Happy Holidays to whoever reads this first of all!!

So I took a bit longer to get my environment right, but I got it done* And that's what matters, right?

Anyways - I was aiming to get the full project finished by the end of Jan 2021... Although I'm still determined to get it done by then, I will have to budget some extra time for other stuff as well, which I haven't really taken into consideration. I'll take a few hours to really plan out my schedule for the project by using something like the ASANA website ( Project planner ). 

So far I've just tried getting my environment done without a deadline, cause it's an important piece of the project for me. BUT I do recognize the ugly truth that if you don't make a deadline for an artist, he/she will never finish the project. So instead of just estimating how long it'll take me to finish something, I'll be assigning deadlines for each task that I set out for myself, and properly evaluate my progress on these dates. ( NOTE: I know how to manage a project through real experience... I was just lazy from the start )

I know it looks bad from a professional standpoint to admit my lacking project management skills, but I take pride in the fact that I noticed this by myself and am trying to improve rather than just being blindly ignorant?!? The next post will be a small detailed roadmap of my project progress so that I can hold myself accountable even more by putting my deadlines per se on public record... although no one reads this blog, it's still connected to my online reputation as an artist. 

So!

To get back to this week's update on my progress, I finished the entire environment layout, still need to fix and optimize textures, but that'll be completed during the polishing phase if needed. I took some time to do a little Look Dev in terms of the style that I'll be going for in the end. I actually really do like the cartoon hand-drawn effect that the denoise does when you have a low amount of samples within the Cycles renderer of Blender. 

But a friend sent me a link of a pretty cool artist that uses EbSynth to overlay a hand-drawn effect on top of your rendered frames: 

EbSynth Official Video

I will also try and play around within Blender itself, cause I do know you could create the same effect if you know what you're doing...

And what I have so far is this oil painted idea per frame:

I'll be taking a small break from this just to focus on some other commission work and then I'll jump back into things in the new year! 

Happy Holidays once more and I'll be back with a more planned out and serious roadmap  >-'_'-<

Cheers