Hello everyone!
This post is to give you an idea of where things are going now that I'm fully committed to this page.
Private messages:
I will disregard everything from over 2 weeks in my mailbox to start fresh, as it became an absolute crazy mess because of my reluctance to even look at them.
If you had sent me answered private messages, please send them to me again so that I start anew with a clear, clean inbox.
I will answer each and everyone of them.
The videos:
I am currently working on the Eden Initiative. That is the next big episode you'll get.
Before it releases, you'll get a couple of Quickfires, including a CD story.
I do intend to reopen the SS.
The VIP requests:
After releasing the Eden Initiative, I will endeavor to finish the previously requested videos.
After I am done with the previously paused list, I will reopen commissions.
Communication:
In addition to the "cleaned up" private message inbox, I would like to get a dedicated Discord, and within a special room for VIPs.
I have 0 idea of how Discord works, and I would need help with that, if a charitable soul is willing, please let me know in the comments and I'll contact you.
Rhythm:
I will not trade quality over quantity, I even started making my own atmospheric music for the videos. Therefore I still aim at releasing one video a month at the very least. I would rather keep expectations low rather than the opposite.
I will be more hands-on regarding messages.
Also, as started before, I'm planning on reopening the SS; creating alternative scenarios (or even sometimes versions) for videos will take a little extra time.
Series status:
We have two big series going right now:
Cruentum and Futacademy.
The Eden Initiative will add to that.
I am currently writing the next episode of Futacademy, and will start writing Chapter 3 of Cruentum soon.
I will keep releasing Quickfires and will create and release past requests, but I would like to focus on these stories as much as I can.
I also have The Preacher in the back of my mind, would love to continue the series, I just couldn't come up with a scenario yet.
How I work:
I take extra care to make all videos as qualitative and "realistic" as possible.
I always start by writing a scenario, I do not use AI to help me, everything stems from me.
Scenarios include dialogues and specific scene descriptions, but not specific animations.
After writing the scenario, I create the environment in-engine. I try to make it as realistic and plausible as possible.
I then create the characters, and this takes a while, I plan outfits and "undressed" states.
Once the characters are created, it is time to match animations for each scene from the scenario. This takes even longer.
The recording starts by shooting all "story" content, meaning the dialogue parts, exposition and atmospheric shots.
I then move onto the "action" scenes, where animations get used and each angle needs to be positioned accordingly to keep consistency.
Each angle you see is a clip. For comparison, Cruentum Chapter 2 consists of 451 clips.
The first part of editing is the music, I start by selecting what I consider to be appropriate music for each sequence of the video. I then import all clips into a first editing software to create the "raw" video, what I call "Unsubbed".
This involves cutting, deleting and adding scenes. That's usually where I realize some stuff is missing or doesn't make sense, and reshoots can usually happen.
Once the unsubbed version is satisfactory to me, I render and export.
The second part is importing the unsubbed version into another editing software.
This is when I add each color-coded line of dialogue from the scenario, sound effect, vfx etc... It takes a big amount of time.
After this is done, I try to review as carefully as possible the whole video to see if caption position matches, dialogue is correct and spelling errors are present.
Only then do I render and export.
I hope this gives a little more insight on how I get things done for each vid.
Anyways, that's it for now. Please, do let me know if you think you can help regarding the Discord.
Other than that...
Stay Awesome!
Elliot.