Hook Progress Update

For the last few months, we've been on and off working on an original project (currently named "Hook", subject to change). Most of the visual work is done (modelling, lighting, shading, etc...), and the music is almost done, so for the most part, we're just in animation mode right now.

Most of the instruments are relatively simple to get working, we've mostly been trying to figure out how to animate the bass and guitar. The biggest issue with that is trying to split the notes properly between three different aspects; the fret fingers, the strings, and the plucking fingers/pick. It's not easy to balance them out right now without a lot of manual tuning, but we have gotten somewhere with it for the bass. For the ANIMUSIC tribute (and even Ambient Glow), a lot of that work was done manually (we would split the notes up into individual tracks), but we really want to avoid having to do that kind of manual work for our original projects. As far as the guitar goes, we're getting somewhere, just slowly. A lot of this is territory we haven't approached yet, so it is taking a bit more time.

Drums have also been difficult, as we've been meticulously adjusting them throughout the entire development process. A lot of it just comes down to getting these complexly-designed moving parts to have satisfying hit motions, especially on faster note patterns. The hi-hat has been particularly annoying to deal with, but we've been saving fixing that for the end while we focus on the sticks that are used more than once (the tom/snare and cymbal sticks).

No real updates on the ANIMUSIC HD Tribute right now, we've mostly suspended our work on that for the sake of finishing our original animation. After we're done with Hook, we'll get back to that. Aqua Harp will definitely be the next one we put out, but after that, we don't know what we're going to next. Out of the three remaining, Future Retro probably has the most work done on it animation wise, but it's more than likely that most of that will have to be re-coded. We'd like to save Harmonic Voltage for last.

Three animation test videos are attached below: