March Update: Sneak Peek, Concept Art & Plushie Development!

Dear Patrons,

Ahh, time is going fast again - it's already been a month? This time, the update is going to be a bit short, because I'm in the middle of packing for a business trip to Sweden, and time kinda ended up slipping away from me!

THIS MONTH'S PREVIEW:

This month's preview is one you've already seen if you saw the plush campaign video, but here it is stand-alone, and here are some insights: this bit of animation is actually hybridized animation between handdrawn and rigged! Here's what Zale actually looks like when you turn on the deformers:

I had roughed out the animation, and had actually started cleaning it up traditionally, then I realized that the amount of time I was about to spend making inbetweens wouldn't be representational of the resources we'd have available in production. I'd recently seen Marc Hendry's video about how to mix and match the handdrawn and rigged animation approaches together and decided that this might be something worth trying out. While I'm adamant about Zale and Alba's full body acting absolutely working best with the freedom and expressiveness of handdrawn 2D animation, there are many shots where I'd like to get in closer and have their acting be more subtle. If I made some head rigs, or even just eyes and mouth rigs for some of these cases, that'd allow us to get that softness, while also cutting down on some of the clean-up time. I'd actually be able to get that type of eye animation that I prefer:

So this was a little prototype for how such shots could be approached. The beginning and end are hand-drawn, but when we get to the facial acting, that's rigged. It's a bit rough, and was definitely still a learning process - but I'd be curious to hear what you all think of the initial result!

CONCEPT ART: 

This month's concept art piece is by Paula Huerta! Is was based on an intial thumbnail made a while back by Phoebe Mao:

After looking over some references, Paula started making a couple different variations so we had some options to go from:

After locking down on something that was pretty close to the original, we looked into a few variation on the fence and powerlines too:

And then, finally, color options:

And then, it was just a matter of drawin it! I unfortunately don't have the different versions we went through anymore, but this is where we ended up:

Looking back at all the options we had in the different thumbnail stages, I'd probably have chosen a bit differently today. But I think I was really going for establishing a range of different compositions and color schemes, rather than only looking at the individual piece.

ZALE PLUSH:

So, as you probably saw, we reached the pledge goal on Gimmeswag to make the Zale plush!

That means that we've started the design phase for the prototype! Below are my initial instructions. I'm pretty happy with that initial Zale plush sketch, and that's what people have pledge to as well, so I've based the brief on that:

They already sent back their initial design, and although I had a couple of notes, it does look like we can stay pretty close to this idea.

The campaign is closed until the pre-orders open, but if you want mail updates as it happens, you can still sign up for notifications here on the website. I'll be sure to yell plenty loud about it once the campaign opens up as well though!

LOFI:

Ahhh I wish Patreon allowed allowed audio previews right about here, but I'll have to just give you my word instead that Matthew is cooking up something quite magical at the moment. What he is making right now is gonna be the soundtrack of my steams, and general life for years to come!

DTIYS: 

For those who haven't seen, we're running another Draw-This-In-Your-Own-Style challenge over on the Discord! It's gonna come out on other social media as well, but I've been waiting till the enamel pins arrived, because I want to make them a winning prize. They got a bit delayed unfortunately, but should arrive sometime next week!

TV-SERIES:

This one is low on the list this month, because there isn't much new to report. We're still in conversations and negotiations. I wish things moved quicker, but I'm glad I can at least work on some of the prep work in the meanwhile!

ROUND-UP:

Aaand now I'm off for my trip! The chicks hatched and are all grown up, by the way. Four healthy chirpers... so much can happen in a month!