Happy new year!!
Last year my goal was "taking breaks", after the extremely intense year that was 2021. I did end up meeting that goal, taking an entire month and a half off at the end of 2022.
2022 ended up being a somewhat frustrating and scattered year for me production-wise. I didn't complete any projects or make much progress on the ones I was working on.
An impromptu decision to join a storyboarding class led to bumping Broken Spirits further down the schedule.
This year, my new goal is "focus". I'm shifting my priorities in order to get back on track. What projects are essential for me to be working on right now? Am I spending my time effectively while making these projects? These are the questions I asked myself, and after thinking about how to proceed, here is my new plan going into 2023.
ON HOLD
The Life of the Dolls animatic is being placed on hold. Because I developed it for the class deadline, I rushed the script, and got an evaluation that made me second-guess everything about it. I found myself endlessly fiddling with the dialogue and the whole thing is unraveling in my hands. This is why I hate revising!! :(
The best way to get something out of "revision hell" is to put up your hands and back away. I'll probably just use 85% what I wrote in the version of the script that was recorded, with tweaks to certain scenes to solve the most major issues with it. I'll record these pick-ups and new scenes with the actors at some point this year.
I'll definitely return to complete the animatic at a later date because I think it's really cool, and I didn't even get to board the coolest stuff yet!
FULL RELEASE AUGUST 2023
After taking a hard look at the story and how long it's taking to complete the first file, I'm setting a deadline for myself for August. This gives me about 1 month per file, with a bit of flexibility. It's intense, since the Canada Files chapters are requiring much more work than Methods chapters, but that's the kind of pressure I need to actually get it done. Completing the first file will give me a good head start, since creating the UI interfaces and minigames have been a huge challenge.
I hope to finish File One by the second week of January, and launch the beta during the third week.
Obviously, my plans may change if something happens during production, so keep an eye on this blog for weekly devlog updates.
BEGINNING PRODUCTION IN Q3
This project has been pushed back since 2018, but I remain excited about it. In many ways I'm glad it was pushed back, because over the years I've come up with a stronger emotional core to the story and Midori's arc. The game that I will start making later this year is much better than the one I would've made back in 2018.
I'm crossing my fingers that this time I actually can begin production on it without any other projects getting in the way, and that's the main reason I've placed LOTD on hold and I'm creating a very strict schedule for MTCF.
Though I was a bit hard on myself at the beginning of this post, I did accomplish many things in 2022.
I released three vignette stories for Methods, maintained my Patreon with posts every single week for the entire year, wrote my first ever feature-length screenplay, recorded it with some amazing actors, and edited it into a showcase video in time for my class deadline.
Every month I was also working on music commissions, and I completed work on the soundtrack for the horror visual novel The Elevator Game with Catgirls — which is out now! I hope you'll check it out, I highly recommend it!
So that's my mission statement for this year. Happy new year and I hope you are looking forward to The Canada Files and other upcoming projects!
Until next time!
— LockedOn.