Story 8 Animation

Hi Patrons, please enjoy the following April update post!

Progress Update

Story 8's battle animation is about 2/3rds done, with the major bit of animation being the Chorus 1 section (the first red TO DO box). This section has been set up in 3D for a couple weeks now and I will now be tackling it in full force for the next week or so.

After that, we'll have a bunch of FX animation to do to round out the end of the main battle for Story 8! I'm already very proud of how much action we've been able to pack into this 5 minute portion of the animation. But I am aware there is still another 15+ minutes of animation to go in the entire production. 

If we can hit a 2-2.5 minute per month pace, I'd say we'll have a good shot at finishing the animation by the end of 2023/early next year. 

May have to recruit more artists though! As of right now, all our team members (except for myself) are part-time, and are contributing what little spare time they have toward the project (time paid, of course). 

I did the math and I was surprised to learn that - all combined, time-wise, we comprise about 1 full-time artist and a half. This is something I need to reflect on and hopefully improve.

Spring Overlay Updates

In my ongoing development of the Twitch stream, I've updated it to feature Spring-time graphics. I also added some improvements to the chat display and song request features, including a special end-screen animation, similar to GoldStream 2.0.

Sparkle particle FX for VIP's

I figured out a way to adjust to "Fog Settings" in Unity to dynamically change the lighting to feel like night-time without having to manually swap out color palettes.

Plushies

I am stealthily announcing that I'm collab'ing with Makeship again to produce more Gildedguy-themed plushies! This time featuring two characters: Penny & Lilian! Here's a look at their first full-color designs.

Super secret designs, don't share.

I'm working closely with the designers to ensure that these plushies are as close to the animated characters as possible. I also want to load them up with accessories so that if you already have a Gildedguy plush, you could swap the items out in many combinations. 

The requirement for manufacturing would be to reach 200 orders of each, with the stretch goal being 400 of each. Since we hit >700 orders of the Gildedguy plush, I'm optimistic!

I'm not exactly sure when these will go on sale - should it be before, during, or after the release of Story 8? Hmm. Either way, they're in the works and coming along nicely.

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That's all I have to share for now - back to work!