Hello friends. Things are picking up. Here's where we're at:
All the music in the episode is done except for the ending song - the person doing the final song is taking their time with it.
I have now finished all the character animation on my end. This is a major milestone. I've come to the realization of why I tend to be so "picky" about the character animation, and it's essentially because all the characters are me. The way I want them to move and emote is how I would act out the scene if I were playing this character and I have a hard time letting someone else do it in a way that satisfies me. This is why it's been so easy for me to hire out animators for high-intensity action scenes, but freak out whenever someone turns in a dialogue-heavy acting scene that just looks wrong to me. Given that I pour so much of myself into the writing and characters, it's very difficult to outsource character animation, the one thing that takes the very most time and energy. Luckily, I'm finished with it now, but going into the next episode I'm desperately going to need to find an animator that can do the characters to my satisfaction.
Although I am done with all my own character work, there is still one character left to animate - the character that I hired someone to work on exclusively (part of Scene F), who is still pending to start on May 14th. I really hope this person comes through, because if he too drops out, I will be very screwed and have to push stuff back even further than I already have.
Anyway - heading into May, I'm now going to attack the episode one scene at a time and try to get a fully rendered version, starting with Scene A all the way to Scene G. This means finalizing the camera, finalizing all set details, adding SFX, and basically making sure everything is set up the way I want. I am thinking that by the time I get to Scene F, the hired-out character will be complete and I'll have everything but that done.
I really thank you guys for your patience. At this point, the episode feels overdue, but thus far it seems really close to the original vision, so I hope it's all worth it. Anyway, thank you.
Shipp