Quick update - Progress slow 8/8/20

Unfortunately, there's not been much in the way of real progress on the next episode.

I've got a rough script fleshed out, I know more or less how it's going to play out, scenes, actions and so on. I've even animated the first part of the first scene and rendered it. But it was shit.

It turns out that I have not quite nailed the new Efa model, and it doesn't work as intended. It needs a bunch more adjustments to get her moving correctly. Add in to that, I've just been learning about Proxy Models. Usually this means you're using a version of a model that is unfinished and updates as it is completed in the parent file. In this case, because it's ongoing animation instead of iterative, I'm adding a simple base model using the same rigging.

This means the proper character will display in the animation screen as a boxy basic model, and the real one shows when rendering. What this means is that I can playback the animation as I do it in realtime. With the current models, I get maybe 4fps if I'm lucky. Getting it to run at 24-30fps means I can start to get the hang of proper timings, because every episode so far has suffered from movements at the wrong speed.

I've been taking a bit of time to brush up Kyn a little. His fur looks kind of rough so far, so I've gone and retopologised him, meaning all the faces on him ar fairly equal in size, so there should be less weird clumps. So far I think he's heading in the right direction. Eventually I'll completely redo him, but for now this seems to work.

So, I've not given up, but have hit a load of tricky issues that are being annoying, but also working on ways to make the animation look and play nicer.

Also, if things are taking longer than expected, what should I do? Should I just keep doing updates, or should I do quick cast posed images or more specific stuff? I want to keep providing content, but the main stuff takes a long time!