Hectic

Apologies for the lack of updates or anything really in the past fortnight. Things have been kind of busy or just not working out.

I'm working full time at the moment, which means I'm out from 7am until about 7pm daily. Usually later wednesdays and fridays. I'm on a desk job, so I need to be active at some point, so those are my designated after work biking days. Which is where the first failure lies. More on that in a bit.

Weekends are a mixed bag. If the weather is good, and it has been for a while, I've been helping to rebuild a roof. This is both time consuming and really tiring. I have been using wet weekends to animate, which is where Fail #2 creeps around.

Now I have explained my timekeeping, on to the fails. Those are the best bits.

#1 - I have a GoPro. I figured that even if I'm not providing content very often, maybe I could record some of the fun bits when I'm out riding just for a bit of extra stuff for you guys. So this last friday, I took it to the place I normally go fridays. The past few weeks, I've been improving my fastest time on the final descent, and it's starting to feel really fast, and feels so cool. So I recorded it, excitedly got home, and it looks so fucking slow and shit. Genuinely disappointed, so it's still sat on the camera until I either decide it's not that bad, or do it better.

#2 - I did another bit of the wolf/Efa stuff. Got some fluid physics I think look quite good. Decent speed, good movement. Fairly happy with it. Unfortunately, I can't make the actual scene work. It just feels off. I think I might have a way to fix it, but right now I don't think it's good enough to upload. That, and I haven't had time to try those fixes.

I have been animating. I think I mentioned a scene with a bunch of explosions. I had that in the can and started rendering it, but I'm just not happy with how they came out, so I've been redoing them, so that scene is on hold while that gets worked on.

The next scene is 100% in the can. It's ready to be rendered.

The following scene is a pretty big effects shot again. You can see one of the pre-vis above. It's missing quite a lot of elements, just getting the timings. The camera movement taking Efa and Kyn out of frame is where a cut would be, so you wouldn't have that segment. The effects look really bad right now, they are improving with each revision I do. No actual character animation yet though. That's the bit after the main stuff!

It's also been suggested that I should put a Discord channel up for people. I'd appreciate opinions on that. I've not really been into the whole Discord thing, so I don't really get if it's a useful thing to have. I know a lot of people run servers, so I'm opening this one up to discussion. I'm happy to do it, if it's something people want.

Until next time!