BlueLightSFM
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Year in Review
🕑 Added 2018-12-07 21:48:48 +0000 UTC Welcome to the roller coaster that is my SFM work, this new low brought to you by the Tumblrpocolypse. I think most points in this post have been mentioned before, but this is a more comprehensive post, and I think that I can articulate a few things better.I'll start with Tumblr. It certainly sucks that 10k+ followers are going down the toilet. Twitter doesn't seem like a great alternative, but it's also the most popular one for now. It's possible that branching out to other sites could be beneficial, but I'm pretty worried this could be a hit to exposure.
Next up, my main project, Undercover ASSignment: Omega. There's a lot I can talk about here, but I think I can articulate it better with the title. Undercover ASSignment: Omega. I've got nothing about the undercover assignment, and it barely looks like Omega. So what the fuck am I doing?
Well, that's because the movie was only ever going to be 5 minutes long, and only use audio from the games. The scene build actually predates having any voice actors on the project. It was actually a re-make of another scene build inspired from the Citadel's Purgatory. Otherwise, the only Omega inspirations are the center hologram spire and the skybox (which you can barely even see, lol). Okay, so that's the scene buildings. Even if I could fix that, there's still the story.
The story was kept short to keep animation time and voice acting costs low. Yet the movie still ended up being 15-20 minutes to include a good variety of scenes. So now I have an overly lengthy movie that somehow still isn't good enough. Can't cut stuff without reducing quality. Can't add stuff without money. Can't make money when nothing is finished. Can't finish shit when everything is so long. Can't do other projects if I've got the movie. Outside of the movie and some posters, I've completed 5 whole loops, oh boy.
So what have I completed this year? Well, 4 minutes of animation towards the movie should be pretty impressive. Except even that is incomplete in terms of lighting, transitions, sound work, and editing. So the most I've completed is still too unfinished to see any public release. And quite frankly, I don't think it's good enough either. I suppose that's the problem with working on something for so long. If I get better, the beginning will be worse. On top of that, I have to sacrifice quality for length of the movie. So I've sunk most of the year on something I really want to make, yet I'm not really please with.
The disappointment of having to consider re-working or adding to an already huge yet unfinished project is crushing.
I've also tried blender. That was actually pretty fun to learn. I've gotten reasonably used to it, and I like being able to directly manipulate stuff. The quality work other people have put out is pretty amazing. But it sure seemed like hitting a brick wall once it came to performance. My aging GTX 770 just isn't cutting it. Trying to play around with lighting and shaders was awful. Rendering was so slow. So now I'm disappointed in SFM yet can barely manage to utilize Blender. Perhaps 2.8 will help.
There's probably more to say, but this turned into such a rant. Thanks to anyone who bothered to read it all. I'll summarize:
- I want to create more stuff, loops or whatever, and I'm really disappointed with how few things I've made this year.
- Undercover ASSignment: Omega isn't cancelled, but damn if I haven't almost convinced myself once I typed this all out.
- Blender could be cool but I've struggled mainly because of performance.
I'd really appreciate feedback. I don't want to disappoint anyone, but I don't really know what to do. I don't really know what people want me to do.
Comments
Nice
BlueLight
I've played around with Blender quite a bit, so I'm aware of its lack in resources. Movies are basically impossible on cycles, but there is some potential with Eevee. It only just hit beta so I haven't played around with it much. I think it can still be useful as I do want to do loops in addition to movie projects. Aside from performance, character rigging is easily Blender's next greatest limitation.
KamadevaSFM
Dont be to optimistic with blender. Its just an illusion of *one room and greenscreen +loop*. For its basically "testing" :D Most blender artist do 2 loops and a greenscreen ,thats it ,maybe even less pictures. You need the MASSIvE recources of SFM workshop and other sources to make a decent scenery and yea without renderfarm ,good luck with that :D Check selfdrillingsms his works are 90% from sfm .Just stick to it in a regulary routine bases ,worktime a day can vary but as long you give updates its cool .
lakrj
twitter sucks, and might ban pornographic content at some point in the future too. The only way to be immune to censorship is to go decentralized and federated. You could set up an account on an instance of Pleroma or GNU Social, which are part of the ActivityPub Fediverse. Or Diaspora, Friendica, etc.
Hey, first of all I really appreciate your honest! It's cool to get the insight into the creation process with both the highs and lows. As for your feelings about the year - it sucks that you feel like you haven't accomplished enough. I too was drawn to you thanks to the Undercover Assignment, and I would love to see it completed. However I understand that it is a tough project, in terms of length and quality it is very ambitious. I'm not quite sure where I am going with this, I think I just wanted to say that I think you're great and should keep up the good work. <3
BlueLight
I appreciate the feedback. I think the greatest difference about those animators, and what I've been afraid to talk about, is money. Most of those guys make at least 3-4 times as much. The amount of effort for this movie should be a full time job, but I don't earn enough for that stability, so the pacing is inconsistent. And the longer it is to make something, the harder it is to gain support. It's an awkward cycle, one which I've always tried to break from. I greatly appreciate the support that I do have though.
UnprocessedCoalLump
Alright. Well, for starters, I fucking love your work. I love what you do and I would be very happy if you kept on doing it. Undercover Assignment will be a great way to showcase your work and, if you look around, some of the biggest SFM animators on patreon right now are all working on big projects like yours and take equally long, if not longer, to produce their content. BigJohnson has been working on what's it called Special Delivery(?) for almost 2 years now. Aardvark hasn't finished Blue Star episode 3 in nearly 2 years, FOW have all these animators and barely have any good stream of content. Animo has just released a new movie, and by just I mean 3 months ago and the next one's not gonna be ready for another year. So your frustration is expected and understandable. The tumblr situation is a crapshoot for everyone. There will definitelly be a next thing, but that will take some time. There is also very affordable PC hardware on the horizon with 7nm entering mass production for CPUs and GPUs in the mainstream, as I am looking into the PC stuff myself, lately. Once that hits, you should make an amazon wishlist and post it, that's still a thing right? For some of your followers money is not going to be such an issue, and if it helps with your production, it may be worth a shot. I don't have to make stupid *wink wink* comments, do I? I think I'm pretty clear on that. We'll help. So anyway, sorry for the overly long comment, longer than what I usually leave, you're awesome, keep doing what you're doing.
BlueLight
Tumblr has been getting shittier, I'll give you that.
BlueLight
That's sort of the pressure I mean. Undercover ASSignment is "the" thing I have going for me. To me, that's all I really have that's unique. But it also means if I don't have good progress on it, then it's not good enough.
Derples
Also fuck tumblr, that shithole needs to die anyways. Twitter is a good platform for porn, so it should be good
Derples
At the moment, I’m only here for Undercover ASSignment. I can’t explain what it is, but the artist can never jack off to his own work while others treat it as a fap god. So don’t worry, buckle down and keep going. The way you can tell if it’s up to par is by the comments/likes patrons drop. You’ve already got so far, now it’s time to make that little push to get to the end
BlueLight
I really want to make this movie. It's just quite frustrating at times, and I think my standards are too high. I don't think it could ever be fully canceled. There's so much great audio for Miranda, and I absolutely still want to do stuff with her on Omega. I think the pressure is too great, and yet it is mostly the pressure I put on myself. I just need to re-think things.
Malgus26
Look.....this year has been pretty tough. Tumblr going down the shitter fucking sucks and now everybody has to move to a new platform possible losing a lot of followers and trying to get them back and more will take some time. I just ask that you please not cancel the Undercover ASSignment: Omega project. I am really looking forward to when it is finally completed and I will be here for however long that takes. I will continue to support you through this and I know others will as well. Just take a moment for yourself every now and then, whether its a couple days off or working on a loop. Sorry for the long comment and I hope everything starts to look up for you. Here's to 2019!!!
