It is now August and I've still not produced anything this year. Bad bad bad ero! Don't worry though, I haven't been wasting time, in fact I've done a lot of extremely useful and valuable things, but nothing has been completed yet. I realized I've got too many balls in the air and decided to temporarily drop a few to get at least something done this year. One of them is Project E unfortunately, but not without reason.
If any of you have Lali's Bits then you'll know that Project E will be crazy complex and very detailed, and to make such a figure I need a rock-solid platform that gives me total control over my figure. Poser is almost such a platform, with lots of extremely useful tools to get me 60% of the way. Unfortunately Poser also suffers from a lot of crippling bugs that have never been addressed, which make it near impossible to oversee and manage the complexity of Project E (or even to get it to work properly on your PC). And with all the attention it has been getting lately, I don't want to release a half-assed figure.
Waiting for Poser 11
The good news is that Poser has a new product manager (Nerd3D) that seems to have a better and more diligent grasp of what has to be done to get Poser fine-tuned. So far I can only rely on his words, those of some of the testers and other rumors, but most of them seem quite promising. In any case they seem more in contact with the reality of their user's experiences than before, and that should only prove beneficial, imo. Let's hope I'm right!
btw, concerning DS, no promises but I have a vendor closely affiliated with DAZ that has offered to help get Project E into DS once she's working. The tech theoretically works in DS but it just needs some small tweaks to read PE properly. But first I have to get the girl working properly in Poser, my platform of choice.
So I've decided to focus entirely on my comics until Poser 11 comes out. And even then, I've decided to delegate some development tasks to other people so that I can focus more on my comics, the entire reason why I got into 3DCG in the first place. Luckily I've now got some very competent people offering their help to me in running this project, and also they agree with me that it is best to wait for Poser 11. But not to worry, PE still gets developed as I make my comics, since that's what she was made for.
Finally some comics!!
Now for comics, Poser is brilliant, so no excuses there. I've added a progress bar frame up top, so that you can see what's happening. Most of the progress would indicate the posing / rendering phase, because that's really what its all about. But if the progress is at 10% it would mean that everything is set up, but now has to be acted out and rendered. In actual fact it should be 50% because preparing the scenes is half the work, but usually preparation work is also in conjunction with other comics, and future comics related to that comic. Like with the Disco Dragon, once part 1 is done, parts 2 and 3 should be smooth sailing since everything is set up.
Progress
And on that note, like I said I haven't been wasting time this year. The good news about my comics is that, despite having spent so much time on Project E, I've still managed to build up figures, props, clothing, materials, entire sets and locations for the stories I've been planning to do. All I really need to do is pose the characters and render. I've already started with the Disco Dragon part 1 a few weeks ago and its 74% done. I hope I can finish it by the end of this month, otherwise it will be beginning of September.
Erogenesis' Madness streamlined
The Disco Dragon (DD) will by far be the most elaborate comic I've ever made, even crazier than the Gentleman's Club. The first part will be the introduction to the story, setting up the reason there will be so much sex in the second and third parts. I think by now I've firmly established that 'Lite' means: fun, light-hearted, no violence etc, as opposed to a short comic lol. I cannot do short comics! However I'm not going to make the same mistake as the Gentleman's Club to wait and release it in one go, but rather in three parts, both for entertainment reasons as for marketing and financial reasons. Most of all you won't have to wait so long for some prime Lali entertainment lol
For free???
Part 1 will be for free, and the other two will be for sale. I do this for two reasons: 1. so that you can see what the comic will be about. 2. shameless marketing. I've discovered that there are many people out there that hesitate to want to pay for 3DX comics, partly because of being disappointed. So like this people can see my quality and what they can expect the next time they pay their hard-earned $$$ for a comic of mine. Also, I've found out that a lot of folks out there don't exactly know that Lali comics are not your average 3D erotica. So hopefully this will also help folks see what Lali is all about and make them less hesitant to invest in my work. Of course, and I am not ashamed to admit that this will help my sales along a bit... which is necessary because I need to make a living hehe
And then...?
For the rest, as you know I have a load of other comics planned, but I hope to get Sen's first comic done this year!! I'm in the mood for something totally different!
Secret Projects
Yes I have one secret 'comic' coming up, and I'm also working on a simpler 3D model of something, something with the level of detail of Lali's Bits ;) I won't say more.
