Did my shopping for today! Started by walking a few blocks to the dollar store to pick up some soap before I run out, then came back to do all the shopping I had to do on my own street: got a cooking pot at the thrift store so I could heat water for my tea, stopped at the local popcorn shop again to get more popcorn and soda, and finished up at the tea shop, right there on the first floor of my building, to pick up some honey for my tea, now that I can actually make the tea I bought there a couple of weeks ago. Nice herbal stuff for my throat so I can keep performing!
Sebastian was very mad at me when I got back. The old doggo doesn't like it when I leave him alone in the apartment. He barked at me until I took him on another walk. So, successful shopping trip, everything I've wanted to gather for a while. Certainly enough crossing streets and talking to people to make me have to take a few weeks to recover...
In other news, the storyboards for the pilot episode of The Choices are approaching 70% completion, with five of the episode's eight scenes being totally done with the boarding stage. I considered today, as I have before, actually making the animatics of the scenes that are done being boarded right now, but nah, there's just so much else to do, I will wait until the entire episode is boarded, and edit the entire reel all at once.
Certain scenes being finished as of today means we can start boarding the Irregular Fantasy! teaser, a little "standing around and talking" scene about three minutes long meant to be a proof-of-concept to demonstrate that we have the characters of Irregular Webcomic! designed, voiced, set to music, and semi-animated, all with the blessings of the comic's creator! None of which we can prove right now because it simply isn't true, hehe, but one thing at a time.
While boarding, we're simultaneously doing a quick redesign of the characters; then once we have an animatic, I hope to get back the voice actors from the old Icewind Dale custom soundsets and some musical score, and show that to David Morgan-Mar, who gave me a tentative blessing for the project last June. If the teaser impresses him, then we'll finish it. Being a very simple and short scene, we can probably finish it in-house with the people we already have, no need to seek out producers or freelancers quite yet. After the teaser, not sure; after all this Choices boarding it's pretty clear I don't really have much idea of what I'm getting into, but it's exciting, diving into the unknown like this.
Regarding those character redesigns, ah, yeah! We've also gotten around to doing some of that, now that we're started boarding that Fantasy teaser, also redesigning the characters, I've shown you those designs before. Let's see, does this site let me look back through pictures I've already put on the blog so I can post them again? It sure does!
Okay, but before I do that, ah, let's see, the first picture in a blog post gets displayed in all the links to it, so... I wanna post something cool first. How about these:
Anyway, back to the subject, these right here Irregular Fantasy character designs. Here they are:
Casey did these back in, eh, I wanna say September? Maybe a little earlier? So, yeah, great start! But the fact I've decided to make this a motion comic just like every other project instead of being CGI means we have to reduce the detail quite a bit; CGI characters can have a lot of detail because you only need to model them once, but in a comic or other drawn medium, you gotta draw them over and over again, so they need to be fairly simple. So I'm having Stacy do that -- taking this opportunity to not only simplify the characters but also maybe throw in a bit more accuracy to their comic designs, and also come up with a unique aesthetic, I'm thinking cheap action-adventure cartoons from the 80s.
Stacy's on that task because Casey is on another task... yeah, by some weird coincidence, all the projects we're actually launching are the ones where Casey did the visual development: The Choices, Irregular Fantasy, and Better Yet? Hopefully we'll get around to some Stacy and Naty style stuff pretty soon. But anyway, the reason Stacy is redoing the designs that Casey did initially, that'll be because now that Casey's done with the Better Yet? designs -- that's gonna be unveiled soon, it's really great -- she's on redesigning the cast of The Choices.
Yeah, these guys again, we've seen a lot of these character models over the past year. I am aiming now to create the ultimate, true, perfect versions of these characters, not only down to all the best little details from every drawing of them that's ever been done, but also defining the art style -- I want it very Disneyesque. After all the time I've neglected the Disney influence on the Keys & Kingdoms world, I might as well start by making the characters look like Disney characters. Injecting those influences back into the world and story, well, been workin' on it. Casey is brushing up a bit on that art style before she begins.
Of course, the standard Disney cast consists of two realistic-ish and very attractive romantic leads while the rest of the characters are super exaggerated and stylized... I don't really like the latter, but I managed to lift references from various places, mostly Disney films, to help nail the final designs of these characters. That makes diversity in body types a bit difficult, because again, all of the non-idealized characters in Disney are too cartoony for my tastes, but hopefully with what I've built up for designing these main characters, The Choices and the Keys & Kingdoms art style in general can develop a bit on its own so every character has the groundedness of a Disney hero, without being restricted to classically heroic body types.
Also! Just started work on TAPAS Podcast #50. That's a pretty cool milestone, so it'll start with a funny little on-camera intro, I'll be discussing four Disney films -- those released in 1998, including Mulan and A Bug's Life -- I'll be finishing the final book of The Secrets of Droon, and, er, there won't be anything remotely special about the fanfic segment of that episode, but otherwise very cool. Podcast #50, and then, only two more podcast episodes until we fire up TAPAS Phase Two!
*sigh* Why doesn't anyone read this blog? This thing has exactly two subscribers and only ever gotten one comment. I occasionally get a Facebook comment when I share a post there, but... not for the longest time.
Anyway, it's now the 29th, the day this blog post is due, so, let's see, what else is worth talking about?
Well, I'm a little bit nervous about my finances, getting started with vocational rehab took all month long, so I've got some utilities to pay... I'm gonna be okay, I'm not dead yet, if nothing's really turned around by this time next month, I'm gonna be worried, but I think I'm okay, just gotta take this release of information to the post office today and then, er, they get that, and... whatever comes next.
Ah, final note, yesterday was the third anniversary of TAPAS! We commemorated it with a very big Jackbox gaming video. Definitely haven't gotten as much done as I would have hoped in three years... Season 1 of the podcast still isn't over, The Choices has been in the storyboard stage for an entire year... ultimately no actual stories have been released, just podcasting and gaming and other little bits of art. But we're getting there... we're very, very close and I'm excited.
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