Gildedguy

Story 8 Chapter 4 Well Underway + New 3D Artist!

Added 2023-02-01 20:32:26 +0000 UTC

Hi Patrons!

Here's a fresh update on the latest animation and where we are at in the production.

Chapter 3 Done, 4 Now in Progress

We've completely wrapped up animation, inking, and backgrounds for Chapter 3, putting us at ~9.75 minutes done of the planned 25-minute shortfilm! I've even had time to put some basic compositing and color correction so that the current cut of the first 3 chapters is consistent & watchable.

Since then, we've moved onto the first "chunk" (a very technical animation term) of Chapter 4 (the battle). A little over a minute of Ch4 has been completed, with four minutes to go. A portion of the past couple weeks has been spent on R&D due to the new environment, character designs, and palettes. But they have been mostly established, so we are primed to do lots of pure character animation.

New 3D Background Artist!

Part of my efforts to streamline the pipeline is the hiring of a brand new 3D background artist - UnderMineBlox!

He has done impressively speedy work on other animations, including TArrow & "Crossfire: Bullet Rain". So far he's done an excellent job recreating my cave concept art into a 3D model, with the correct colors and shapes included!

Not final - it's missing some painted textures

His proficiency with Blender has already given me and the team tools to produce background assets much quicker than before. We'll still be using 2D backgrounds where appropriate, but certain scenes require the use of a 3D camera that I can freely animate on a set.

The plan is to draw over 2D character animation and FX so that we can achieve an integrated look. We've done this before on previous animations, and I feel that our techniques are just getting more and more refined!

Next Milestone

The next goal is to bite off another "chunk" of Chapter 4, hopefully another 1.5-2 minutes of animation for February. I'm feeling good [inc] about the setting of battle now, and the challenge of dragon animation.

Check the attached spoilers here or on the Patreon Discord channel for more WIP animation!