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I noticed that there was less of a gap between the first video and the second compared to the 2 year gap before hellbent. Was this because the video was longer, or was life getting in the way, or was it the new character models? Also, should we expect a similar gap till the next video? Hellbent was worth the wait and I’m sure the next video will be the same! Great work all around!! ~ A Curious Fan

heilos:

artsyfeathersartsyblog:

Is it post mortem already? Here we go then!

We put a lot of focus into improving the overall quality of the video this time around and tried a looooot of new things, things we didn’t even anticipate trying honestly. We knew we wanted to have a proper storyboarding phase and really push the angles of shots especially since from here on out there will be a good deal of conflict and things need to be dynamic. 

Unfortunately that meant more backgrounds. I was reeling at the amount of backgrounds in Freaking Out and Hellbent turned out to be DOUBLE that workload. Double the bgs. Double the shots, many with multiple characters. @heilos​ usually works on additional assets/ shot set up and I on backgrounds. We ended up having to combine workloads to make a proper dent in them because both of us began experiencing periodic burnout and were bottle-necking the production somewhat. Once @mysterybensmysteryblog​ has shots that boy’s pretty freaking dynamite.  

Please note that’s putting things veeery simply. There’s a lot of life nuances that typically get in the way as well, such as freelance, and getting a new job. I had to let the bg artist who’d been helping me since Mystery Skulls: Ghost go which caused me an inexplicable amount of mental turmoil the beginning of this year. While they’re not part of the core group literally everyone on that special thanks list is my hero! They provided just enough to keep me going during a tough time.

My initial goal is usually and will probably continue to be within a year of starting production, so ideally it wont take another 2 years. I will try to do everything I can to prevent this but in the end this IS a passion project and we’d rather release something we feel we can be proud of!   

Artsy couldn’t have summed it up better.

We won’t go into the super nitty gritty, but there were A LOT of bumps in the road on top of the multiple burn out moments while trying to finish this thing either from events out of our control or from experimenting with tons of new things on the production that we had to learn on the fly/ trial and error. 

Artsy was my rock this entire time as we were in work hangouts almost every day talking and working with each other piece by piece on production assignments, be it props, backgrounds, animation set up, tweaking existing animation, critique/feedback on what was turned in ect ect. 

Our team is only made up of 4-5 main active people, and about 4-5 additional helpers that aren’t always available throughout production due to jobs, life, other projects ect ect., but were extremely helpful when we were able to have them on assignments. We were also so fortunate to have our special guest animator Vivzipop help near the end on one very large shot. 

This is first and foremost an incredibly elaborate passion project that comes out of what free time we have. The goal would be to not take another two years while still keeping up quality, but we’ll have to see how things go in taking what we learned on this production and streamlining things to go a bit smoother hopefully.