Crossbow Hailstorm 3

The young High Prince fled the conference room, the nightmarish chaos fading behind him, only to be replaced by pursuing wing beats. Tears blurred his vision. Zul’jinn normally loved flying through the open areas but now they were too open, there was nowhere to hide. Behind him he could just hear the sounds of crossbows arming up. How could this happen? I don’t want to die! He was barely aware of the nearby mewling sound, not really registering the fact that he was the source of it.

Pod ride

Unlike the silence of the pod, which was broken only by the pods own humming, Dakarai’s head was full of tumultuous, confused thoughts.

They’d looked. They’d kept looking. They hadn’t given up.

The last few days…or was it weeks? He wasn’t sure. Either way, it had been a seriously unpleasant blur.

He’d hurt Zara. He glanced sideways at her, perched nervously on the comfortably worn seat beside him. That had been the start of the downward spiral. They’d been training, he couldn’t understand the technique Juan was showing them. Zara picked up everything so easily. Frustration was normal, but then it had been intolerable. He hadn’t meant to hit her that hard. Then Juan had confronted him about his stim usage. Dakarai bristled slightly. Juan wasn’t his father, he didn’t have any right to tell him what to do.

Test

There was that warning prickle in the air.

Tsa’run didn’t give any indication of noticing, glancing around with his eyes. This particular walkway was usually quiet at this time of day, and nothing seemed out of place.

Except for Es’tad stepping out suddenly in front of him, his impressive mohawk rippling slightly. Tsa’run faltered then, the ingrained habit to stop and greet his superior checked by a gut feeling. Sensing his uncertainty, Es’tad grinned with definite malice, then launched at him.

Zara sketchies

Super quickie sketches of Zara, 10-11 years old doing gymnastics and probably 17 or close enough to as she is in the current block I’m working on practising a form or something. And the one in the middle because I like odd numbers and because I’m trying to work out how to convey expression with those bloody goggles covering half her face all the time!

Also, that ring hold was tough even with a base.

Thursday streaming

The plan for streaming on Thursday was do a quick sketch, then carry on with the rig test anim. That didn’t happen. What happened instead was this.

I don’t do anything more complex than textures for backgrounds, the bed is just one ridiculously oversized prop masquerading as a background. I don’t hink that’s going to be a normal thing either. I am not really looking forward to shading those tattoos XD

Greet the Sun

Not quite a redo of Shimmering Wings. Next job is to try and work out if the first gen Avians had head feathers or if they developed later on down the track. Taha’ne is the earliest known ancestor of Tsa’run and the original developer/inventor of “The Art” (a branch of kung fu specifically tailored to the Winged who eventually evolved into the Flyers, and which was further developed to accommodate both Base Terrans and Evolved with extra limbs).

Thursday streaming results

The problem with doing 3d or animation or 3d animation (for me at least) is that the works in progress shots can be exceedingly boring. I spent pretty much the entire streaming day yesterday finishing up the tail end of the rig test anim, and am currently letting it finish up a timing render which didn’t finish overnight because I forgot to turn Avi’s particles off. Oops.

I’m aware the feathers are being awkward, they will get folded down in the detail run (I need to figure out how to do feather controllers, or if there’s just a better way to rig them, they’re doing my head in). These are from the end of the test, where the three of them have a quick conversation while turning away from the camera (because I wanted to end with the My 3 pose) which then pans around to be in front of them (I do also need some panning practice).

Sunday and Monday streaming

I’m usually streaming on Picarto on Sundays after 12 and Thursdays from 9am-3pm AWST, though lion dance season is coming up which may throw the Sunday streaming a bit. I did a random ~4hr stream today as the in-laws have a busy week this week and decided to come today rather than not coming at all because they’re awesome like that, working on an Ingress wallpaper:

Yesterday I switched up between working on the Zul’jinn concept:

New Year WIPs

Stuff I was working on as the year ticked over (because we apparently don’t do parties anymore).

Still working on the rig test animation, just about at the end of the blocking phase and then I go back through with the detail phase (there should only be one but there will probably be 2-3 and me trying and probably failing to stop myself). The unofficial title of the above is “YOU IDIOT”. All will become clear when I get the render out XD D is average Dragonkin height (2m tall) but I think I made Avi and Base a little bit small, should have made them 1.7m instead of 1.6.

AER roadmap goals thingi

Because they’re apparently useful to have and I haven’t done one forever (seeing as I’ve spent so much time redoing things). Let’s try a 5 year plan.

2017

• character concept art for all characters in the first and second blocks
• come up with a name for the arc the first and second block are in (yes it’s been over a decade and it still doesn’t have a name). Episode names optional.
• build all of the things for the first ep
• make intro, outtro and trailers
• start writing second block
• continue writing Aidan’s blog
• possibly start writing script for Seamus’ storyline (comic)
• make AER website

2018

• build all the things for the second ep
• see if I can interest people enough to be voice actors and run auditions
• -record and animate first ep
• character concept art for every other character I know about. Yes, all of them.
• keep working on second block
• continue with Aidan’s storyline, start Seamus’ if haven’t already

2019

• with luck my build list should be a lot smaller now so should be able to build out everything else
• is the second block finished yet?
• run auditions for new parts or unreprised roles
• record and animate as many eps as possible to my ridiculous standards and assuming I have the hang of things by now
• start writing out C’inokh and Ter’wyn’s stories, decide whether they’re comic or animation

2020

• build/modify all the things for second block
• if possible build all the things for Seamus’ comic
• if possible start work on second block

2021

• have we finished animating and released the entirety of the first block yet?
• can we start producing the second block now?
• I suspect there might be a third block

The 2018 part of the plan involving finding voice actors actually terrifies me because that involves trying to find people who might be interested. I’m actually seriously bad at the marketing side of things as I prefer people to be interested if they find it interesting and feel like even resharing from Patreon and announcing Picarto streams is “too pushy” even though I have been told I’m probably actually not pushing it enough. Everything else is stuff I would be doing anyway. Trying to work out how to get sound into the video is similarly terrifying because I’ve never done it before.