This is gonna be a meandering ramble, since I originally wanted to talk about composition. Namely, composition of a shot, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized I had little to say. I don't really think about the composition of a shot, I just picture an image in my head that looks nice and try to match it. I never think about the rule of thirds, or the golden ratio, or any of that stuff that I see some people talk about when talking about composition. My composition rules basically are as follows.

Does it look good? If yes, move on. If no, fuck around with the camera/pose/lights until it looks good. I never turn on the composition guides in Blender, because those things confuse me more than anything. So yeah, I've got no real advice. And I'm not particularly great at composition to begin with. It's just something that happens.

As for another topic, this one will be a bit more 'serious' as it pertains to what happened earlier in the year. I'm not gonna divulge what happened, but I will go ahead and say that I am doing quite a bit better now. Been feeling more like normal, albeit not 100%. Doubt I'll ever be 100% again, or rather I doubt I was ever at 100% to begin with. Just my previous 100% is no longer my current 100%. Which is just to be expected as the cruel fate of time wears down on all of us. But I digress. I'm not here to get doom and gloom or anything like that, just to bring it up for anyone curious, and to kind of lay out my general sort of plan going forward.

I had, more or less, stuck to a bi-weekly release schedule for two+ years. I initially did it as a means of seeing if I could. Up to that point, I just kind uploaded stuff whenever. Some of it was super packed together, other stuff had long gaps, but there wasn't really any consistency. So I tried to make some consistency. Took some breaks here and there, did some wacky things elsewhere(the Anniversary Project was just a year ago, after all), but I had a fairly consistent output of at least something every other week. It was one of those 'object in motion, stays in motion' sort of thing, where the momentum kept me going. But that did break early this year. I had a lot of projects I planned to work on that are, currently, on hiatus. I teased some of them, and for a while I was really trying to continue them... but I've officially put them on the backburner for now. Having them looming over me when I no longer felt like working on them was just stressing me out on top of an already shitty time. But, around when I started working on Yukari, I basically just decided to just work on what I feel like working on. Previously revealed projects, characters I tend to work on routinely, frequently requested characters, teases, or whatever are just put aside and I'll work on whatever I feel like working on in the moment.

I imagine that will be disappointing for people who were looking forward to those projects and I do apologize for that, but for the 'current me', that feels like the best course of action. None of them are 'scrapped' or cancelled or anything like that. Just set aside while I focus on what I feel like working on in the moment. But sometimes my motivation dries up for a while, so to go back to the bi-weekly thing, I'm gonna keep things kind of loosey-goosey going forward. It may still happen where a release drops two weeks after the prior, but my aim will be 'next release within 2-4 weeks' as opposed to a hard 2-weeks. And polls will remain unaffected by that. It's just my normally scheduled releases that will slow down some, depending on the set and what not. At least until I can build up momentum again. But my hope for putting some things off for a little longer will be a bump in quality. People seemed to really like the Y'shtola, Yukari and Momiji stuff, which were things I worked on without worrying about WHEN they'd release, and that I was really excited to work on. The end result was me going the extra mile for them in some regard, since that 'looming date' wasn't there to pester me. And admittedly they aren't perfect all the way through, but they're overall a higher quality than some of my older bi-weekly sets I feel. Will this be a permanent change? Probably not. I am a fickle person, so my feelings could change the moment I post this. But it's something I've been thinking about for the past month, so I figure it's time to 'officially announce' it. Don't worry about me, though - I'm doing okay. Not perfect, obviously. This has been a shitty year in general for me, but I'm living. Still trying to get things into balance that got thrown out of balance, but I'm making progress bit-by-bit and doing a lot better than I was months ago.

But let's get off the serious talk and talk about something not serious. It's been a while since I showed off any random 'OCs' I made, since I haven't actually made any for a while. Tig ol' Biddies was the last one I really made. But I got into a spree of it recently. So why not show some levity with my crappy OCs.

The first one is the one I've got in my profile picture(which I will forever want to call avatar). Lot of people mentioned Lili in relation to the profile picture, and that's because it is her hair. I just borrowed it since hime-cuts are top tier. No name for this character, much like ToB. Just a random cosplayer/goth lolita. Took a bunch of parts from various characters to make the outfit... though a lot of it is DOA based. Surprisingly, the face isn't Aerith, who is usually my go-to face for making one of these. This is Luna, who I can no longer see in there. I am using Gentiana's face textures for part of the face, so I do see a little of her in there, and the hair doesn't help in that regard. But Luna? Can't see it.

This one is sort of based on an old modded Skyrim character I made in like 2013. Isn't exactly the same, as that character had messier hair, but there was some sort of leather outfit along these lines going on. It's been over a decade, so my memory is fuzzy, mods that old are hard to find at this point, and I don't think I backed them up. But in the end, my tastes haven't changed that much. This one does have a name from back in the day, but I forget it. I'm sure I have it written down somewhere, but I'm too lazy to look. I kind of want to do something with this one, but not just yet. Got other ideas I plan to work on first. And yes, that's Aerith's face.

This is just a Gaggle of Gyaru. I did these after the Yukino poll animations, since I have talked shit about Yukino for being a generic gyaru, so I decided to put my money where my mouth is. They're not amazing gyaru, but they're okay for ten-fifteen minutes worth of work. (´-ω-`) And yes, the two on the left are Aerith. Right most is actually Kyrie(FF7 Kyrie).

I've shown off the cat(otherwise known as Menat-ripoff) on the left before, but now I've made a guard cat. She big. Like as tall as the male model I use. She could crush you pretty easily. If she wanted to, anyway. Also not Aerith, surprisingly. I'll let you guess this one. (´-ω-`)

This one was just for something different. Was originally gonna go for a swashbuckler style, but a proper attire for that was annoying. Instead, it's kind of a private dick sort of outfit I guess. Just a random idea, kind of cool but not too special.

And this is actually an old OC of mine. From like 2020, but I never showed her off. She's OldC, since she's old in terms of being an older woman and being an old OC of mine. (´-ω-`) Also not Aerith, but a Yakuza character. I'd also like to do something with her, but because she's old it'd probably do poorly. Such is life. (´-ω-`)

I've got some others, but they're less interesting or even more half-assed. But that's about all I'll be showing off at this point. Got my next project lined up, and starting work on that. No clue when it'll drop, but ideally this month. Don't want to work on it too long. And of course, the poll results will drop this weekend, and the animations themselves the weekend after. Until next time.

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

Miji. Haven't done a proper set with her, like, ever. And I actually really like Momiji, I just never got around to feeling inspired to do a set with her for one reason or another. That has changed today, where this is a pretty sizable and decent set for her. I'll be upfront with it, this set was very strongly inspired by pockYin's still fantastic Momiji animation from back around when I first started posting my stuff. To the point I remade it myself, which actually happened quite some time ago. I had posed it last year just as practice, but after my impromptu 'break' at the beginning of the year, I spent a good few weeks doing a whole lot of nothing animation-wise, and I just kept returning to that animation and my still recreation. So, out of an attempt to do something without thinking too hard on what to do, I started recreating that animation. It was quite therapeutic and helped me 'get back into it' so to speak, but I didn't finish it at the time, and I intended it to just never see the light of the day. Since recreating someone else's animation always felt very weird for me to do, but since he hasn't posted in years, and it helped me through dark times, AND it fit with the set I ended up creating, I decided to include it. It serves as a tribute to a great animator that isn't around anymore. And at the end of the day, my version is worse anyway.

Beyond that, no clue if the next post will be two weeks or longer. Don't have anything lined up at the moment, but I sometimes get spurts of motivation. And past that, Chun-Li's poll animations + a new DOA poll will go up tomorrow. Would have gone up today, but didn't want to immediately bury a post.

gofile - https://gofile.io/d/7BRxtN

The results are in, and it was actually closer than I think some people might assume.

For a long time, they were all within spitting distance of one another in terms of points, but Chun-Li did eventually pull ahead and cement the victory. Regardless, like before, Xiahou Ji and Nina will both be added to a future 'Loser Poll', where four losing characters battle it out for a second chance. Winner gets two animations, 2nd and 3rd place get one. Only one will not get something. So something to look forward to, I suppose.

Beyond that, not much to say. Was on 'break' since Yukari did take a bit out of me, but I have started on the next set, so hopefully that will be done by next week. Not gonna be anything huge like the Yukari set, but it'll still be nice I think.

gofile - https://gofile.io/d/JYjIRi
gofile(poll animations) - https://gofile.io/d/sJF9Gr

A combination post, since I didn't feel like making two. First off, Yukari animations. I went a little wild with these, since Persona is ripe with scenarios to be used. I could have easily come up with several more possible settings/situations to be done with Yukari alone, but I held off since I was already going overboard. This is just my first real foray into Persona, so I was extra motivated. Yukari is a good 'entry point', honestly. I was always waffling with who should be first, so once I settled on her it was like taking off the training weights and getting a speed boost so to speak. I will say that these are rendered in 4k, mostly by accident. Anime stuff renders pretty quick, so I didn't notice I was rendering at 4k until about seven renders deep and at that point I was just like 'well, might as well'.

As for what comes next... not sure. I finished these and have been kind of brain dead, so I'm gonna take a small break in terms of regular releases to sort of recharge and figure out what I want to work on next. It won't be more Persona, since I don't want to flood too much of one thing, but I'd like to do more Persona this year. But I've got a lot of things I'd like to do this year that I probably won't be able to get to, so I'm just taking things one thing at a time.

For the poll, the winner is...

Jihl. The results are as follows.

Going into this poll, I expected Ifalna to win. And she almost did, at least in terms of pure number of votes. But she lost by quite the margin when it comes to total points. How the cookie crumbles sometimes. At the very least, Ifalna will be guaranteed an animation from the Loser poll. Since, let's be real here. Gladiolus has no chance. He did get more votes than I expected(5 more than my proposed 8), but unless more people jump aboard the troll train in favor of Kyrie, Lulu, and Ifalna, I can't see him getting enough to get third place. So there's that. The FF Loser poll will probably be in July, though. Since next month will be a DOA poll, then the following will be the FF loser poll.

Anyway, that's about all I've got for today. Poll will also be slightly delayed(just a couple days) since the first poll was delayed, and I need some time to whip up some Jihl stuff, AND rig the three characters for the upcoming poll. It's a bit of a doozy. I'm actually not sure who will win this one, since it's probably gonna be a 1v1 in the end but I'm not sure which of the two will prevail. Though, for all I know the third character will be the dark horse and win. Life is funny like that, sometimes.