by the "Final Refinements" category.

This is the last stage of the work. The rework, the polish, the final quality assurance of any scene before it's going to be locked off for the final render. And all 152 scenes need to go through it.

I've not yet decided whether I'm going to make lossless .avi files for each scene. I've not had any trouble rendering it...yet. But I might have to go through that step before the end. Worth keeping in mind.

Now the checklist is about 850 rows long. And 324 rows are still to be completed. That's where I'm getting my 62% value from. That's the remaining mountain to climb. It's building a tad as some scenes are having tasks sub-divided for easier management.

But "final refinements" makes up 145 of the remaining rows (17%). Meaning the 83% to 100% mark is just quality assurance and nothing else. So I just need to get from 62% to 83%. That's the remaining stuff to add. A 21% gulf to cross.

However the distribution of remaining jobs is....hairy. I'm going to start getting repeatedly blocked now. Well not blocked, just...well have a look. It's something of a pain.

The "animation needed" part is my main job. That involves taking the assets and animating them into a scene. Everything that's a missing asset becomes "Animation needed". But now it's looking a bit thin. The artists simply need more time to make the assets than I do animating them. Because they're often variants (more on that below). By the nature of this beast, I'm faster.

The phoneme work is... well I was really expecting all of those to be done by now. They've been outsourced to two volunteers. But there have been scheduling and technical issues. A huge pity. I was kind of counting on those being out of the way at this point.

I could switch over and assist. But since they're so relatively simple, requiring almost no knowledge of After Effects, it feels like I should be focusing on bigger fish in the edit. The nasty problems that need full attention. And I feel I shouldn't start "Final Refinements" without the speech animations in. That's asking for trouble. Those mouth phonemes need to be QA'ed as well.

So I'm worried I might start treading water in the editing. Waiting for assets from the artists, animating them as they arrive, but then getting blocked again.

I'm considering switching over to some other project on the side.

I'm not blocked yet. Not truly. But I should try to avoid a work week of stopping and starting. Whatever I end up doing I need to keep it efficient.

Bear with me there. I'll figure out what I'm doing.

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Editing wise, I've mentioned it a couple of times sorry, but let me tell you about the "variants" coming in . As in, the artists have been making me puppets I can animate. Usually focusing on their most frequent poses. Such as Lump_Side, Lashonda_Side, etc.

But then the character might need to do something specific.

Lump Beefbroth might have arms that exist in various poses. But sometimes I might need him to reach out and poke or grab something specific. I don't bother having the whole puppet redrawn from scratch. I just request a more dextrous arm because it's faster.

Some assembly required.

Lashonda may need to get down from a wagon. But only briefly. So I keep the head, eyes, mouth, etc. And just make a vague blob of shapes explaining what I want:

A few days later and the artist Zahmbei comes back with this:

Lump might have this bit where he mockingly "mourns" one of the team mates. So standing bolt upright would look a little weird. So I just request a variant in Lump's body from the artist Gwaredd. Being very careful to specify which hand he should be holding his sword in, etc.

A lot of the cartoon is like this now. Variants of variants. Trying to make it all as smooth as possible between the poses. Providing briefs for what's needed, etc.

To clarify, it's not really frivolous extras. Some sequences are more like events that happen in the cartoon. Like being struck with an arrow at a specific moment. Or falling off something. The character needs to react somehow. But only reacts that way once. Hence why there needs to be a variant of their existing body.

Often just represented by a blob or geometric shape until it's available -

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/xxjyxl08yuht8rdxh1ojp/200625-01.mp4?rlkey=du6jwbcgzzrk4gskkt1nc3855&st=mqbsyqse&dl=0

Additionally, even though I'm repeating myself with these updates sorry, let me show you how things have been turning out with the mouth phoneme animation method.

Gone are the days in which you'd place down layer by layer. Now it's just a simple slider you move back and forth, which cycles through that comps time on the playhead. So getting convincing looking dialogue is easy:

Example - https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/ovx8rinjlrdtaqj68lp3v/A10-modified.mp4?rlkey=lzhrdt9osjjp7dkshboprw7q4&st=rf7wb8vs&dl=0

Example 2 - https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/65f8rnk0fho455wd353m6/B17-210625-01.mp4?rlkey=eaj7msbijlu5wifuqqxs6nls5&st=ikt4gma5&dl=0

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Lastly, there's a slightly amusing discovery with the outsourced phoneme animation. For in order to do their work, I requested that they download the entire project. Which is something like 28gb. Making a local copy on their own machines.

And once they've finished animating the mouth pieces, there's an amusing way in which they send the finished work back to me.

I have them literally behead the character and send it to me.

After Effects has this feature under File called "Collect Files". And if you specify just one specific composition, it will make a new .aep project file with only the files that are lower in the hierarchy.

So I have them select the head of the character with the now animation mouth.

Make a new project for just that head.

And then just email it to me. At which point I import it, copy the mouth off the floating head. And slap it onto the original copy of the character. I'm quite literally getting emails containing severed cartoon heads floating in a green void.

So yes, TL;DR:

• Editing continues in a slow grind. But it's now at 63% complete.

• QA effort starts at the 83% mark to 100%. So I need to cross that leg.

• Encountering some blockers as artists need more time to cook. Might pivot to an alternate project if I find I'm being inefficient.

• Phonemes remain mostly incomplete. Which is becoming a problem now. They're going to block QA.

The work continues. Hopefully with your blessing. Thank you all. Thank you for your support on this.