October Snapshot #8 + Keynote on future projects

Greetings Everyone,

So I wanted to start all this off by extending a huge thanks to all of you who have supported my work in the course of the last few years. Its been a really transformative experience (no pun intended :P) working with so many awesome enthusiasts and passionate fans of the arts. I've opened my eyes up to a lot of things I didn't expect to ever be that involved in and I'm grateful for that.

Which leads me to elaborate a bit in this post about the future of my project plans (not to detract too much from the standard open studio schedule.) Animation as you might have noticed is a very labor intensive process, requiring the premise of a plot to develop, choreographing all the shots, the looks of the characters, the actions that happen, making a rough and cleaned up pass, inbetweening the cels and painting some of them in full color to convey depth and design. All usually without the assistance of interpolation or keyed shapes - which by themselves are useful tools are often in my instances very edge case specific. All while keeping them confined to short bursts of time between 10-40 seconds!

Since I've started doing all this my curiosity to push the limits of my work has been never ending. I had recently attended the Blender Conference 2022 which felt like a smashing success. Lots of interesting groups to congregate with and learning tools of the trade. Blender, much like many of the other tools I use, is something of a curiosity for my ambitions. It does feature the 'grease pencil' which is a discussion of its own but it also allows me to work with plates and divided visual designs to create effects like parallaxes or a depth of field. I definitely want to flesh out the environments of these animations and give characters more of a natural placement in these scenes I make. The aim of 'narrative' animation isn't just to feature the subjects but the environments they're in and I intend on aiming to improve this aspect.

Another area I discussed earlier on was the goal of helping other aspiring artists dip their toes into animation by assisting me in projects. I am a firm believer that people should be paid well for their work and it was something I have been steadily cultivating in my works, which is why you might notice the prices being raised periodically - this is all coinciding with the plans I have established in hiring others to assist me in the projects I work on. As mentioned before animation can be an enormous amount of labor and having some helping hands, not to mention an extra dose of creativity to bounce off of, really helps which is why I am announcing the inclusion of the first forays into this area. I will likely be working with a variety of artists for various things since all of this is dependent on their schedule and justifiably of work to pay ratio. It will likely always be a fluid affair but I like the idea of formulating a sort of informal studio space to cooperate with others concerning these projects.

This leads me to finally discuss the last major point which I wanted to bring to the forefront and might not be as popular to all of the fanfare earlier in this entry - and that is balance. 

Some of you will have followed my work long enough to see the evolution of my services and options I provide. I want to explore narrative animations for my own satisfaction but I also want to provide those who support my cause a little extra benefit in that as well. I had already mentioned my commitment to maintaining the original prices that people will be expecting from the time they had inquired and been included to the waiting list while I also have been examining ways to streamline this process to introduce the slotting system I had developed - and while I am much closer to completing this waiting list my expectations to completing said list by the end of the year is looking increasingly unlikely. 

So! I have decided to make changes in helping balance the services offered and time it takes to complete them, I have attached a screenshot of the augmented price list for those of who you are expecting a project in the future to review.

Take note that I have committed to keeping the same prices for the 10 and 20 second line work segments - the base price - the same as mentioned before, however any augmentations be they color, characters, frame rates, etc will be subject to the contemporary pricing to ensure the payoff allows me to bring in help if needed and furnish my finances for longer development times. I also had to make the difficult decision in removing the 30 second option from this point until slotting is made available simply due to the prohibitively large scope of work they entail - its simply not a possibility without expending a much longer period if I am to maintain the quality and effort I feel it should have as well.

I am also committed to ensuring those of who you have to prematurely end your support for any reason are compensated with the original benefits you were bestowed as a supporter. The format of waiting lists is simply not ideal in ensuring those who have been waiting patiently are compensated for their commitment in time so I have no issue ensuring this and I have made a detailed and informative list to keep track of those who are or have been supporters in concluding all this.

The specially tailored pricing is something I can show under the commissions tab of the document that is made available at request or at the time of discussing project formats (link below) I simply hide it for clarity when I am not reviewing the information with interested parties at the appropriate time.

If any of you have any questions or concerns my discord and Patreon inboxes are always open to feedback, you can also contact me via FA and Twitter if that suits you better.

Thank you all for your sincerity and patience, it does mean a lot for my part while working through these processes carefully and steadily.

Project planner documentation link:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1NpvujA0pmGz0EChLYgZVl4bli0F-styitnHfnv007k0/edit?usp=sharing

~WK