(Genshin/Furina) Hopefully the last WIP before tha final version.

Yeah.. what are we on to now, month 4? At least, the final version is 4 minutes long. My respite is that the final keyframe is finally in place.

Current gist of the situation? Animation work is finally complete, what remains is mainly things like simulations, general polishes, smoke and mirrors to add flair. And at least a week of rendering will take place.

My main feelings and concerns is patience, how long this is taking, and as much as it was an learning experience, I don't intend to ever do a project of this scale ever again. At least, definitely not with this approach I took.

Now for those interested, here's the messy details.

Funnily enough, each month in my career has just about equaled 1 minute of animation. So at least we're mostly on track in this case. With the downside of stagnation, only WIP posts to show I'm not dead, but that was it. Work was in progress but I'm really not the type who enjoys constant progress posts, it takes away time and detracts from my attention, though it is something I should try to change. Nevertheless, as we say in Portuguese, a "prestação de contas" is necessary every once in a while for both our sakes, meaning, accountability.

So here we are again. Final keyframe in place, currently I'm adding in the hair movement, next up there is body squishing and clipping fixes to add, then there's other small yet necessary details, such as making naughty parts wet, spreading it in the environment if relevant, and so on. Among a few other things.

What I'm guessing is to be the biggest upcoming headache afterwards: Rendering. By my account, there's about ~7815 frames of animation to be rendered. Each frame takes anywhere from 40 seconds to a minute. Assuming it takes a minute? 468,900 seconds. Divide by 3600 (amount of seconds in an hour) and we get 130.25 hours. Divide by 24 (hours) and we get 5.41 days of rendering. Fun times.. Not counting the compositing. Outlines, color correction, depth of field, see through eyes and eyebrows in anime style don't come free.

So that's where I'm at. And then to get the audio work done, which is a whole other story, but I'm gonna guess at least a week if I'm lucky, probably more. Pray it all goes well and we have it before September. Geez..

I'm pretty exhausted and burned out on this project, all the while there was still passion, a sense of duty, and just running on fumes to get it done. Burned out on it does not mean burned out on animation, fret not. The thought of all the other ideas I have is a relief, refreshing, ideas never were a problem. But over ambition like in this case? Well, it has been a heavy mental cost. More so than anything, given how I'm always surprised by your patience and how steady supporter numbers have remained, which I am incredibly thankful for.

For now, that's all I have, I do hope to see you all again sooner rather than later!