Jill Tickled Breakdown and Insight

 As a horror buff it was fun to play around in this world and instill some horror imagery/themes into the project (did you catch the “subtle” Evil Dead reference?).   

   This project wasn't without it's challenges. Notably, I'm still in search of the perfect tickle device. Syncing up tickling with a wiggling, writhing body is currently an effort of brute force. Which I can do, but when you have 8 devices going at once it DOES tend to drag a bit. I don't know exactly what the solution is but I'll keep experimenting; until then, brute force it is.   

   I'm gonna go through the animation and list out a few notable techniques used.   

   For the “nipple suction cups”, I simply parented an IK rig with a child-of constraint to Jill's breast bone. This almost worked, but if you moved the bone too much the suction cup would fall out of sync. Not wanting to use brute force animation again (animating the IK to offset the movement frame-by-frame), I ended using an empty parented to the bone, and then a “track-to” constraint set to that empty. This kept the suction cup pointed at her nipples at all times.   

   Hey, wait, maybe this is a potential solution for the tickle-device scenario... hmm... 

   Moving on... I created some custom “tickle balls” to run all over poor Jilly Bean; I thought about using the tried-and-true “gloved hands,” but being honest, those are not my favorite device. I like my stuff to feel real and tangible, and if you're going to be running tickle experiments, cartoony gloved hands don't fit the bill (though they obviously have their appeal). I wanted something fitting, something “sciency”, that you could imagine Umbrellla themselves using, so I ended up with these simple, utilitarian devices. After finishing them they didn't seem quite “lively” enough, so I added some shapekeys to make them “pulsate”, sending the feelers rapidly in-and-out, ideally increasing sensation.   

   It's a subtle effect but I think it goes a long way in selling the scenario.   

   Looping back to my original complaint, I ended up having to keyframe the positioning on every frame for the tickle balls. I had a basic child-of constraint set up, but the balls still found their way out of position. Thinking forward, using a track-to constraint set to a curve object on Jill's body may be the way to go.   

   I mean seriously guys, look at these keyframes! At some point going the “brute force” route is the smart solution, as you can only spend so much time experimenting. I definitely want to get this worked out, though, as the less time I spend brute-forcing the more time I can spend creating.

   The Scientists were fun characters. Originally I had not planned to show the male scientist on screen, only his voice was to be heard. This was because I like to be realistic in what I can accomplish and I do need to check my ambition in service of, you know, releasing content. But I told myself if I can get a male-scientist rig quickly, I'll consider putting him in.

     Arhoangel has a default male rig and, lo-and behold, I was able to make a few modifications (namely, shaving his head and adding sunglasses) which I think worked. “Discount Wesker,” is a fitting name, but he actually has perhaps my favorite scene in the animation (his subtle pause before “increase the dosage”). 

  I'm glad this worked out because it likely would have felt a bit awkward just hearing his voice from off-screen.   

 The female scientist is actually an “Elise De La Serra” rig by HantzGruber. I made a custom outfit and, under a shapekey, some modifications to her face to hide the resemblance a bit and give her more angular features (because people with angular faces are evil). Sneaky! 

  I did encounter a mysterious issue on this animation, something I actually encountered on Succubus Doms Elf but on a minor scale. There is SOMETHING in Blender that triggers movement of your graph bezier curves, pulling them all drastically to the right and completely destroying your splines. This happened to me midway through the project and I had to spend a day re-splining out every bone, every axis. I was, frankly, disgusted. I have not been able to discover the source of this problem, nor what triggers it, and I don't believe I'm the only one to experience it. Locking the bones after editing them seems to protect the animation, but this too becomes a tedious process.   

  If I'm too be frank, using Blender with these more complex animations has made me more aware of some of the shortcomings of the program. Messing with your already-set splines is absolute heresy, as that's where the true magic of animation happens. The viewport performance also leaves much to be desired, requiring hiding almost every object in the scene to just barely get 24fps playback. It seems that these things ARE being looked at by the foundation, and with the new influx of money from Unreal, Unity, etc, I hope that we see some improvements. I still love the program, but I'm starting to brush up against it's limitations a bit.   

   Don't get me wrong, the new grease-pencil, new widgets, it's all great, but performance is paramount. Hopefully this happens sooner rather than later (I think it will).  

 
   All in all I'm very happy with how this turned out and the response so far. It's a fun world to play around in, and obviously Jill is a cutie (especially when she's writhing around).  

 
   I'll have a new short posted soon and previews coming for Ashe Doms Brigitte after, so stay tuned! Thanks to all my backers, newcomers and mainstays alike, as I'm looking to continue growing and up my quality with every project. You make it possible! 

   Hope everyone is doing well!