September 30th weekly update! Cerulean Shooter

Hey gang,

Hope you've all been well. Been busy myself, just trying to catch up on things mostly. 

Speaking of, I want to take the time to apologize to anyone that has ordered an animated comm from me over the last couple of months. I've been way too slow when it comes to making them and I will be placing a stronger emphasis on them going forward so that I can get them out to you soon. Thank you for your support, and if you have ordered a comm, you should be hearing from me soon with a preview or progress of your comm. 

Actually I want to talk a bit about animation as a whole when it comes to my work. I think I've been trying to make things "too perfect" when it comes to a lot of my work, and I think my animation and games has suffered the most from it. Often I find myself getting into a project and then thinking "Darn, I'm not as good at this as I thought. Maybe I can make a smaller project so I can get some experience first. THEN I can come back to this with a bit more knowledge".  But in reality, that just leads to me starting a stopping a lot of things. As a result, my backlog has become disgustingly long, and honestly the amount of stuff I DON'T show you all has drastically increased too. I already kind of struggle posting wip shots, because with pixel art, it often just looks like a mess until I clean it up. But since a lot of these projects I've started don't have a specific deadline because I haven't shown it, I tend to hide it away until it's almost complete. That way I won't show you guys something that I won't finish any time soon. Something that I've already done too much.

I'm going to start taking steps to move away from this kind of mentality for the future. Frankly I think it's just a discipline issue and me being addicted to starting projects and then trying to "speed run" them until I eventually run out of steam and drop it. I feel like I always approach longer form projects (animated movies and games) the same way I do with smaller projects (pin-ups and loops). Kind of off the cuff with a loose plan, and I tend to end up adding things that weren't originally planned to "maximize the idea". But obviously with bigger projects, all those smaller edits tend to escalate exponentially, drastically increasing the time it takes to finish the project, in comparison to smaller projects.

For example, for Mythra's NNN, there was originally just going to be one loop of putting lotion on her tits. But I thought it would be better to have a few loops to really break up the time and show some more intimacy. I ended up doing 3 tit groping loops total, with a few other loops putting lotion on her belly and thighs. But for each loop, since it's all one shot, it needs a transition TO and FROM that loop, which drastically increases the amount of animation required. I feel like I often make this mistake, addicted to having a BUNCH of animation at the expense of the time it takes to make. Especially when I spend a lot of time on very small things that I feel like most people don't even care about.

Going back to Mythra part 2, I've spent a LOT of time on things like her hair moving consistently for all the loops. And once I spent all the time and look at the finished project, I can't help but shake the feeling that "No one is looking at this hentai animation to see if the hair physics are consistent" haha. And I think those thoughts, across so many projects that I've started and stopped, that were all announced months ago but are nowhere near being close to finished, really starts to erode my confidence as a creator as a whole.

I guess it really just boils down to me "indulging" in animation a bit too much and being too novice of a director when it comes to these animations. I think that's why so many of my projects tend to stall out, and frankly it isn't fair to all of you that have been supporting me all this way. So I'm going to start learning how to make animation shorts, project management plans, ideas, and strategies, and director skills like taking something from an idea to a finished product. I don't want to keep stumbling and bumbling through all my projects, you all deserve better than that, so I will put the effort in to ensure I am properly earning all of you support. Thank you for your patience with me. 

The main reason I'm bringing all of this up is mainly due to how I've been handling the animation commission orders I've received. They've really opened my eyes to how poor my approach to bigger projects are, and I want to make sure I'm getting the content that they paid for to them in a timely manner. I'm going to start first with just planning out my projects better overall. I often keep my pixel art app (Aseprite) running in the background with dozens of tabs open, each relating to another project that I'm "working on". And obviously, me trying to juggle so many things just isn't going to work. So moving forward, I'm going to limit myself to 1 tab at a time. 3 at the absolute max. That way I can just sit down and know that for the next hour or so, I will be working on this ONE thing and can make more consistent progress on it.

Then, I will start breaking down all the things this project needs and give them deadlines. My old approach was basically just story boarding things out, and then hoping I can pull it all together at the end. But that approach is way too unfocused and doesn't account for my error, so I want to have more strict planning overall. It's also why my deadlines tended to never be accurate. These deadlines will help though, as they will help me keep track of what things are taking too long and I can also put an explanation of why something needed to be delayed if needed.

I'll be doing more research and seeing what ideas and strategies I can incorporate in order to be a more consistent creator and understanding my limits when it comes to bigger projects. Once again I'm sorry all my projects take so long, but I truly value each and every one of your support and want to make sure that I am properly earning it.

Geeze that ended up being a lot longer that I thought it would, sorry for prattling on like that haha let's get into the content for this week:

 Mythra's NNN and Palace of the Goddess

So I spent most of the week working on animated comms, so I didn't get as much work done on Mythra and Palu, but I worked on the transition from the 1st and 2nd tit groping animations more. Mainly doing the lighting for the breasts and hands and cleaning up some of the lines so the animation flows better. I also did the lighting for the first cut in for Palu. I wasn't sure if I wanted to add lighting to the "inside" of her hair, but I think it looks better this way. I still need to clean it up a bit though so it's smooth. So that's up next on the chopping block.

I also spent a lot of time working on animated comms. 

I finished the comm of St Louis for Moparmudder

The next anim comm will be for Plantanote of their OCs

I also did the base animation for some of my other animated comms, but they're still very rough. But I should have more to show soon. I should also get the animation laid out for the rest of the animated comms in the next couple of days.

I also did a doodle page of the Red Landsknecht from Etrian Odyssey for some practice. I'll probably draw some more femboys in the future, but I'll always tag the posts just in case they aren't your thing.

Anyways that's it for now. Gonna take a small break and then get back to work on comms. Gonna spend time working on project management like I mentioned earlier. I'm not sure how much work I'll be able to get done over the weekend, but I'll let you all know how things go.

As always, you can support me on Subscribestar or Patreon

I hope you all have a great rest of the week!