Story 7 has been unleashed into the wilds of the internet! It was an ambitious project with an extended production, topped off with a bombastic premiere.

Overall, I’m proud of what the production team and I have created. Because of the sheer amount of work and preparation for the project, there wasn’t much time for me to reflect and wonder about how well the animation “would do”. So I’m very relieved that many found the final video to be good and up to par with the other stories.

I’ve written this post as a way to reflect, now that I have some time to do that! So read on if you’d like to learn about the process behind this animation, as well as my thoughts on what shall come next.

Destination Reached?

As far back as 2020, and in my WIP blog post for this project, I stated my goal was to animate something about the “ever-changing future”. These previous two projects have been very “past vs future” focused.

Why? I guess I’ve been going through some life changes (NOT PUBERTY) that make me think about my next big steps. Although I intend to create projects for a long time, I’m not sure how many more big “animations” I got left in me.

The Origin story was a good way to pay tribute to my family, while this recent RHG story was a good way to pay tribute to my art community.

I’m thankful that Stone (the original creator of Andre & RHG) found the animation moving, along with other RHG legends.

Some of my favorite reactions included viewers reminiscing about the Chuck vs FLLFFL footage – this is the exact response I wanted to elicit from those “rosy nostalgia” scenes!

Lengthy Crunch

Something that I would like to improve on was the lengthy-ness of the “crunch” period for this project. Crunch is a period of high-intensity work during the end of a production that is usually the result of overly optimistic planning. Like cramming for a test the night before, crunch comes with heightened stress and reduced work quality.

I purposefully left the ending for Story 7 unplanned so that I could more organically write the conclusion, and animate it in a free and “untethered” way. And as expected, this lack of planning resulted in a lot of uncertainty and slow progress. Whereas my crunch times are usually 2-3 months long, this one lasted about 4!

The extended deadlines were a combination of scope-creep and underestimating the workload to achieve the visual style of the finale.

New Feature! 3D-Printed Merch

Of the new ideas introduced by scope-creep was my fascination with 3D printing starting last February. Growing up, I was a massive LEGO fan, and I credit the toy for stoking my interest in creative world-building, engineering (LEGO mind storms), and game-dev (LEGO PC games). Over the years, I switched to the digital side of things, and as evident by the buckets of unused LEGO pieces in my basement, I no longer play with the colorful plastic bricks.

But now that I am more proficient in 3D modelling and design, my love for fabricating plastic toys is back! What really caught my eye was watching videos of small businesses showing off their 3D print farms, all running from a room in their houses.

Controlling rows of machines working busily and overseeing them as the superior human master is the sort of power that I dreamt of while growing up.

I also caught wind of the fact that these people ship product all around the world via home-based postal services, all without having to leave the house.

The hermit in me fell in love with the idea of running an online shop, manufacturing the product myself, and having the mailman pick up orders from my doorstep. And something in me felt like it was possible to set this all up while also animating Story 7.

Little did I know, there’s A LOT more to making a 3D printing side-hustle than “3d printer + press start = make monie”:

• Tweaking 3D prints tolerances (1mm differences)
• Learning slicer software and optimal print settings (nozzle temp, layer height, support orientations)
• Building & maintaining the printers
• Picking the right filament colors, size, and quality
• BED LEVELLING
• Exploring & buying packaging
• Marketing, pricing, taking product photos
• Teaching my brothers how to pack orders
• Driving back and forth to my brothers place to drop off supplies
• …and many hours with the craft knife trimming finishing off and painting the figurines themselves.

More pictures of my prints can be see on the Shop Page.

The 3D printing merch effort ate up a considerable amount of my time – and I’ve enjoyed nearly every moment of it. Aside from some aspects, I absolutely love the process. After years of being a digital artist, it feels awesome to transform the virtual into something I can touch (and physically hand to someone else). It’s a lot different from just showing your phone out and saying “look at this JPEG I made”.

The Dynamic Finale

The 2nd big contributor to the crunch was my insistence on doing a minute-long, hand-painted, sequence at a full 24 animated frames per second.

I felt it would be the perfect way to contrast against the limited palette (lovingly called the “booger palette” internally) and the more static shots in the beginning of the animation. And I not only wanted to try something new, I wanted to put an overwhelming amount of effort into it. And massive effort put in we did do.

All of the scenes during and after the blastoff of Story 7 were digitally painted outside of Flash and composited together later on. Each character frame was repainted, whereas the background were a combination of manual inking and 3D generation. We adopted 3D clouds after my loving girlfriend (bless her hands) worked over a couple dozen hours inking this 4 second segment.

Switching over to 3D for the backgrounds saved us weeks of work – and I’d argue it looks more consistent and better than digital painting. The integration between the human touch of 2D and the cold precision of 3D continues to be a balance I will explore.

Premiere

Last story’s Fortnite premiere was huge and exceptional – there was little chance that I could top a showing to millions of live players! But that’s ok, because I had a project lined up that I could finally unveil for Story 7 – the GildedGala!

This was a dream project that I developed in preparation for last year’s premiere, so all I had to do was take it off the shelf and dust it off. Part of the dusting was adding a few more NPC’s and the very popular “dance” functionality.

Prepping development for the Gala was surprisingly easy, and I was so happy that the old server &app code still worked after all these months. The night of the premiere I opened up this website to a FLOOD of guests itching to log in. This predictably lead to my website crashing (luckily I had a sister site ready in this case).

Besides that, and some spamming issues, the app ran perfectly, and was able to accommodate the thousands of players that stopped by that evening. With all the attendance and virtual item sales, we were able to fund the development costs of the app and pay for a nice dinner for the production team members.

I’m extremely pleased with how the Gala went, and will definitely be bringing it back for the next animation. It was wonderful seeing stick community members pop into the premiere and enjoy the festivities.

I’ve never done an in-person premiere or movie showing (only a small entry into a school film festival), but I imagine it feels similar to GildedGala. I’d love to set up a venue like this again in the future, even if it’s not for my own work.

The Andre is Dead All Along Theory

Lotsa peeps have been digging the new animation! I’ve been monitoring the feedback and noting parts where there was the most interest and also the most confusion.

It’s an interesting interpretation, and it infuses the story with a lot of meaning. I have to take the stance of the un-interfering author, and neither confirm or deny the theory, but I can give a fun behind-the-scenes factoid:

The original “opponent” for Story 7 was initially planned to be someone else – FLLFFL himself in a ghostly form called DELTFL. He was to be a sort of guardian of the colosseum, allied with wind itself.

Influences of the Delta concept seeped into a modern Andre design, where Andre would be an amalgamation of multiple RHG’s he’s defeated over time. I abandoned this design since his “new” aspects started to mirror Arzon’s role in the story.

My Activities Since (Chores)

So it’s been about 2 weeks since release, what have I been up to?

Vacationing & chores –

Immediately after the premiere, I went stepped back from the keyboard and touched some grass, and mowed the lawn. I can’t lie, it was hard to keep myself from looking at the comments all day, but having things to do outside of the digital world was very important for my “mental hygiene”.

After all that working on the computer, it is refreshing to unwind a bit. And do more work (but at least it’s handy-man type work). So I’ve been tidying up my work spaces and catching up with friends.

I’m moving quickly to put this project to rest. In fact, I consider this blogpost the very last bit of work I need to do for Gildedguy & the Rock Hard Gladiator!

Story 8 & Dragons

The next animation is likely going to involve a Dragon. What the Dragon exactly is and means is still a mystery to me, but I do know it’s something dark, powerful, and unconscious. I’ve played around with past & future a lot with these previous two pieces. For this next one I want to do a deep dive into more dangerous territory.

But there’s a knot in my stomach. Something undigested. I need to get it out, and this animation is the only way I know how.