Random Dungeons & Dragons bullshittery - Update #6

Good morning all. Another update on Dungeons and Dragons bullshittery.

Thank you very much for your trust, as shown in the last poll. The final count came to about 95% continue and 5% stop. I'll keep cracking on with the animation work and providing updates. I'll try to keep an honest accounting of progress. And we can always do another poll if things take a turn. As always, I edit to your pleasure.

On that front, the sheet looks like this. We're now about 30% of the way through:

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

The scenes are looking a bit like swiss cheese - holes being poked out of them as things are getting completed. A little inconsistently I'm afraid. It largely depends on which characters are in the frame.

But the most crucial things to look for are the ones marked in blue and red. Those are the true measure of my progress.

• The blue ones are missing assets. I'm blocked on these. Progress isn't being made until I can get assistance from an artist and they can have the time to do it. This involves lots of emails back and forth to specify what I need.

• The red ones I can sink my teeth into. Those are the full animation tasks where I'm off the leash. But they're also difficult tasks that are often measured in hours.

The others are lesser in priority. Even the purple phonemes (mouth sounds) are tasks measured in minutes. Same with audio refinements. So these updates might be a little...strange.

One interesting thing to thing to talk about is how the individual puppets are going through a form of animation "reshoots" in a manner of speaking. Where during the process of animation, I'm identifying lots of little tweaks I can make.

For example, in the process of animating Cyanide in this scene, I noticed that he does a silly voice when he says "I steal things". I figured I could make him do a little 'grabby hand' motion for emphasis.

So why not request a brief custom job for the original artist when they have the time, to provide a variant on his hands I can use for this one moment. Leaving a pair of coloured boxes to remind me that something is meant to go there.

So, my apologise if the sheets sometimes looks like I'm completing one task but adding two. I am sometimes doing that, yes.

Here's another example. I mock his "tiny muscles", since he's a halfling. So why not put in a little custom shot of him trying to flex his bicep? After all, it doesn't need an entire puppet redrawn. Just a small piece. Should be easy.

This one is a near-finished example. In this scene, my character Lump uses his bow on the goblins up the hill. But I noticed that the hard cut from shield is a little jarring.

So the artist Gwaredd knocked up a quick variant of the arm layer to show Lump handing off his shield. Playing that a second before the transition makes it look much smoother.

Basically I'm a spotting lots of little opportunities for revisions. Trying to help characters emote. Or have smoother transitions with some light additions. Hopefully it'll make the end result better.

Additionally, Nep's final asset came in on Friday. I did some animation tweaks to it. I'm reasonably confident I can redo her scenes to look much better.

I mentioned it before in the other update, but the original Nep design looked a bit weird in the end. I made the boobs too big and the pov too side-on. This was part of a joke where Rarict's fat belly turns into big boobs when switched into a lady.

So NervousHawk has been working on that problem and I think the result looks much more convincing. And more inline with the other art styles. I'm pretty happy with how it's turning out.

So yes, the editing work continues. But this is a slow, slow grind indeed. Thank you everybody. The editing continues.