WIP 180711 + Oops

I'm sorry, guys! I said we'd try out a patron-only stream this week. Monday I sat down for it, and then noticed that I can't, quite. Patreon has two options for hosting a livestream: YouTube or Crowdcast. The latter wants $40 a month (yikes??) and the former requires an approved Google AdSense account.

If you've never worked with AdSense before, it's a hilarious beast. Yes, blogs make plenty of money with their ads, but first you have to make a website that passes muster with Google, and you MIGHT GUESS that comic websites comprised 90% of images do... ah, not. "Insufficient content," right.
Traditional internet wisdom recommends writing a blog for six months and then applying again. Well then! Add that to my list of "unfulfilled business ideas," I guess.

Anyway, I apologize for not delivering that one! I'll still be streaming work on the next Doc tomorrow afternoon (CST), so catch me on Twitch if you like.

Let's talk about progress on The Phoenix Chronicles:

First step (as always in these things) is the script. I already had episode 1's script ready before I finished the prologue, and the script for remaining episodes is in a notation/outline stage. Whether or not I'll dive in and finish that depends on how well I execute episode 1, so we'll wait and see while I work and work. If its current format isn't received well or proves inefficient, I'll have to mix it up and try something else--even if that means dropping the project. If it DOES go well, I'll pick up some voice actors and we'll really start to have some fun. :P

Episode 1 is longer than what I have planned for average--it does some work establishing three of the main characters and three plot devices, in three separate scenarios. The first scenario is the shortest, with only two scenes: one at the beginning and one at the end, to frame the episode. The other two character scenarios have three scenes that are inter-cut/juxtaposed around the same theme (spoiler: that theme is "treasure hunting" ;) I didn't really WANT to start with a long episode, but I'm excited about how it'll turn out, anyway. I'm going cut some corners to get it done as quick as I can, *with lots of luck* by the end of this year.

I've started on the first scenario with asset building in Blender. The character models I posted earlier (and the ones in this post) are part of that set. Of the eight "NPC"s I made, four of them have speaking lines, so those got the most detail and rigging, and for the others I slacked off a bit. If I'm going to do any large groups/crowds in the future, I'll definitely scale the effort waaaaaaaaay back, because while I *do* like practice building character models, I don't want to spend that much time on bullshit viewers won't focus on (hey, remember how RWBY volume 1 got away with all those black p--I mean shadowy figures?) There's even cooler (read: cheaper) tricks with billboards to make background characters that I'm looking forward to trying out.

That done, I'm starting on storyboarding with the grease pencil. After that is constructing the set, and then animating with the temp audio I recorded yesterday, and then editing up the subtitles and sound effects.
And that'll be the first scene! I'll share what I've got with you guys as soon as it renders.

Gotta experiment, listen to feedback, try everything while you're still young.