August 2026 Update

Hey everyone, hope you’re doing great and you enjoyed Protocol: Heat, which is now available to the public. Let me start doing the post mortem on it.
 
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Protocol: Heat

 
There’s a saying that last 10% of the work takes 90% of the time and it was definitely true this time. It was definitely a planning issue from the start. The club animation was supposed to be simple, un-polished, without voice acting, just a quick mash up of random scenes.
 
And of course, I wasn’t allowed to do that. Partially because the audience demanded better, partially because I demanded better myself. I wanted to do some quick low quality gooner stuff and while it still is low quality gooner stuff, it wasn’t quick at all.
 
In march, when I decided to combine the first 15 minutes of the animation into a single one, I gave the animation to the audio guy and said “Look, this trash needs some SFX, I don’t want to look at it anymore, I don’t want to change it, it’s final. I don’t want it to have voice acting, because it wasn’t made with it in mind, just add music and some sound effects”.
 
But then he said “Hey, I can probably hire some VA’s to do the voice over, just give me the script.”
 
You have to understand, the main thing I dreaded was finding, auditing and hiring a bunch of VA’s (I just want to make cool 3D shit, not manage and coordinate a bunch of people). So okay, if I can pay someone to deal with it, great, I’ll take that offer. Of course, the script didn’t exist to begin with, but I mostly knew what I intended the characters to say, so I made one up on the spot.
 
Then came a long time with occasional reviewing of some recordings. I think the audio guy realized he made a mistake and signed up for more than he expected with how chaotic the animation is and how many characters are in it. But to Zorak’s credit, he delivered in the end. It definitely took longer than he or I expected though.
 
Fast forward to 15th of July, I got the full draft of the audio. Great, I can finally release it. Let me just run it through the quality assurance team, aka a few fantastic Discord people that signed up for this torture. You have to understand that at this point I cannot look at the animation myself without vomiting all over my keyboard. My brain turns off when I try to watch it. Imagine you watched a single movie 3000 times, frame by frame. That’s what animating is, I cannot look at any of my completed animations, even years later.
 
The quality assurance team is like “This shit is unwatchable, because the spoken lines are not lipsynced with character’s mouths and it ruins the whole thing.”
 
It’s so good to have people that actually tell what they really think and it’s so hard to find them. Most people don’t want to hurt your feelings and they’ll sugarcoat things. Let me tell you, without their feedback, I would’ve shipped this immediately without watching.
 
So basically, I went through all the stages of grief and went on a quest to find the final_final versions of the project files that were spread all over the place (some of the scenes were rendered over a year ago, that was before I swapped to Linux). Then, of course, Blender broke them in many ways through updates. Now, animating in files with physics and everything is painful, viewport barely works. The lipsync is not fantastic, I basically only somewhat synced the mouths with the lines. My computers didn’t appreciate doing a 24/7 full blast rendering in the current weather either.
 
So yeah, second half of July I was crunching the lipsync and re-rendering of the lipsynced parts. Also I did the credits scene, because I thought it would be cool (originally it was intended to be just to be continued screen with a list of names).
 
TL;DR
I’m a scatterbrain retard without ability to plan, foresight or hindsight.
I want to say I learned on my mistakes and won’t make them again, but I probably will make them again.
 
Thank you for your patience.
 
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Protocol: Euphoria

 
That brings us to the continuation of this animation. Even though I have 7-8 minutes of animation basically in final rendered state (or so I thought), it’s clear it doesn’t work and I need to go back, script and plan everything properly, record all the voice acting, and only then I can animate (and fix what’s already there). So the R’Shiru+Eleonore part is on hiatus until I get the mental strength to do that.
 
And of course there’s the aspect of it that it includes a lot of funny magic potions and beastly cocks, which I don’t think payment processors approve, so maybe it would be a better idea to can it completely. Eh, I’ll keep you updated.
 
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Meru tentacle thing

 
I was busy with Protocol: Heat, I didn’t do much on this front.
I will get all the files of EP01 to audio guy on Monday, hopefully he didn’t block me and will take the job (in this case much, much simpler). No timelines, no promises. Predicting ETA’s never worked.
 
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Other stuff

 
I only have ~9 image renders from July, so I think I’ll pass on making a pack this month and bundle them with August ones. I’ve been also continuously working on character models, we have one that’s going to appear soon in random stuff, but also I have some more important canon ones that’ll come into play later.
 
Making 3D models takes quite some time. Yes, it is an excuse, but it’s a valid one. Slow releases are not just because I’m a lazy bum.
 
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Thank you for your amazing support. I read every bit of feedback and every comment, even if I don’t reply to every single one. Your opinion matters.