February ProgBlog #1: slightly less stuck

Happy I Love You Day!

I spent Thursday to Sunday not being able to concentrate on any one thing for any length of time and just incrementally advanced a lot of things instead. I don't know whether I feel somewhat accomplished at getting some work done on a lot of things or deflated because nothing feels done "enough", but it's a known thing that my idea of "enough" is actually unrealistic (at least in the timeframes I've got).

UASG

I finished Gundry's hands and felt a bit lost and confused (which is very normal when I actually finish something because I've been so all over the joint lately).

Then I moved to work on his feet partly for the sake of completion and mostly because I have exactly no idea what kind of shots I'm going to be needing, as at this stage I'm now not even sure if we're still making a game, a game AND an animation (!!!) or just an animation (this was extremely briefly discussed one roleplaying session) or any of the above.

When done sculpting I'll have to do some Edit mode adjusting to correct his proportions (which I didn't know were wrong until after I'd sculpted, that's just how things roll sometimes). Then he'll get hair put on and get rigged and tested and then have clothes and stuff made.

AER

Meanwhile I finally finished the shadow layer of Zara's phoenix tattoo!

Now all I need to do is remember how to add another layer/image and do the gloss map (which will HOPEFULLY go quicker now that I can actually see what I'm doing relatively easily). Now I wish it would be done after that so that I could move on but I need to burn the image to the new and hopefully better uv map that's on the hopefully better base model and fix the horribly low res/distorted bits. And while I'm about it I will probably fix the normal map too (by using and baking the multires modifier like I should have done the first time if I hadn't forgotten that that particular modifier existed).

You know what I might just try burning and fixing it first and doing the gloss map after.

At least I got some knowledge and experience for the whole pile of aargh?

Roleplaying

I've started linework for the mercenaries piece.

It's feeling somewhat out of date as the bear is temporarily out of action and the fae is crippled (hard fight last session, 17yo indicated he wanted to retire the bear as he felt it was too powerful and try a new character but this was vehemently argued against by the other players, all of whom love the bear, I was intending on hibernating the bear but this worked out just as well, and meanwhile the fae attempted to blow up a werewolf at close range with some highly flammable toilet hooch and succeeded, also succeeding and blowing all the skin off his arm, 13yo has opted to play crippled rather than bring in a new character).

Next group shots:

Vampires (3 characters)
Mortal Mystery Team (2 characters, possibly more if some of the others decide they are going to join in after all)
Not Pirates (6 characters x_x possibly my biggest group ever though I am also simultaneously certain that I had 7 at one stage with my uni group)

What's going on with roleplaying:

writing up Modern 2 - Mercenaries 2
trying to write a few more session notes for Modern 2 - Vampires 5 (yes the writeups are lagging a long way behind the sessions), I have enough to run most if not all of a session but I need to finish the idea I have. I do know how to improv so there is that if nothing else, they might give me ideas. Simultaneously (because they run concurrently) trying to get Mercenaries back on track
writing up character arcs and cobbling together story arcs from that (this is standard operating procedure for me, and there's only so much that can be done in advance with a roleplaying game as I need to also play through and see how characters are playing)
making character sheets for major npcs (one off npcs/groups that need to have statblocks get inline ones) and silently screaming about the spells for some of the mages. Also wondering why I do things to myself as I now have to read more sourcebooks. On the bright side I at least do characters in roughly order of appearance (as far as I can make out for something as volatile as a roleplaying game) so I should have another couple of weeks x_x
CoD has a "social manouevring" system that WoD didn't have that I still haven't gotten my head around (the attempt to try it out in the CoD test that I ran to see if I liked running it and if the kids liked playing it failed due to it being a one-shot that ran over an in-game day even allowing for Dreaming/Hedge time shenanigans) so I'm trying out a grid system to keep track of character relationships and how many Doors have been opened and that's more than I can keep in my head (which is what I was originally doing as far as character relationships went)

At some stage (probably after finishing Modern 2, but I'll see how I go with the npcs and story development for the current CoD game) I'm going to finish converting Changeling: The Dreaming and then convert the rest of the changing breeds starting with Hengeyokai because Kitsune are my favourite. And I suppose I should probably test the conversions at some stage to make sure they're not actually completely broken x_x (so far it's working fine in my head).

I might try to squeeze in sketchies for major npc portraits and try to actually do maps of major locations. The maps thing was something I definitely wanted to do for Mercenaries and Vampires but kept...not doing (if we needed visuals for an area for complex positioning we would use dice and whatever else was on the table at the time x_x) so I'll see what actually happens. Given all the nonsense I'm up to I refuse to feel bad about it for a change.

This post also appears on my blog.

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