MoTR Production Update: Week 22
- 1rregularcharlie
- 1 hour ago
- 10 min read
Another fortnight passes, another MoTR Production Update impacts your monitors! >:D
So yep. Summer hasn't let up and it's still way to freaking hot in the UK right now. So much so we're officially in a nationwide drought. Dead grass everywhere.
Apart from in private schools and golf courses because... of course.
"Rules for thee but not for me." - The rich
Current Status:
General:
Woo okay. This might be a FAR shorter update than the previous one due to the fact that a great deal of the last 2 weeks has been spent converting Storyboard Pro files to .FBX for Blender import. Which required a lot of trolling through many undefined and invisible layers in Storyboard Pro.
After which I began storyboarding the new shots and sequences in Blender which... took some getting used to. But I'm happy to say we're chugging along. ACT 1 has the majority of changes but a chase sequence in ACT 2 is going to have to be completely redone, some shots will need to be added and changed because of new dialog and ACT 4 got completely redone (but it's a very short act), so that'll be a big undertaking.
Before I focused on all that however I managed to animate and complete another Scribble Short! Which I got fully animated in under 24hours, which I'm still very proud about. Then I properly experienced a fair bit of burnout in regards to the weekly comics I make separately from MoTR, that I will go over later on this update.
ANYWAY, into the deets we go.
Scribble Shorts:
Somehow I only just realised that this is constantly going to be the first thing on the agender in this Production Blog updates from now on.
Anywhozel! We have ourselves another Scribble Short!
Had a lot of fun with this one. Gave me an excuse to draw HANDSOME POTAS for like... 30 frames, gave Finn a chance to put his voice to the character of Eliot and I decided to use the must up to date 3D model of The Grand Vagabond plus the lovely background artwork of Melotea.
Natka also had some fun with some of the stills.
Potas contemplates arson. Thanks Natka. HANDSOME POTAS The single frame reaction Hawkins gets to handsome Potas.
Teamwork really does make the dweam work. :P
Feast ye peepers!
Already got the next one planned in terms of audio and a backup ready if that one doesn't pan out due to schedule conflicts. :)
Strangely uploading this to the socials really did gave me some unexpected insights into how all this social media bollocks works. Also gave me even more appreciation for Social Media Managers because this crap really doesn't come naturally to me.
The social media response:
So, as I revealed above. I really can't get my head around a lot of social media and the algorithms that dominate it. I thought I understood but, given the bizarre propagation of the last Scribble Short, I clearly do not.
See, I was labouring under the belief that short form content like this really was the best way to get something spread around. Whilst that still might be the case it's clearly very different depending on which platform you are using.
YouTube:
On Youtube the first short did pretty well off the bat, easily hitting 2K views in like 2 days. I didn't do anything particularly special with the tagging/labelling of the video. As expected the views then started to dip which I'm not too fussed about. these shorts are essentially the animated snacks of the animation world and are meant to wet an appetite for more.
The 2nd one (seen above) CRAWLED to the 500 views it's at now. I actually added some more tags and labels to this one because I assumed with more of those it would appear on more searches and thus the algorithm would be more likely to spread it. Clearly that was not the case.
So I'm left to assume that longer shorts do better on youtube? Or at least get shared more? Or perhaps it did better because it was the first short I uploaded? Maybe because I put it straight to public instead of leaving in on unlisted before turn it public? I'm truly not sure. I'll be keeping my eye on it.
Instagram:
So on Instagram the short actually did fairly good (for me that is). Certainly got a lot more traction than the previous short which I imagine is probably more down to the fact I tagged everyone who helped in making it.
As you can see, it actually reached the eyeballs of a lot of people who don't already follow me. Which is EXACTLY what I want. The whole point of these shorts is the spread knowledge of Member of The Revelry.
So yeah, gonna keep tagging everyone, everyone short. :P
Tiktok:
So, for me this was the strangest of the responses. To be clear, Tiktok is the newest social media I got. I literally only made an account following the advice of Shogako (voice of Sulfu) because she's experienced a fair amount of surprising success with her lovely artwork there (which you shold check out because it's good and she's lovely).
As such, it has the fewest followers of all my socials (>10 at the time of typing this).
So I was very surprised when it shot up to 870 views in under an hour. More so that it immediately dropped off after that hour.
I was honestly expected like 50 views tops.
I think the primary reason for this sudden burst of views was the tags I used. In particular I used the #animationmeme tag, which seemed to make it jump up on a lot of folks For You tab? But then I can only assume it didn't get enough of a response for the Tiktok algorythm to continue to recommend it?
Regardless it certainly did reach some new eyes which is axactly what I was looking for.
In conclusion, I still do not understand social media but must continue to suffer it's intricacies to build an audience for MoTR.
Storyboarding:
Storybord Pro to Blender:
Okay! Let's get into this mess!
So as I mentioned last update, a great deal of the last 2 weeks was dedicated PURELY to converting Storyboard Pro files to FBX files to import into Blender.
Ever since we realised that boarding in Blender would be both simpler and cheaper than hoping back a forth between 3 programs, we always intended to shift everything to Blender. I dragged me feet on doing so as I was focused on other elements of the production at the time, but an email from ToonBoom stating they we're going to bill me another £600+ to continue my Storyboard Pro lisence for another year quickly made me realise it needed doing NOW.
So I went through the long a boring process of openning up every sequence in the Episode 1 storyboards in Storyboard Pro, and began properly labaling layers (dammit past Charlie), deleting invisible layers (a lot of those) and make sure that when the sequence was converted into .FBX files that it wouldn't add an additional rough 3D model of the enviroment everytime a board changed.
As you can imagine this took some time and was soul draining. Honestly reminded me of the Data Entry work I did back in the day.
Never the less I'm happy to say that all the shots for Episode 1, and the proper Animated Shorts, have been converted successfully to .FBX files and can be imported and organised properly in Blender.
Thumbnailing the new shots:
In animation/film/visual production it can be real helpful to do something called Thumbnailing.
What this is creating a series of VERY ROUGH shot layouts in squares/boxes, ideally not much bigger than your thumbnail.
The purpose of this is to essentially organise your thoughts and see how the sequence you imagined actually plays out when it front of you. The general rule of thum is not to work about drawing it well, because you don't intend to show anyone. It's just for you, as the creator/storyboarder to figure out a sequence.
... Unfortunately for me, and to your no doubt great amusement, I use this Production Blog updates to basically word vomit literally EVERYTHING I've done/am doing for this project.
So squint in horror at this:
You are allowed to laugh. Lord knows Natka and Lance (voice of Mr Hyppos and Party Balloon) did on the Production Discord.
With that said I actually found this really helpful for chosing angles and camera movements for the new boards.
Speaking offfffff...
The new boards for Episode 1:
There was certainly a learning curve to storyboard directly into Blender.
The Plugin we have is simply called Storyboard Tools and uses the Greese Pen to allow artists the draw directly into a plane in a 3D enviroment, as if it was 2D.
The spacial aspect I have never really sturggled with. I don't know why it is but I've always had a good head for position and placement in 3D enviroments. Probably due to my mother's influence. Myself and my mum tend not to get lost when in unfamilar enviroments because we build up mental 3D models in our heads as we're moving around. Unlike my Dad, who does not and gets lost very easily. :P
I did however struggle with the lack of the quality of life features in Storyboard Pro and Toonboom I've come to rely on. For example, the ability to select individual brush strokes and edit drawings after I've drawn them.
For examples if I drew a hand to large in ToonBoom or Storyboard Pro, I could simplier select the brush strokes that made it and scale them down. With my currerent understanding of the tools in Blender, I can't do that. If something is drawn wrong I just have to erase it and try again.
As a result I've had to just embrace a far more messy style and accept that the boards are not going to have the clean clarity of the previous ones.
To be fair, storyboards really shouldn't be as clean and detailed as I usually make them. A little bit of perfectionism tends to come out of me when review my own work. Which has it's moments of usefulness and moments of annoyance. In this case; annoyance. The rougher look does what it's meant to. Give guidance to the animators and correctly layout the shot.
The trade off however is that I can directly affect the 3D enviroment which I've taken full advantage of!
Lighting:
As you can see in the animatic above I've taken full advantage of the lighting system within Blender. I've also used a simple black plane to add a ceiling (which wasn't in Katherine's intial rough model) and then added another white plane that emits light, cut to resemble the gaps of the hatch, to give the enviroment the dim lighting I had imagined. I've also added a orange light coming from a jar to catch both the viewers eyes and Hawkins'.
This kind of lighting simple wasn't something I could do in Storyboard Pro or ToonBoom and I think it really adds to the atmosphere.
This is obviously still very rough and when we get closer to properly rendering out this shots, full animated and textured, we'll definately do a better a job. :P
Manipulating the mesh:
You can see in this shot that I can now manipulate the 3D environment itself in time with the 2D boarding of the characters. So now I can actually place the camera within the crate itself and have the lid open. In Storyboard Pro I basically had to place the camera just above the actual crate and add drawings of both the bottom and top of the crate myself.
The future boards:
So yeah, this will be my focus for the coming weeks. Getting all the new shots and sequences boarded up properly in Blender, ready for the VAs to do their new lines with visual guidance.
Then spend a little time getting the fully animated short boards cleaned up and ready in Blender (shouldn't take long).
After which we'll hopefully finally be able to get back to rough animation for the shorts. Which will involved hopefully bringing in other freelance animators.
But that's future stufffff.
Burnout:
Okay so I breifly mentioned this at the start but let's go into details.
For over a year now I've been dedicating my Sunday's to creating short little comic strips of me experiencing life. Anything I can think of really. This was partly because it gave me something to put out onto the socials every week and partly because it was good practice (I actually credit doing this for improving my art style).
But for the last couple of months it's felt increasingly... forced? At some point it became something I HAD to do and it fell into a very established format. So I felt resistricted and frustrated and thus I made this comic last Sunday to just, lay out my feelings.
Panel 1: Charlie is laying down in the middle of a white void looking tired. Panel 2: Charlie says "I think I'm burnt out on making these comics every week." Panel 3: "It's nice to have something to do at the end of every week. And it's improved as a result. Panel 4: "But forcing these out every week is starting to feel..." Panel 5: "I dunno. Insincere?" Panel 6: "Or maybe I just need a break? Still want something to put out there weekly. (It's good pra Panel 7: "Don't want to sink back into barely putting anything out there. But I also don't want to f Panel 8: "Also kinda worried that if I don't constantly put stuff out there the algorithm will F--- Panel 9: "Bleh."
I mean, I did it to myself at the end of the day. So whatcha gonna do?
Thus I've decided from now on that my Sunday's are still gonna be dedicated to doing art and sharing it, but it doesn't HAVE to be a comic. Can just be whatever I feel like drawing. Got a design of a character unrelated to MoTR I've been meaning to draw for ages stuck in my head I kinda wonna doodle out.
Also some folks were worried that this meant I was burnt out on Member of The Revelry and I cannot empathise this enough:
I AM NOT BURNT OUT ON MoTR. I'VE BEEN WANTING TO MAKE THIS SERIES FOR YEEEEAAAARRRSSSS. I'M STILL VERY EXCITED ABOUT THE PROGRESS BEING MADE ON IT.
Just being clear.
The Crew:
So the rest of the crew are doing their thing. I've mentioned before but it bares repeating, I am the only one currently working on this full time. Everyone else chips in when they can, between their jobs and life. Which I cannot thank them enough for.
With that in mind no updates on the modelling lately as Katherine is tackling the joys of changing accomidations and Natka's dealing with life, work and dodgy wrist.
Such is the way of things.
The VAs are clearly enjoying getting little bit roles in the Scribble Shorts though which delights me. :P
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