Memory Bones

-- January 2023 - Production Update --
// animal health

Hey everyone! Hope your holidays were lovely and your New Years quite swell!

First off, good news! As you might recall, I mentioned in an earlier post that a sudden emergency cropped up after ORB 2's release. One of our dogs got very sick and needed intensive care, so ensuring the surgery and healing process went smoothly became my first priority. Thankfully, things seem to have gone well, and now she is back home and active :DD

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Now that things are slowly normalizing here, I'll be able to start chipping away at ORB 3 again, which I'm really looking forward to.

That said, expect some changes to production. Wrapping up ORB 2 took a significant toll, with every moment not spent on ORB or my full time programming job feeling like I was wasting time, which was real rough. 

I attempted to set-up some production changes to be more mindful of scope and so episodes released faster, but sadly those changes were draining the joy out of the process of creation. One of the things I love most about making ORB is seeing where the characters take me and indulging in fun tangents, but the scriptwriting process for ORB 3 was turning into a cycle of thinking about something cool and having to walk back on it because it'd be too complex if I wanted a shorter episode.

Ultimately, it seems like a lot of the ways to make ORB viable as a job are in direct conflict with the things I enjoy about creating it. This realization, coupled with this recent emergency made me realize that I might not have the best profile to pursue animation as a main career.

So, from now on, for my own sanity, I will prioritize things that let me enjoy making ORB over things that might be more productive but that'd make writing+animation not enjoyable, which is hopefully understandable!

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We're also changing the way RECOMMENDED CREATURES work, so that people get more chances to recommend characters. From now on, you can fill the form below, and your creature prompt might be used in a future episode!

The Form: forms.gle/oUgyJNG9FKRgmHWF8

In the future, I'll be posting this form in the description of episodes and videos, but for now if you're seeing this post you have a free head start >:3

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Above all, thanks everyone for your support and patience. This is all very experimental, but I feel like some changes are needed so that I can continue enjoying the process of creating ORB, and to avoid burnout.

I might experiment with other things down the line (such as streaming writing and animation) to see if that might be fun and align more with what I want out of ORB, but nothing's really set in stone at the moment hehe. We'll experiment with a couple things & try to reach a good balance with how ORB works :D

2 years ago | [YT] | 384

Memory Bones

Hey everyone. Unfortunately, about 2 to 3 hours after the episode released yesterday, a sudden family emergency cropped up, and ever since we've been focusing on ensuring things go as smoothly as possible.

I don't think I'll have the energy or mindset needed to work on something like ORB for a while, and think it'd be for the best to just set it aside entirely for the time being in favor of these family emergencies, mental health, and my full time job. Apologies.

2 years ago | [YT] | 397

Memory Bones

Hey everyone! If nothing goes wrong, ORB 2 will release this *Friday, December 9th*.
I'm very excited for you all to see the episode, and very excited to write future ones!

(As a heads up, this episode starts pretty much immediately after episode 1, so it might be worth a refresher if you haven't seen that one in a while.)

2 years ago | [YT] | 174

Memory Bones

Hey everyone! 

After a few weeks where my programming job was taking over all of my time and energy, here's a major update to start December off on the right foot! As you can see (below? above? every site does it differently), we're -very- close to the episode being complete! I've been working a lot over the past few weeks, finishing the remaining animation, doing multiple revision passes, and preparing to wrap up the episode!

So, what does this mean?

Well, it means I'll be confident announcing a release date soon! I might've fallen a bit behind in my programming job these past few weeks, so I need to dedicate a few days to catch up, but after that happens, the stuff left should be hopefully smooth sailing! Some of it is a little time consuming (I want to have Captions up alongside the episode, for example), but we're past the days of 'oh god i dont even know how to start animating this scene'.

There's also a few 'organizational' tasks I need to do (in order to ensure production for next episode doesn't suffer as many bottlenecks as this one did), but those hopefully shouldn't be too much work either.

Anyway! That's about it for now! Been a bit since an update so since it's the first of the month I felt like it'd be fun to just hop in and say the intro is done and animation is done and all that good stuff. Thanks for all the support and patience so far!

2 years ago | [YT] | 52

Memory Bones

ORB 2 STATUS UPDATE 6
Hey everyone! While my programming job has been taking most of my time recently, I'm here with a pretty chunky update! If we weren't before, we are 100% in endgame territory now.

Here's what happened since the last update!

EPISODE ANIMATION:
* Four animators got their scenes in, heck yea! It was the right call to reach out to other people for some of the remaining needed animation; I severely underestimated how much work I personally had left, and these animators did a really good job! Most of the revision work on them on my end is done as well.
* I finished another of my scenes! When it comes to my scenes in the episode itself (not counting the intro and outro) I only have a few left. One of these, unfortunately, is one of the most complicated scenes of the episode, and it'll probably take longer to do than the average scene. Wish me luck!

INTRO:
* I also did a good chunk of animation for the Intro! About 50% of it is fully done now (first draft, second draft, final animation, coloring, polishing, VFX), and I've began work on another chunk of it. Hoping to work a lot on it during this weekend!

EDITING:
* Editing moved forward a little bit too, with some scenes getting their music. I am not super knowledgeable on music arrangement (& editing as a whole tbh) so I'll probably try to get some help with this from a few people I know. But it is nice that editing has formally started, even if it's something I'm only doing as a break from animation hehe.

So yeah! Pretty exciting stuff!
Still, and i'm aware this is total party pooper behaviour, I do need to remind everyone that while there isn't a -lot- left, the things that are left are all pretty complex; and I'm still at the mercy of my programming job, so I can't promise a release date just yet. I'll let everyone know once I'm confident, but with the intro and another major scene left, it's possible that a rough work week might sap my energy and considerably slow progress for a bit. I'll do my best to make sure that doesn't happen, though!

I mentioned last time that we were getting close to the last update, and I think this might be it, actually. By this point, since all that remains are a few major things (and editing + continuity revisions), any progress shown in future updates would be too noodly/underwhelming, I think. Not substantial enough to warrant an update on their own without giving the impression that the episode would be ready within the week. I might still make another update before the release date announcement, whenever that happens, but I hope it's understandable if by this point I turn my attention toward wrapping up the intro and my remaining scenes :D

Anyway has Bones been in an animatic peek yet? Well here she is anyway.

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2 years ago | [YT] | 79

Memory Bones

ORB 2 STATUS UPDATE 5
Hey everyone! These past work weeks @ my programming job have been more hectic than usual, leaving me with less time and energy than normal, but I wanted to make a small update still, to ensure that progress is still happening!

Here's what happened this week:
- Now that the meet-up and some other commitments are wrapped up, some animators are hard at work at their scenes! We'll be hopefully seeing some wrap up over this next week, which should get the Animation graph closer to complete.
- I also was able to finish a scene myself! Might still go over it again for some additional tweaks, but it's close to complete; I just need to replace temporary backgrounds and do some other final revision work I think.
- I continued chipping away at the intro animation when possible! The first pass of it is... close to 50% done? hard to put a proper number to it hehe. There's still a good amount of work left and it's hard to find the energy for this kind of animation once I'm complete with my programming job; but intro stuff will be significantly less of a roadblock for future episodes if I do it well this time, so I'm taking my time on this hehe.
- While I wouldn't say editing has like, -started-, I did begin going over some scenes with finished animation to start setting them up for editing. So stuff like swapping temporary symbols with more polished ones, cleaning up the .flas so they don't break when rendering, tweaking character animation, spotting last minute errors, and just overall ensuring consistency.

We're getting close to the last-ish update, because once scenes from other animators are finished, by that point it'll be less a matter of showing incremental progress and more a matter of me finding time to work on individual complex elements. Once I'm confident on a release date, I'll announce it for everyone, but unfortunately I'm still a little at the whims of demands @ my programming job.

To cap things off, an animatic peek, containing Orb and Oklawk!

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2 years ago (edited) | [YT] | 70

Memory Bones

No official status update this week (a lot of animators were at the meet-up, and I've been mostly working on the intro & some side stuff that doesn't translate super well to graphs) but I still wanted to show something, so here ya go :D

This is a small behind-the-scenes look @ the .fla file for the WIP Intro. Those frames are all like, regarding one character haha. Trying to do Frame-By-Frame stuff I don't experiment super often with, so we'll see how it turns out, or if this was a mistake!

Also, here's a (unrelated) animatic sneak peek as well, this time with Boxcars and Clubs. If you want to see a character in the next sneak peek, feel free to mention them in the replies.

That's it for today; a smaller update this week in-between my job and external circumstances. Thanks everyone for your patience so far!

2 years ago (edited) | [YT] | 59

Memory Bones

ORB 2 STATUS UPDATE 4 -
Hey everyone! Was able to work a little more on ORB this week in-between my job demands, so here's another small update! I think a project I joined on my programming job is going to ramp up in complexity this next week, so I don't know if I'll be able to post an update next time, but I'll still try to chip away at stuff whenever possible, and whenever I get a break from work!

So, what happened this week? Well, first of all, some prop progress! I reached out to ORB's main Recommended Character artist, and there's been some good progress in the new ones that will appear next episode. The concepts are close to finalized, and we're moving on to coloring. After that, I'll make assets in Flash for them!

Additionally, I mentioned last week that I was planning to assign a few scenes to other animators, and that's been done as well! So now there are like 5+ scenes being worked on by different people at the moment hehe, and while there hasn't been a lot of changes to the graphs, a good chunk of the scenes in 'WIP' have shifted from 'some work has technically been done on them' to 'actively in production', which is a huge weight off my shoulders! The prospect of finishing my remaining scenes is a lot less daunting now.

On my end, I was able to focus this week on two scenes that were on the longer side, finishing one up, and being -just- short of finishing the other. Once I'm done with that one, I'll only have a handful of scenes left, and while they are some of the more complex scenes in the episode, they feel a lot more manageable in quantity now! Also, also, while it's not shown in the graph below, I finally felt comfortable starting proper work on the intro this weekend! Not a lot was done (the intro will have a good amount of frame-by-frame animation and that's more time consuming to make than the average episode scene); but before this week I was worried it'd take another month or so before I was even able to start work on it, so that was a very pleasant surprise!

So those are my next steps: finish work on my current scene, animate a few other scenes that are assigned to me, and slowly work on the intro! If things line up correctly and my work goes well, I'll have almost everything directly assigned to me wrapped up by the time the other animators finish their scenes, and then I can move on to post-production, editing, final reviews, & all that stuff which might not be the hardest but is definitely still time consuming and is something I'm sorta rusty on, hehe. The finish line's not quite -yet- in sight, but it's closer than ever.

& finally, here's today's animatic peek. People mentioned wanting to see some of Pip, and Vee, so here's a screencap where they're both present. if you want to see a particular character next time, let me know as well! I'll try not to repeat characters if i can avoid it, but that's not super set in stone, so suggest away!

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2 years ago (edited) | [YT] | 50

Memory Bones

- ORB 2 STATUS UPDATE 3 -
Hey everyone! My job was also nice this week, and I was able to work some more on ORB, so here's another small update! I'm a little worried that one of the projects I'm on will ramp up in demands soon, but I'll keep working on the episode whenever I get a break!

This week was pretty good I think! I was able to do a few props that were still needed for a couple of scenes, and I've done all animation associated with those props too! There's still character animation left on those scenes, but that was still a pretty big accomplishment, and will make things easier down the line when I tackle said scenes!

I also stopped to review all remaining scenes, and decided it'd be for the best to try to assign some of them to other animators, so I've done the necessary prep for that as well! Like, polishing up animatics, setting up the composition of a scene, and so on. The OSC Film Festival is going on right now I believe, so I'm still sorting out which animator will do what scene afterwards, but assigning some scenes will lighten up my workload a little bit.

There's still a bunch to do, but I think we're at a point where (intro aside) I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, which is such a relief. It's nice to be able to complete a scene and feel like meaningful progress is being made, if that makes sense? a while ago I had like, 18 scenes I was planning to do myself back to back, and there's few things more disheartening than putting in hours and hours of work only to feel like you've barely made a dent on what's left. I've been working a lot recently on ORB (multiple hours per day over the past two/three weeks) and it's a world of difference to be able to see where that work is going, y'know?

And speaking of scenes and progress and what not, I was also able to finish two scenes over this last week, alongside the prop animation and prep work I mentioned earlier! I'm still very slow at animating overall, but I think I'm getting faster and faster bit by bit, even if sometimes I get tripped up and spend too long on a short segment. I'm currently working on two more scenes, which are both pretty long and have some complex segments, but I'll do my best to work on them over this next week if I have free time from my job!

(As a reminder, the graphs shown here don't cover post-production stuff like editing, and also don't cover the intro. I'll be posting this reminder for the first few updates to help manage expectations that there'll still be a fair bit of work beyond these pie charts hehe)

Another update comes with another animatic sneak peek, too! It's been fun trying to find these, but a little hard to get sneak peeks that don't spoil anything. if you want to see a particular character in the next sneak peek let me know and i'll see if there's any good animatics containing them! as a reminder, jackie/boxie/stump/fuzz & now loop appeared in animatics, and I'll try not to repeat characters for a while

ok that's it for me for now, have a great week everyone! i'll keep you all posted :D

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2 years ago | [YT] | 54

Memory Bones

- ORB 2 STATUS UPDATE 2 -
Hey everyone! I was able to find time in-between work this week to chip away at some ORB stuff, so here is another small update! You shouldn't take this to mean updates are guaranteed weekly, though, because if my job is more demanding during the week then I wouldn't have much to show, but I'll try to keep up the pace whenever there's something to highlight :D

So, here's what happened this week! Last time, I mentioned there was one line that needed to be re-recorded to avoid a possible wrong interpretation; and that's been wrapped up! So there's been some progress bump in both Voice Lines & Audio. I've also been able to make some pretty good headway in that scene too, and I should finish animating it soon, hopefully!

Props & BGs saw the biggest bump this week. There's a scene in the coming episode that required some unique backgrounds for it, and while the backgrounds were on the simpler side, there were a number of different angles required. That took a fair amount of time to do, but I was able to finish them all, and I also animated the scene that used them! I think that scene turned out p. good too, which I was worried about. Additionally, I was also able to do a good number of props this week that will be used in a few other scenes!

Animation also saw a good bump as mentioned above! Alongside the scenes mentioned, there's also another scene that is currently being worked on by another animator, which is progressing nicely too. I might take some time over this next week to do more layout/prep work for some of the scenes currently WIP, in case I'm able to assign more of them to other animators as well, if my budget allows for that!

(As a reminder, the graphs shown here don't cover post-production stuff like editing, and also don't cover the intro. I'll be posting this reminder for the first few updates to help manage expectations that there'll still be a fair bit of work beyond these pie charts hehe)

Another update comes with another animatic sneak peek, too! But overall that's it for me today, hope everyone's having a good weekend :D See you next time!

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2 years ago | [YT] | 55