Random Dungeons & Dragons bullshittery - Update #2

It's been a week since I've jumped back into this project and here's a summary:

In other words, eager to save this project, I've gone in swinging.

The new plan to get his done is to bring more hands in to work on it. Outsourcing the relatively simple bits of editing, commissioning whatever assets I need, and generally dividing up the remaining effort to identify what needs my personal attention.

I was telling my mum on the phone today that this week has been weird.

I cannot speak for other Youtubers. But I suspect that the pressure on most after getting bigger is to do precisely this - get a team to mass-produce the content somewhat.

Editors, artists, brand managers and the like. Becoming less of a Youtuber and more of a manager.

Now I find myself doing precisely this. Spending all day on email. Queueing up work for three commissioned artists. Speaking with one volunteer (soon two) to work in After Effects. And I need to approach a true animator for a 30 second sequence in whatever program they like.

Coordinating "staff" essentially. I feel out of my element.

And on that front, I'm working to create a spreadsheet in order to identify precisely what I need to get this monstrously complicated video out of the door - https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/19tOipWj8X3P8nNhxRY9jWX5xB8hi-gK450FbOfdButo/edit?usp=sharing

Broadly speaking, these are the categories of issues that remain:

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1.) Background issues

The background issues are tasks to replace some of the static backgrounds previously created. Despite almost all of them being finished previously, some of them didn't turn out quite as well as I'd hoped.

Perspective is often the problem. Due to the piece-meal nature of what was being made, the POV's were sometimes incorrect. In pretty obvious ways. When the characters would be in a sideways profile, the pov might be from an isometric corner of the cave. It looks so weird.

Ultimately this was my fault. Framing things in the previs and sending those instructions of the background artist. When I should have just let the artist decide from the beginning. Another lesson learnt.

The proposed solution: Identify the background replacements that feel necessary and assign them to one of the artists with the intention of fixing the issue. Using the same colour pallet as much as possible so they blend in.

I don't need to replace all of the backgrounds. Only specific pain-points. These are the background issues to assign.

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2.) Missing Asset

The most complex type of issue. Of the 9 characters featured in this video, 2 of them were intentionally left till the very end due to their complexity. And they remain in a state of partially edited to this day.

• Lashonda Jabubbins - A purple thief played by Cyanide

• Lump Beefbroth - A red fighter played by me.

This means there are numerous obvious locations where animated assets are juxtaposed with hilariously shit static MS Paint temps. This work now needs to be identified and completed.

The proposed solution: Of the three artists commissioned, one/two of them will handle the character art. Once again striving to match the existing colour scheme and art style of the previous assets.

Once I have those, I can animate them to join the others. This is the bulk of the remaining work.

3.) Animation needed

Once I have available assets I'm able to animate them.

Know that some of the animation work will run up against a hard barrier. Because whilst D&D is extremely dialogue heavy, and the existing assets are designed to handle exactly that, occasionally the animation will need to switch to something custom.

Like swinging a hammer on a bugbear, or firing a bow, or belting a goblin in the face with the flat of side of the sword the moment it's your turn to move, because you think "oh my god D&D has a lot of talking"...

In those situations, I'll animate the general assets made for the dialogue. Then make a vague blobby outline of what I need and give it to one of the artists to let them take it from there. So there's some back and forth between the animation tasks and the "asset needed".

4.) Phoneme work

As the last two characters become steadily available, there will be phoneme work to complete for them. This means the shapes the mouth makes during the dialogue.

Previously I just did this all myself - https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/w9vsvj007e5vxtqouycju/Example-of-mouth-moving.mp4?rlkey=phomq86oc15kt6lzywro26ytw&st=rbkoqok6&dl=0

Its simple, straightforward and honestly a little relaxing after more challenging work. But since my goal is to get this thing out the door, I plan to try and outsource as much of this as possible.

I've got bigger fish to fry in this animation, frankly:

Doing the mouth shapes is actually extremely simple. A composition is created with all the mouth layers, staggered in a sequence like this.

Then the composition has the player head tied to a slider. And you simply move it back and forth where you need to, placing down these square keyframes.

These are "held" keyframes. Meaning the value doesn't change until it hits the next one and you arrive at the next mouth shape.

Provided you have a good selection of shapes, you can pretty rapidly make convincing looking dialogue just by moving a little slider back and forth. No proper After Effects knowledge required.

My aim is to get these queued up and send off to a couple of volunteers to do in my stead.

5.) Audio Replacements

A simple issue. The previs was absolutely that - a simple previsualisation. It was never intended to go live on the channel. It lacks a whole load of really obvious sound effects. And the ones that were featured often loop annoyingly.

I plan for a sweep of the whole video, inserting things like convincing ambience noise for caves, forests, etc.

To be done for each scene when everything else is complete.

6.) Final refinements

Anything outstanding that remains to lock off the screen in its final form.

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So with the above spreadsheet documenting what's left to do, my goal is to try and keep willing artists chewing through what I cannot do. And animating what I can. Locking off each scene as it's complete.

I'll report back next Friday concerning how that's going. I imagine I'll have some more tangible progress by then. Thanks everyone.