Random Dungeons & Dragons bullshittery - Update #7

Good evening dear patrons. It's pretty much exactly 8 weeks since I've returned to this project in the form of Dungeons and Dragons bullshittery. And here's a progress update.

Summarised in one paragraph:

I'm about 50% of the way through officially. A vibe check feels more like 75%. But then due to some heavy-duty tasks on the back-end, it's probably more like 60%.

Either way, quite a large amount of the video is reaching its near final look. Give or take some tweaking here and there. It's very easy to go through large chunks of the video and spot placeholder bits only on occasion.

This is the checklist I'm rather fastidiously following.

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

It's a breakdown of all that needs to be done, using the previs as a baseline. I draw your attention to the fact that quite a lot of it is turning into the "final checks" or "audio refinements". With the bulkier parts of the editing behind me.

The checklist has divided up the cartoon into 152 individual scenes (A1 to H11). And each of the tasks there are divided up into categories.

At 8 weeks in, I have about 386 rows to do out of 778. Hence 50% to go.

And those remaining 386 tasks are divided up like this (with a small handful of Misc):

Practically speaking though, what does this all mean?

• With only 18 backgrounds remaining (started at 106 ish), that task is nearly complete.

• The number of "missing assets" is still fairly substantial at 71. And that's important when compared to the "animation needed", which is almost half that. It means that I'm getting through the animation much faster than the artists are able to queue them.  There's potential for problems later in the form of waiting for assets.

• Quite a lot of "missing asset" jobs are small but custom now. For example, a bit where Lashonda is climbing a wall in the cartoon, but it only appears once. A bit when Lump raises his arms above his head. But only twice. Whereas before, an entire pose would be used repeatedly.

• I'm intentionally leaving the Final Refinements section to the end. I'm eager to avoid it as much as possible. It'll essentially be quality assurance. Doing those earlier than the end feels like it misses the point.

• The number of phoneme jobs remains quite high, unfortunately. The outsourced volunteer hasn't been able to do those as quickly as I'd hoped. I'm going to have to onboard someone new or ask if one of the free artists wants to attempt it. For the mouth shapes during the dialogue are critically important.

Lastly, within the 50% there's a really complicated scene that I need to outsource. And I'm not yet sure how to go about it. Essentially there's a bit where the music swells and Cyanide goes to do something heroic.

I figured it would be fun if Cyanide suddenly turned into hand-drawn animation in a completely different style. All the other characters would stand around with their usual look, in awe. As suddenly he's got flowing hair in a glorious close up, etc.

A comedic edge would be added by the hard juxtaposition of hand drawn animation versus .aep puppets.

Trouble is, I don't yet know who I'm going to commission. What they'd need. What tools they'd use, etc. It remains a big unknown in the sheet that needs to be urgently addressed. For whatever I end up doing, that animator is going to need sufficient time to get it done.

It's worrying me and I need to do something about it.

Beyond all of this though, there's not a tremendous amount to update you all on apart from the 50% figure. For the editing continues, slowly and inexorably. Each scene is having requirements drafted to the artists, who deliver the asset. I animate them in one by one until all the characters in the scene have the same treatment. Continue for however many characters are on the page.

The things going actively wrong seem a little trivial.

For example, a scene in the original previs had Cyanide admire his own characters arse.

But in upgrading the assets, the character ended up wearing a skirt and was much more aligned to face to one side, rather than in hard profile. Meaning the same shot doesn't work.

I'll simply need to rework it to be from a different angle rather than walking through the forest.

Likewise the scene B18 has just randomly disappeared:

It was drawn, updated with new assets, animated to look good. But then it's just vanished from the timeline AND the backups.

I must have fat-fingered the delete key the moment I finished it. I'll just have to bite the bullet and redo it. Doh.

But overall the project isn't experiencing any severe horrors in the edit. And the presence of the previs makes bloat an impossibility, since the number of scenes is utterly fixed.

It's just slow process overall. Like 6-7 bullshitteries videos stacked on top of each other. Depending on how many characters make up a scene.

Thank you for your patience all. The work continues. I'll keep chopping through this.