Who would have thought that editing a 6 hour video would take longer than a 3 hour one? Additionally I had some fun and drama with KDEnlive, apparently its annoying settings are per project; I had to specifically tell it to use most of my cores for rendering as it kept trying to use one and overheating my computer which caused it to hang and made me mad. And even after telling it to use 7 threads (so I could have one to do stuff with) as it turned out I had to just sit and let it do its thing all by itself as if I attempted to use my computer while it was rendering something would violently overheat and then the computer would hang.

This one’s especially for @jedau on Steemit hive who has made numerous requests for a process video. So here’s me retopologising Za’haran/Red like I know what I’m doing, 3hrs timelapsed into ~8.5mins (bonus: learned KDEnlive). I apologise if the flinging around in and outside the head I was doing gives anyone motion sickness. And who knew trying to credit everything I was listening to would take all day, might never do that one again XD

My headache has finally cleared but my shoulder is still hurting like hell so I managed to completely forget about streaming this weekend, not that I would have been able to stream for more than an hour anyway at the rate I was going, had to take very frequent breaks! Retopo is another thing that really isn’t my friend so even if I did know a way to reuse retopo models I would likely just keep doing retopo per character just for practice.

Yep I’m trying to stream again. I’m currently looking at Thursdays again (because that’s when the inlaws come down to hang with the grandkids and then somehow my house gets cleaned in the meantime, yes I have awesome relatives), Tuesday nights and one of the two weekend days (which one will depend on what is going on at the time), won’t be announcing them til I can make sure the schedule works reliably though. If you’re keen as mustard you can still drop in if you like though.

This has been the better part of a week in the making. Almost full days because I stupidly thought that I would get it done next session. I now have headache-caused-by-terrible-posture and my neck is violently out again. Pro-tip: do not spend hours a day hunched over a tablet. And while I’m not completely happy with it I’m happy enough to post it. And obviously I need a hell of a lot more practice with dark scenes.

Wings are more or less done. I say “more or less” because I was spending a very long time obsessing about the edges of the wing membranes, and then figured I should just make sure they’re thick enough to retopo around and not obsess about that kind of thing too much. So I did that for the two inner membranes (I obsessed over the two outer ones before making this realisation) and made sure the wing fingers were more or less symmetrical on either side and easily visible to retopo over.

I miss you like nobody else. The memorial forest was quiet. It usually was, especially at this time of day. Walking on autopilot with her head down, Zara unerringly wended her way to the tree she wanted. The markers were all identical; elegant stone slabs extending a metre and a half out of the ground in their neat little rows. The trees were a bit more individual, growing wild and free. The marker simply said “In loving memory”. Zara absently touched the screen on the top of the marker. It brought up a timeline of all the people that had been buried under that tree.

Where you come from and where you wanna go this time? Zara and Zul’jinn hanging out in a courtyard either at Zara’s aprtment complex or more likely Juan’s place. There isn’t so much rhyme or reason to this, it just kind of happened while I was listening to the chorus of Red Hot Chilli Peppers: Tell Me Baby. As a young adult most of Zara’s gymnastics skills simply augment her fighting style but every now and again she likes to randomly show off. I think she’s going into a straddle press handstand on the wall.

It was a long way down. He didn’t have to use his wings. There was no point. There was nothing in him. He was nothing. It didn’t matter. He didn’t matter. Za’haran shifted closer to the edge, automatically curling his feet against the wall n preparation for a takeoff. Dive or just pin drop? It didn’t matter. The result would be the same. A terrible mess, just like his life. He didn’t matter.

This MerMay thing (whatever it is XD) gave a good enough excuse to draw examples of the Selkies and Nereids as they appear in the AER-verse (examples because they vary massively in appearance depending on…a lot of things). I attempted a more “stereotypical” mermaid here which meant it’s either an early Nereid or a reef/shallow water Nereid. The ones that live in shallow water are more likely to resemble Base humans. The ones that live out in the deep sea only bear hints that they evolved from humans.