BEHIND THE SCENES, JANUARY 2022

Let's try updating this throughout the month with behind the scenes content to see how that feels.

IMAGE 1: Concept modelling for Side Story 10 (Ballerina + Game Show).  She reminds me a little of Misa!  I like the big stage background, but wish I could choose what colour the lights were, rather than have them be an constantly changing rainbow.  I feel like if I can get the backgrounds to behave colour-wise my stuff's gonna start looking a lot better.  (Jan. 1)

IMAGE 2: Firstly, Daphney is smol.  Secondly, 50% of the renders are done for RSE chapter 25!  I've had the events of this chapter solidly in mind since the beginning.  You'll see proof of that with how it calls back to the first thing I ever posted.  Neat!  The subtle window shaped lighting is recent new personal technology.  I look forward to talking about how I do things if/when we hit that goal.  You'll notice in most shots now I make sure there's something interesting going on with light so the background isn't flat and boring, even if it means the light source/direction is a bit inconsistent between pages.  (Jan. 1)

IMAGE 3: One weird thing about Koikatsu models is they don't have a back to their head absent of hair.  So when you want to get creative, like making a character with tentacles for hair, you've got a lot concealing to do. (Jan. 8)

IMAGE 4: Just wrapped up some work commissioned through the Alpha tier.  I wanted the fabric of their dress to look like faux velvet.  It was through this commission that I learned a lot about material editing.  You can see further applications of that in the Patreon banner, with Daphney and Foster's clothing. (Jan. 8)

IMAGE 5: Here's the back of my head for all them fan artists to reference.  I haven't done much with my avatar yet, which is a shame because I'm proud of it and it makes me laugh.  Same with the whole Sigma persona, though again I don't try very hard to use it often.  Someday I might figure out how to use these things and lean into these things more, or they may stay obscure.  Also in this image you can see that the clothing and hair shadows are darker than the skin shadows.  This is because for some reason all the ways I know of to change up shadows give you much less control over skin shadows than they do everything else.  I'd really like to figure out a hack for that... (Jan. 10)

IMAGE 6: Never mind!  I just solved the skin shadow thing!  Not only that, but figuring out how it can be fixed gave me insights into further improvements for hair and clothing materials!  Just in time to include it in the guide book now that the $1800 Patreon goals been reached!  Wow!  ...Not sure how long I should sit on this before incorporating it into the comics.  I think I'll wait for RSE 2 to use it in the main series, but I'll try it out now with the next side story. (Jan. 10)

IMAGE 7: With the character models completed, I'm starting the renders for Side Story 10.  It's likely gonna be a two-parter split between months, with around 30 pages coming out in January.  I'm using this Side Story to test a new way to do materials/shading.  Though its benefits may be subtle, all these little things add up.  Still, I feel I've reached a point of diminishing returns on good looking characters and background, so now my intent is to focus on improvements in writing and directing. (Jan. 16)

IMAGE 8 (GIF): Sneak peak of a character for a yet to be revealed project.  Check out how fly the clothes shading is!  The jeans look like jeans! (Jan. 17)