SovietWomble
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Random Dungeons & Dragons bullshittery - Update #4
🕑 Added 2025-05-05 18:36:09 +0000 UTCAnother week of effort on this previously stuck project, and here's another update folks. There's been an important deliverable.
For those not following...I've had a Dungeons and Dragons bullshittery stuck in development hell for years. And after the RoN bullshittery I decided to take a stab at trying to get it unstuck.
This time with help. Four (soon five) people are working on this with me. Mostly as artists.
Now one of the main questions with the plan for this cartoon was "can the artists I've recruited replicate the existing style?" There's not enough time to redo the whole thing. And by the end of week 2 it was quite clear that the answer to that question was "yes". And I've set them to task.
Now 7 of the 9 characters were done, as I've often mentioned. But Lump and Lashonda (played by myself and Cyanide) remained only partially done. Most of their models existed in MS paint pre-vis form with only Lump having an available side view.
That is...until this week.
The artist Zahmbei has plugged away at it. And she's successfully delivered the finished side asset of Lashonda. Shaded and with all the necessary animation layers. Combined with Lump it means that most of our scenes can now be animated.
Let the bickering commence:
Now this is a important deliverable. Because most of the remaining editing consists of these two. Talking shit at each other.
Sure there are plenty of custom alternate poses. Weapon strikes, turning to face the narrator, jumping off things, etc. But collectively they take up only a small amount of the overall runtime for the video.
What I'm saying is, a large amount of what's left has suddenly become unblocked.
There's another character I want to have reworked. And the artist NervousHawk did so. For I wasn't entirely happy with the final version of Nep's dwarf.
In an effort to make a joke land, where the crude plate armour Rarict was wearing morphed into a corset the moment she took over the character, I felt I oversexualised Nep. So I asked Nervous to take another crack at the design.
He's done a great job.
Honestly I'm feeling highly enthusiastic about this project overall now. For previous pain points are being rapidly corrected by the commissioned artists. And blockers are being swept away.
There's a lot of hard animation hours ahead. But in three weeks I feel like this has really turned a corner.
The sheet here is advancing slowly. And much of what is blue (missing assets) is started to turn red (ready for animating) - https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/19tOipWj8X3P8nNhxRY9jWX5xB8hi-gK450FbOfdButo/edit?usp=sharing
I still need to work through the outsourcing of the the dialogue work. But plans there are in place.
Editing continues. Slowly but with progress. I imagine I'll be shrieking for joy if this ever makes to the channel. Thanks for your support all.
Comments
Zachary Daly
Honestly Womble I hope you're seeing this - from what you've described, you're doing GOOD on this project so far. You've made instructions to a team, you made clear goals, you even made admissions where you made crude mistakes (like the dwarf needing the redesign), but you came clear and out with it and made it WORK. That's kind of where the rubber meets the road, and you're making this work. Those roadblocks can be easily overcome when you *get people talking to each other* - like you mentioned about all those testing meetings you mentioned in "The Forest" video essay. I think your in-house experience is coming in handy in this projects for exactly that reason. Overall, you're doing good. Carry on.
SrApathy
The pre-vis was good but this is gonna be epic!
Dr. Zeroplue
Yo, this is lookin' amazing, Soviet! Let's go!
