Category Archives: Ramblings

Delays

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A few months ago, I’d had a plan for the next few pages of the comic. It take place during Alice & Violet’s ride home after visiting Daisy, with Violet asking for (and getting) more information about the Disney incident. Three pages, one recyclable background, pretty simple. But also not very interesting.

I’d planned on drawing those three pages while in Michigan for the summer, but work and other things have kept me too distracted to do that. The same thing that has happened to me every summer for like the past decade, but hey, maybe this year would have been different?

One benefit to being kept away from the comic, is I’ve had time to improve on it. Instead of Alice & Vi’s ride home, the idea now is to pick up right where the last page left off, and have Daisy provide much of the information herself. The script isn’t all that different from before, though it’s quite literally back to the drawing board in terms of panel layouts. If I can re-use the backgrounds from the previous pages, it’ll be that much easier.

Because of how long this chapter has dragging on for, there are some segments that I’d planned but that will have to cut or repurposed later. One bit would have had Mary pop in for a visit, mostly as an excuse to tease more background detail about both her and Daisy.

Another would have had Daisy call or video chat two other friends (separately) – Mimi, and a girl I still don’t have a name for but have referred to as “chibi Hitomi”. Aside from introducing these characters, they would have provided some more world-building, but otherwise didn’t have much to do with Daisy’s burn-out.

A segment I’d felt I would need to cut, but don’t want to, involves an attempted robbery at the diner. In the past year or two I’d felt overwhelmed and just wanted to finish this chapter as quickly as possible, but this is one segment that simply can’t be spun off into a later chapter. And it would pay off a thing or two.

There is a completely separate story that has also been delayed for years, that I’m still trying to figure out how to finish & release. It would have followed up on some of the reveals from Toxic Candy, and delved a bit into how Candice’s family and business operate.

As a comic, the main thing that kept me from drawing this story is/was the backgrounds. Drawing backgrounds in general is one of my least favorite things, but in this case I simply couldn’t find decent reference for mansion interiors and the camera angles I’d had in mind.

At some point I’d decided that it might be much easier to release this story as a novella, either lightly illustrated or just as text. And one version of the story or another was posted for my patrons to read, and then I just forgot to finish it so that it could be released for everyone. I do think about it every so often, but it keeps getting pushed aside by higher-priority things.

Animated Thoughts

Today’s been a bit of a “head” day – I’ve spent most of the day thinking about how best to move forward an animation I’ve posted on my Patreon, Tumblr, and DeviantArt pages.  If you don’t follow me on those sites, I have two words for you – animated Daisy!  I won’t link to it here, because it’s not exactly work- or kid-safe.

I don’t know how long it might take for me to finish that Daisy animation, either rough or full color, but I do have an idea of what it would take to do so in 3D.  I’d estimated that it would take at least a month of full-time work for me to model and rig Daisy for this sort of motion.  But that’s not the model I currently have in the works – the current model will be waitress-only.  Nude/bikini Daisy would be a whole separate character, from a production standpoint, and since that model would be mostly for fan-service, it’d have to be a lower priority than my other characters.  Unless, of course, I knew for certain that producing and animating that version of her would draw in a massive amount of new patrons…  That’s a lot of work for a “maybe”, though.

One of my goals now is to have waitress Daisy modeled and textured by November – if not October – and her unicorn speech animated by Christmas.  We’ll see if my schedule actually allows me to pull that off.  I may continue to refine this 2D animation on the side, but it may be too much to hope to have it finished by Christmas as well.  That might be a hell of a gift, though!

3D prints, delays, and whatnot

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About three weeks ago, I uploaded a Daisy figure to Shapeways and ordered a full-color print for myself, to judge the quality. After two weeks of the order being listed as in production, I was informed it couldn’t be printed, as some parts were too thin. I’ve adjusted and resubmitted the model, but I’m already looking into other printers.

While I’m waiting for my second Shapeways attempt to go through (and maybe still get rejected), Ownage has already gotten back to me with an estimate.

The good news is that a small run of 20-50 unpainted figures would cost just low enough that I might not need to worry about setting up a Kickstarter campaign. I’m just waiting on some extra details, like shipping costs and whether the figures will come unassembled for easier painting. Right now I’m placing the sale price around $75-100.

So, who’s interested?

http://jklind.deviantart.com/ (scroll down for the poll)

In other news, the next page of the current comic may be delayed. This week I’ve been working on my next 3D character*, and next week I might have some contract work. To fit the comic in, I might just split the next page into two, so each one would take less time to finish.
* check out my Facebook or Tumblr pages for wip images.

It’s all about the challenge. Honest.

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Over the past week, I’ve been scribbling some thumbnails for my hypothetical “disrobing Daisy” animation, while also trying to plot out the technical challenges that’d be involved.
Here’s a quick summary of some of those challenges –

  • Untying the bow in her apron
  • switching sections of cloth from normal deformers to full cloth sim
  • hand/cloth collisions & interactions
  • cloth/cloth collisions
  • cloth/hair collisions
  • changing hair styles

…with all that in mind, it’s unlikely that I’ll even attempt something like this. I’d be much better off focusing on other characters, or at least on something that wouldn’t need quite as much explaining.

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An idea can be good and horrible at the same time…

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Sometimes my best ideas and eureka moments come from a lack of sleep. That’s how Daisy came about, anyway. And the past couple of days I haven’t been sleeping well, so I’ve been hoping something would pop into my head sooner or later.

This morning it hit me – a total fan-service (and potential fan-gaining) animation of Daisy disrobing, layer by layer. Not a strip-tease, but more like she’s changing out of her work clothes after a long day. Now to kill any remaining excitement by getting technical…

No matter how I would choose to animate it, this would be a challenge of nightmarish proportions. Either way it would be a fairly long sequence, assuming I do it all as one continuous shot.

As a hand-drawn piece, it could simply take me forever to draw. It would also take quite a while to clean up, to say nothing of keeping her on-model throughout. And if something doesn’t move correctly? If more (or less) drawings won’t fix it, I’d have to scrap that section and start over. Just thinking about it, I’m reminded of why I got into 3D animation in the first place.

If I animated her in 3D, the biggest challenge would be the multiple levels of cloth simulation. My choice of staging could also make it more difficult – the camera would be behind and off to the side of her, and aimed between her and her reflection in a mirror. This would mean that untying her apron can’t be faked – it would need to be modeled so that the bow can be untied on-camera. The apron may also need to transition from a hybrid of skinning and cloth simulation when tied, to completely simulated once untied. And if I have her fold it… now I’m just asking for a world of hurt. But if successful, this segment alone would look impressive on my demo reel…

After the apron is her uniform. I might need to model an unbuttoned version that can be stretched, just so the cloth can then return to its natural state when unbuttoned. Or I could remove the stretching with morphs or skinning. Either way, her uniform will also need to transition from hybrid to complete cloth simulation as she starts to remove it.

Underneath her uniform is a t-shirt. The main problem will be collisions with the uniform. Again, it might be nexessary to start with a hybrid solution – if not 100% skinning – and then transition to full cloth simulation once the uniform is safely out of the way. Having the t-shirt affect her hair properly could also be an issue, unless I can fake the interaction with simple invisible colliders.

Speaking of her hair, there’s the question of how to transition from one style to another. If her hair is sculpted geometry as it is now, then the only way to do this would be to hide one style and unhide the next. If simulating realistic hair, each guide curve could have a morph target for the transition. Then I might need to adjust the simulation so that her casual hair is less rigid than her professional hair.

Her bra would be last, and whether she wears a sports-bra or a normal one, it will have its own challenges. Like her uniform, the bra would need to transition from skinning to cloth simulation. Once removed her breasts would need to fall to a natural position*. This could either be done with joint animation and other deformers, or it could use yet another cloth simulation. Or perhaps both? Cloth is challenging enough, but at least there are material presets for me to work with… There’s no “fatty ball of flesh” preset, though.
* assuming I don’t have them unleashed with such force that she falls over, thus ending the animation on a fun note while keeping on-screen nudity to a minimum. Though I might censor any nudity anyway, to keep it safe to post.

…and that is just part of why you don’t see many (if any) Pixar-quality animated strip teases. The amount of simulation work could require an experienced TD. Plus independent artists don’t have access to the types of tools that the major studios have, and they’re definitely not working on something like this using company resources.

If I were to attempt this, then I guess it’s a good thing I’m remodeling Daisy – I’ll be able to plan ahead. While I might learn some useful skills by the end, whether the effort will truly be worth it is the question.

Impending Holiday Madness

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Now that ‘Discovering A Unicorn’ is finished, I need to decide what’s next. I’ll be taking a breather from the comic until after Christmas – mostly because I won’t have access to my Cintiq and so won’t be able to finish new pages during that time – so I’ll have some time to pick a story and prepare.

In terms of comics, right now I’m focused on introducing all of my central characters. Fortunately, I have stories plotted out for each of them – even some stories for characters that haven’t been designed yet – so the first task is prioritizing them. I keep telling myself that Mary-Anne should be next, but she presents a number of problems…

Mary doesn’t have an intro story… She has two. Two candidates, anyway – one is short and simple, while the other is longer, more epic, and quite simply the ‘right’ story. If I were to make a feature film centered around her, this story would be the opening 10 minutes. The problem with that story, is that I’m not currently capable of drawing it. I’m not comfortable with drawing environments in general, yet; I need to practice use of shading and thick shadows to enhance the mood of the scenes; and I especially need to practice motion-blurred action scenes. This story also features several incidental characters that I’d need to design, first.

For now, it’s looking more like I might just draw Rose and Violet’s intros first, and then draw the easier Mary intro.

Aside from comics, there are other projects I’m hoping to make some more progress on over the holidays – For the past two pages, I’ve gotten my 3D model of the interior of Daisy’s Diner to a point where it can be used as reference for the comic. I’d like to eventually get it and the exterior to a point where they can not only be used for 3D renders, but also toon-shaded for the comic to save me the trouble of tracing them (or, God forbid, have to draw them by hand).

Another project is my next 3D character – Daisy & Rose’s Aunt Mercy. I’ve already modeled her head as a morph target for Rose, so really all I need to do is model her habit and make sure all of Rose’s facial expressions can be re-used. The only real challenge with her will be the cloth simulation on the habit.

Commissions are another thing I’ve been thinking about. It would certainly be nice to make a little extra cash for Christmas, but again, I won’t have access to my Cintiq. I will have my Galaxy tablet with me, but there’s only so much I can accomplish on that. With the general madness of the holidays, it might be best if I just wait until I get home before opening up my commission list.