gofile(Final Fantasy XVI Poll Animations) - https://gofile.io/d/JoEj9w

Public release of the FFXVI poll animations. Since there was no poll held, no poll results to hold. However, I will be doing a DOA character anyway, which will release with a new mid-month poll. I did sort of choose her via RNG, since I was planning to have a poll, but I got lazy. And she was one of the ones rolled.

Amy. Won't be a particularly big set, since I am technically on break and all that. Should still be good, at least.

As for the rest of this post, it will just be my ramble about the ghost video(s). I don't think I've done a proper talk about those first two ghost videos, so I'll talk about them a bit here, too. But first, let's talk about why I do these videos.

The first one honestly just came about entirely at random. I really just wanted to do somethinf different. Something fun to make, that wasn't entirely smut. Even considered just making a straight up horror video with no actual smut at all, but I eventually started figuring out a way to mix the two. I was gonna do some ghost animations to begin with, and then I started thinking about how to make it something more than just that, where there'd be some spooky things happening. And while it was very different than anything I had done up to that point, the more I thought about the idea, the more I wanted to do it. And while I could have gone full 'horror' for the in between shots, I decided to add some levity with some more comedic bits, like the dabbing and what not. But the main thing that stuck out to me about the idea was the concept of a 'fixed camera, yet a bunch of stuff happens anyway'. There was something interesting about taking a small, basic location and trying to come up with interesting ways to utilize it. I actually had a lot of ideas for the first one that got scrapped entirely. For example, the meat was gonna be a recurring thing. It was going to start out small - just a chunk of meat on the table. A sort of 'what's the point of this?' Then later on in the video, it'd be bigger. Then later, it'd be what was in the video. And then, finally, a humanoid meat figure would come out of the mess. It was actually supposed to be symbolic of the entire video. After all, what is the video? Sex. What comes of sex? Babby. Ergo, this weird meat creature was to be symbolic of what happens when having sex with a supernatural being. Buuuut I did think it was a little too much of an idea, and trying to figure out how to get a human to come out of that mass in an interesting way would have been waaaay too much work for lazy me. So it never became a thing.

Still, beyond that concept, I had some other ideas. But the ideas... largely don't tie into any larger concept or insinuation or what not. I quite literally just sit there thinking 'okay, what can I do in that room that would be visually interesting, funny, or cool?' And I just jot any random thing that comes to me. Like, the first thing I thought of that really struck me in the new ghost video was the moon opening up to reveal the red things(eyes) inside. It was just a cool idea that it ended up being the very first thing I made. Didn't come out quite like I would have liked, but one thing about these videos is that I don't obsess over the details. I basically spent less than a week on the ghost video. I go full production line and just churn that butter. I'll do tweaks here or there, but first pass is usually all I go for. Get it close enough to what I can think of and bam. Adding a filter on top of lower resolution helps to cover up the imperfections, as does the fixed, distant camera angle.

But, at the end of the day, I just come up with a bunch of ideas with no care for what they are, or if they thematically even make sense. Just 'that's neat, let's jot that down'. Some are harder than others. Like the meat one. Others are dirt simple, like a cardboard cutout flying by the window. But I tend to categorize them when coming up with ideas. Usually just between "horror" and "comedy", though the line is blurred at times, but in this recent ghost video I had two sub-categories. "Inside" and "outside". The window added a whole new level of potential, and a lot of the ideas that ended up in the video were related to it. I had quite a few more ideas I would have liked to do. Flock of birds outside - including a possible jumpscare of a bird slamming into the window and making a big ol' thud, but I only came up with that the day before I released the pack, so I didn't have enough time. I did add some birds to the very final scene. Hard to see, but you can see a couple crows sitting on the fence behind the figure with the scythe. Birds are cool. And they do fly into windows a lot. That or fight with their reflection. I had that happen to my window once. I just sat there watching it fight itself. Also found a few dead birds at my college near windows. RIP birds. And, before I leave this tangent, I just want to advocate for vultures. Vultures are cool. And helpful. They're one of nature's janitors, just leave 'em be. Don't insult them by calling scummy assholes vultures, kthxbai.

Anyway, scrapped ideas. I wanted to do something like a bloody splatter on the window across the street, but it was too far and low res and what not to really be noticeable. So that unfortunately got scrapped. Having one on the window itself was possible, but it was a bit too simple, and I had already made a lot up to that point so I didn't bother. Was gonna do some classic 'a bunch of glowing eyes appear outside', but I just went with the deer god. Also wanted a giant looming figure standing next to the house in the back, but I had already done quite a few 'figures outside the window' by that point. Another idea was to have a witch fly across the moon, or maybe a bicycle, but I preferred the very scary ghost instead. Of the window scenes, I think my favorite might be the meteor. Conceptually it's the moon one, but the meteor is just funny to me. UFO is also pretty funny. Mostly because it's a super hackneyed UFO model, but it actually looks pretty decent. It's actually amazing what you can get away with with low-resolution and filters. Like, the deer looks completely scuffed in actuality, but with the lighting and distance and filter, it looks a little bit spooky. But when you see it as it truly is...

Deer... god... dat ass. But seriously, I just spent like five minutes sculpting this abomination and threw a super basic armature together. Can't see any of the details in the video, but it served its purpose. And, as you can see, there is no ground. And you want to know something even funnier? The moon is closer than the house. Fixed camera perspectives can do some funny things.

Anyway, back to scrapped ideas... I was gonna do some more stuff in the house. Since it was Halloween, I was gonna do something where the whole room was flooded with candies, but that just seemed like too much work so I scrapped it. Especially since I wanted the ghost to burst out of the pile. I did consider doing something with a meat growth again, but didn't want to get too repetitive. I also planned to have a bunch of faces growing out of the walls, which was a scrapped idea from the scrapped ghost video last year. Which I did make, but didn't add to that little video I released.

Speaking of scrapped ideas that I made but didn't add. The preview of the post had the ghost eating stuff from a bowl. I did animate her snacking, and I was planning on adding more stuff of her just watching, playing, and what not, but I've done that a lot already so I never ended up making them. Instead, I utilized her with the 'Find the Ghost' segments. Which culminated in the 'behind you' one. I knew immediately that that was the conclusion, but I had to build up to it. It's not particularly scary, but as a gag it's perfect. All the previous times she shows up somewhere in frame... but the final one she doesn't? That can mean only one thing...

I also wanted to do more with that picture on the wall, but I couldn't figure out anything interesting other than the figures, or just changing the picture. So, rather than force something, I just let it be. I do like how the little hat guys came out, though. And I know it's kind of a meme nowadays - I think I see them associated with taking too much benadryl? - but that guy has been around a lot longer than the internet. My grandmother talked about seeing the hat man before I even knew what the internet was. 'Shadowy figure in a hat' isn't a new phenomenon, and it's a common sleep paralysis visitor. Speaking of sleep paralysis, I have a funny story about that. It's not quite sleep paralysis, but one night I woke up and saw a bright red light flooding into my room, and what looked like a woman in a dress hanging from a tree outside the window. When I tried to look closer at the figure, it flew up and out of sight, where the light faded. I've recreated what I saw, more or less, here.

It was like 3 in the morning, I just woke up and had rolled onto my back, and I was being forced awake by this random shit. But I'm the type to go 'okay, I couldn't have actually seen that. So what did I see?' And when you don't know how to explain something that happened, you have to retrace your steps. So I rolled back into my original position, closed my eyes, and then rolled back onto my back and opened my eyes. Saw the same exact thing, only for it to fade as I looked at the figure. I had been sleeping on my side, and the pressure from sleeping on my face had caused those weird color patterns to appear in my vision of my left eye. But not my right. So I could focus on my left eye and see this woman floating, but if I focused on my right I couldn't. And so I just lay there watching this figure fly away about five times before my vision started to return to normal. Then I rolled over and took my usual twenty minutes to fall back asleep. Not exactly a good horror story, but an amusing anecdote anyway.

Back to the video...here's another little detail that's almost impossible to see in the actual video.

My very shitty mouse writing aside, as the video shows(and you can see her hair between the pillows here), the ghost didn't abide by the rules. She doesn't understand that pillow fort rules are sacred and should never be broken, smh my head. 

Anyway, that's kind of all I got for scrapped ideas and the little details of what I actually did. Don't have much else to say. Again, I just go with whatever seems interesting to me. No real structure or attempt to make sense in a larger narrative, outside of a handful of things. And if you want to know my process for the sex scenes... well, I'm even less organized. In the first two ghost videos, I did write down a progression of poses, but for this one, I just winged the entire thing. I normally start very structure. Come up with an intro, which would lead into a pose naturally, and then I'd churn out the ideas one by one. For this one, the intro was the very last thing I made. I couldn't think of anything I wanted to do for an intro... and since the deadline was approaching, I just said 'screw it' and just posed something and animated it and went from there. I honestly could have done more - I'd have liked to do something near the window, for example, and would have liked to do something with the TV itself - but I think the video was long enough already, lol. These types of videos, I find, are really easy once I get going. Even without a preset 'script', I could just go 'this leads to this, which leads to this' and get them done nice and quick. Not having to worry about framing the scene and 'perfect' posing just lets me go ham and move quick. Which leads to a lot of bloat, but it is what it is. I think my favorite poses are the carried 69, since the hair is a particle system, it actually obeys the laws of physics without becoming a mess. Completely, anyway. Other one would be the table blowjob. 

And that's kind of all I've got to really talk about for the ghost videos. I meandered and rambled unecessarily, but hopefully it was an enjoyable meandering. I may do some more rambling this month, but not sure. Until then, though, see ya.

gofile - https://gofile.io/d/UEoabu

It's that time again. A new ghost video. I won't spoil anything here, but this is another case of 'cutting it close'. Finished it yesterday, and I honestly could have done more... but I was just starting to feel the effects of just pure animation frenzy and I needed to call it. It really does start hurting my brain after a certain point. Anyway... I'm thinking to write up a ramble this weekend about various cut concepts/ideas, and my general process with these videos, along with any other misc stuff I can think of... if people are interested in that sort of thing. I don't think I've ever actually talked about my ghost videos too in depth, so if you're interested, let me know. I'll also be releasing a 'cut down' version this weekend, as I usually do with these videos. Higher-res(+better visibility) version of just the 'good stuff', so to speak. That one will go up on my pixiv(though it'll just be the same link), just because I didn't feel like posting this one alone there. Too lazy. x)

Anyway, tomorrow is the XVI poll stuff. It's pretty good. x)

gofile - https://gofile.io/d/UEX3L9

The Yearly SuccubIris, new and improved. Sort of. Got a bit of a new look compared to previous years. This marks the sixth year of SuccubIris, so I figured it was time for a new get up. And with a new getup comes an upgraded succubus. Mostly threesomes in this set, with a foursome and a twosome. Was gonna do more twosomes, but I ran into a problem of Blender crashing while rendering the upcoming ghost videos and it took a while to troubleshoot that and by the time I was done, I just wanted some relaxation, so I only got to do one. Wish I had more time, but alas... ah well, next week will be another ghost video. No clue if it'll be any good, but I'll do my best. x)

gofile - https://gofile.io/d/bP23i9
And the winner is... the character who got ten seconds of screen time in FFXVI! Round of applause for the unnamed mother of Barnabas, everyone! *clapclapclap*

I know it seems like I might be salty or sarcastic, but I'm perfectly okay with this outcome. It's actually hilarious to me that the character with literally no character beat all the other characters. And I'm okay wtih that. Barnabas's mom is hot. I just mostly expected her to be last place, but I guess if someone is unfamiliar with the characters and voting solely on appearance, she's certainly got a lot going for her. As for the rest of the poll, Jill technically won if you count the two versions as one. Though it's debatable if everyone who voted for one would vote for the other if there was only one. Thus, the data is a bit inconclusive, but it's a reasonable assumption that a proportion of them would. Though here, Mid is the most popular in terms of votes, which also makes sense. Jill and Mid are kinda the ones I get asked about most, so yeah, no surprises there for me. Of them all, I feel like Benedikta kind of underperformed here, but admittedly I did just do three animations with her not long ago, so that may have played a role. Anabella also did pretty well, all things considered.

As for Jote and Tarja, who are my personal 1st and 2nd place... they got the least amount of votes. It's fine, it's fine... I'm not hurt at all. Nope. Not one bit... I'm used to this by now. (つ﹏<。)

Anyway, I know I said I'd be using the same method as last time, where each 100 points = one animation, but considering that last time that resulted in 7 animations, and here it'd only result in 3... I'll drop the threshold to half since that poll was 4 characters and this one is 8. 50 points = one animation. Which now means I gotta do... ten. And you know what? I'll give myself extra work for the hell of it. Since Anabella and Jill are so close to the next threshold I'll count them too! Why the hell not?! And, out of spite, I'll throw Tarja in as a bonus! 13 animations for the 31st of October. Truly a cursed day. The only way it could be more cursed is if it was a Friday. Is it really smart to give myself that much to work on in such a short time? Especially since I still have the ghost to work on? No, not at all. But I'm the king of bad ideas. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

But it's fine, though. I plan to take a bit of a break in November. Polls will continue, but I'm gonna get around to playing Metaphor in November, and start working on a Christmas set, so there probably won't be any set until December. What'll it be? Your guess is as good as mine. I've got a few ideas for stuff I want to do before the New Year, but no clue if I'll actually have the time to. I'll do my best, either way. ୧⁠(⁠＾⁠ ⁠〰⁠ ⁠＾⁠)⁠୨