New report yay!
At this point I don't even know how to start reports anymore 🤣

Anyway, nothing major to share IRL wise, at least that I am willing to share.
But what I can say, it's deep into summer, and still no ant invasion! Seems that the painful and time consuming preparations are paying off, altho still many months where they could re-appear.

And onto the work, well... A bitter mixed bag.
As I said in previous patrons only report, next on the line was the big MC vs. Falazio running section. I've always wanted to make this section much better than it used to be, and I had big plans for it, many voiced a while ago on Discord. To put in simply, I wanted to animate a lot of the parts there.
Obviously, I am not one of the "big guys" in terms of animating, hell I still think I suck ass in that area. But the me at the time of checking script thought that the "future Kat" will know how to do it. I was already quite cautious and was already ready that the next report might not be in 2 weeks (and it wasn't 2 weeks, it's now 4), but it turned out much worse than I thought.
Well, future Kat became present Kat as he reached this area...

I overestimated what I can do in this section.
The script had FIFTEEN animation slots, just in this part alone. I wanted to animate MC running multiple times, slow-mo shots, crowd cheering, drinking, animated Avis vs. Big Titty top pull, commissioning someone for a post-process work etc. I wanted this section to be more impactful than before. But as soon as I even started to work on it, I realized how impossible it is. Running animation suck ass in hs2, even moreso a "sprinting" one that also needs to look good in slow mo. Also cheering crowd? Vanilla animations move so much, they start clipping almost instantly (same why I do no dance ones).

If it sounds like a burden when reading, it is because it was for me. 2-3 days passed of me trying to find how to make even basic animation set up, I hated all of it and it looked dogshit. I knew this section would be difficult, I even said on Discord this is prob the hardest part remaining till rework done, but it wasn't that I climbed it slowly, I couldn't even move. I was mentally blocked.

So after those couple days of failure, I said let's shift focus and work on something else. Each day if I'd wake up and feel too negative about working on the running section, I'd just do something else Fates related. There is lots of things to work, so I did. And that was actually great!
There were quite a few hs2 related plugins/tools I neglected because I needed time to learn them, so now I finally used that time for them. Finally used Blender for something clothes related, and it works pretty good! Then I also tried to check two hs2 plugins that could also help me with the running related animations. One wind related plugin was underwhelming (but I sent a report to the person making it so hoping for future updates), and the other timeline one took a bit to work but seemed handy. Then I moved further into ep3 testing. Went from line 1300 to 4500, found some more missing renders, even made 4? new animations, one which used the Blender thing I mentioned, and I truly think this might be most of the players fav animation of this whole episode 😎. Bugtested everything till where I reached renders, so half point of ep3.
And as great as this was, 2 weeks were gone, and I did literally everything I could work on the side, only thing not done is sound/music for that first half of ep3. Nothing else, I went through it all.
So, once again, I had to face the mental mountain ahead. And again, 2-3 days went by, I did 2 anims, they were absolute dogshit, and once more I was stuck on how to animate a run well.
However, after seeing how miserable I was, and the mental burden making me start to behave overly negative on Discord too, I decided to let go of the ambitious plans for it. Any animation that I deemed overly complex, or in need of taking me days for this section, I scrapped. And oh boy was the feeling good. Finally felt like something lifted over my shoulders.

Is the section as amazing as I hoped it? No. But is it also some fan favorite, especially with 2 dudes running? Also no (sorry to mc/falazio butt fans).
But now it's almost done, I've just reached the part outside where Koko is about to appear in the distance, and one super small, simple animation remains.
We're now at 1 570 renders for Ep3, and 10 animations (2 dogshit ones).
I can't wait to finally finish this damn party completely, I am tired of putting curtains in my room so I can look better at these dark renders without glossy reflection on screen 😡

Oh and I also worked on something Koko hair related, I'll have to think about it some more before I make a decision, maybe in another report this one is already long as is.

See you again in Patrons progress report in 2 weeks ! (Don't jinx it)

Love you all,
Kat <3