2023 was quite the eventful year compared to practically....... uh........ every other year in my life? i think?

So much stuff happened so it's best to start at the beginning.

December 2022!

REREDEEMER is in a terrible spot. The thing has been in production since February and i only have 2 and a half scenes done? That's fucked! Especially since i made the incredibly wise decision of dropping a Sneak Peek of sorts on Madness Day 2022. It ain't easy doing a full animation while trying to balance school and other projects. So as a "New Year Goal Type Thing", i decided that once the year was over, i would sit my ass down and finish this animation once and for all.

And fresh out of graduation, The next 5 months of my life began.

From January to May.

The Non Stop Balls To The Wall All Shits Given Grindathon Began with me animating the remaining frames. Which took only from January to February.

That's right. HALF of reREDEEMER was animated on just two months!

In March i took a tiny little break to do other projects, most notably i got invited to be a part of the Duke Nukem Forever 2001 Restoration Project in early January, as an animator. Haven't done a lot of animation due to custom rigs and animations not being supported at that moment in time, but i did contribute by doing some props, and most notably, making a model of a major boss, the Praetorian Snatcher, seen here. Aside from that, once i finished those Pizza Tower renders, i was back on the reREDEEMER grind. Doing bullet casings, muzzleflashes and the sort.

A friend wanted to help with the blood splatters and had an idea that sounded great on paper. Animating frame-by-frame every single blood splatter with Blender's Grease Pencil! What could go wrong? The few examples they sent me were fantastic but it was clear that we would not make it out on time if we continued with the idea. So to the Google we go! Awez made some pretty chunky blood splatters and i proceeded to not make them justice because i made them too damn small.

But there was blood! At least...

SFX was finished in 3 days. Don't have a lot to say about it other than i will use Kosmos' Mega Sound Pack until the day i drop dead.

Rendering was a big problem that almost killed the project. You see, said friend had an insanely powerful graphics card. I could do raytracing! But once they dropped the whole animating blood thing, irl stuff kept popping up, and they had to leave the project. Which is completely fair, i'm not gonna force anyone to do work they can't handle.

So i'm sitting here, no RTX card to assist me. Do i tweak the shading of EVERY SINGLE SCENE so i can render it on Eevee or do i just brute-force my way through Cycles? Guess which one i chose.

The main laptop i used was unavailable during the last week of production so i had to throw large boulders at Scientist once again for rendering assistance. And by rendering assistance, of course, i mean "hey can you render over 3500+ frames of animation in Cycles with your not-RTX-card?" He agreed. And he's pretty much the only reason reREDEEMER crossed the finish line.

But that also explains why the final project looks so... noisy. Especially the elevator scene good lord that looks like hot garbage. I had to lower the sample count a LOT. And i did some questionable compositing choices that made it even more noticeable.

Notice how i've been JUST talking about reREDEEMER? Well that's how my life was from January to May so it's accurate.

So.

reREDEEMER has officially released at the night to an unsuspecting public on Pico Day at midnight. And of course, i'm scared as shit. What if they don't like it? What if i missed a scene? What if there's a mistake animation-wise? I even had nightmares about the possible negative reception. That's what spending 14 months in a project does to a man.

But, fortunately, it got an insanely positive reception, one that i'm still grateful to this day. But one question remains.

What the hell did i do between reREDEEMER's release and the Pico Day winner announcement? Because keep in mind i no longer had a good laptop to do stuff. Sure, i could make a simple render like the Annie one but that was it for me. Just crossing my fingers hoping SOMETHING would happen. Aside from my dad occasionally bringing different work laptops that could kinda handle my projects.

And SOMETHING did happen oh my god. I still don't understand HOW or WHY, but it did happen!

Treasure Hunt 2023, Pico Day 2023, and Best of May 2023. All competitions with my stupid ass name at the top. This plus some extra commission work gave me the funds i needed to buy myself a GOOD PC. Scratch that, an EXCELLENT PC.

What you have to understand is that all of my work was powered by an Intel iGPU from 2016. It was bad.

Parts arrived Early August but that was it. It was time to go NUTS.

Showdown was the first thing i released that was made from scratch on my new PC. Hopefully it showed what i'm capable of with ACTUAL HARDWARE.

Everything rendered in Cycles with barely any splotchy visuals. (looking at you reREDEEMER)

And after all that........ It was quiet. And for good reason.

I was finally at peace. Achieving a childhood dream. Doing my funny art with barely any limitations. Running any game i wanted at 1080p max settings. Beautiful.

Then i opened commissions, didn't get a lot of clients, but a BIG highlight was Coda, who wanted to use my TADC models, but they were uhhh kinda garbage if i'm being honest.

Rough Pomni model/rig with mishapen hands and eyes so i could do some funny cheating to the camera.

So, with no experience doing advanced rigs, i said yes!. I had never used any advanced rigging tools, so it was a very good learning experience having to re-rig all 7 characters, plus Bubble for good measure.

The current Pomni rig. Much better looking! And much more complex.

And also the rigs are good as hell on their own. You can see what they're capable of here:

And.... yeah. That's basically all that happened this year..... If you exclude my insane ability to never release any animations i say i'm gonna release.

That's something i noticed this year. I HAVE to keep my mouth shut about upcoming projects because they're almost never finished.

Remember that Joel animation i was doing after reREDEEMER?

Remember that Madness Day 2023 animation?

Yeah. No more promises like that in 2024 and beyond. I work better when i shut my mouth and show stuff publicly when it's almost done.

And if there was one word to describe this whole year. It would be Exhausting. I'm tired, believe it or not.

A lot happened irl that i won't get into because this'll turn into a big vent post and i don't want that, but i'm just Tired. And i can't exactly take a break due to my current circumstances. I've been doing nothing but crunching projects all year. Will it get better? If this year has shown me anything is that it WILL get better. It always does. But for the time being, i'm in the grinder. 

See you all in 2024!