Story #9 has been Out in the Wild! What’s Next ?

A couple months overdue, but it’s about time I write another blogpost so that I can settle my thoughts on the latest animation release, “The Stellapen & the Eraser”. I’ll be going over how the past year went with production, resizing the team, and tackling the fickle challenge of work/life balance.

Nearly 1 year ago, I wrote the WIP blogpost detailing my intentions with Story #9 – a major artistic hurdle I was struggling with was that of “aimlessness”. As a refresher, we had just finished our cooldown project, “Violet vs Dummy”, and it was time to seriously think about where the Gildedguy series was headed. Big questions like, “what is it all about?” and “how will it end?”.

And so, I aimed to poise Story #9 to ask these questions while teasing at a possible answer.

Now that the animation is out, I feel like I can discuss those answers more openly.

Even Leaner Production

This project had a small, yet focused team, with the animation being done almost exclusively by me and cleanup/ink from Rebonk, Voroxzii, & Rainby. We had to downsize after Dragon of Mar for Violet vs Dummy, but we went even leaner for Story 9. Despite that, we got a good amount of footage done while keeping the quality level up.

Another efficiency (and genuine artistic flair) was the use of 3D throughout the episode. I contracted BetaPotata to model and setup the forest fly-over scene, which was a blast to play around with. He set up nodes to let me fine-tune the tree, bush, grass, and stump population throughout the map.

Working with a reduced budget is not necessarily a bad thing – it just means reduced scope and/or more labor on my part. It comes with the benefit of added creative control and a healthy pressure to work efficiently.

It reminds me of earlier days when I was working purely solo. There exist many livestream VOD’s of the Basement Busk production’s cleanup & inking, which lasted months. I recall it being tedious, and although I would prefer handing that job to someone else, there’s a tranquility to the act of simply drawing cleanup lines and using the fill-bucket-color tool. Similar to cleaning dishes, you surrender to the soapy bubbles and eventually feel the satisfaction of a job well done.

You don’t always get tangible results like that when doing rough animation or storyboarding. Project managers and directors are constantly dealing with planning, people, and ideas. It’s hard to get into “zen mode” looking at spreadsheets.

Life vs Work

You may be wondering “why is the budget smaller?” and part of the answer requires me to dive more into my personal life. I don’t mind sharing my financial picture, but it’s typically a private matter, and I’m a rather private person. But a small glimpse is necessary since it has a large impact on the size of my art projects. It also correlates closely with Story #9.

The budget isn’t growing because – well, marriage! As I’ve grown up from a lone artist living in basements, I’ve taken on more responsibility. Ever since combining my life with my wife’s, everything has at least doubled in scale. More people, pets, travel, joy, and experiences. But that also includes twice the challenges and costs.

And it’s not just a money thing – life demands a time and effort cost too. My fellow adults understand this in their bones.

I definitely felt this tension between life and work when deciding whether or not to pursue an animation career. A core conflict in “Gildedguy Gets Up” is that struggle between artistic passion and conventional stability. In the climax of the story, we see a vision into a potential future for Gildedguy, where the stable path seems unfulfilling. Despite choosing passion, I still wonder about the road not taken. This is why Gildedguy reminisces about the Life Factory at the start of the recent episode.

And so I chose the art path, and then a bunch of stuff happened, and now we’re here, still having to balance out the sacrifice between inner art and outer life. I’m in a period of refining the cost of my art so that it doesn’t balloon into bankruptcy. I love working with bigger teams, and I really hope to do another huge project (like the 30-minute episode) again.

Even now, our cat (a new acquisition from married life), is getting in the way of my work! She just hops right in front of me, and demands pets. And I’d be a fool not to.

By the way, younger artists seeking a living from their work should not be discouraged! I bet, no matter what path I took, I’d still be having this conundrum.

Yupia

The castle in “The Stellapen & the Eraser” occupies a large part of the setting, and reflects the aforementioned expansion of life’s responsibilities. But even the strongest of fortresses have their weaknesses, and in this case, it’s the threat of an unlived life.

In Story #9, Yupia’s summoning is initiated by a nagging “what if” from the past – a small instance of unrequited love. Creatively, these “what ifs” are great material for stories, and I draw upon them often. But what if your “what if” came true? And you made it true, whether by force or by accident?

Not all aspirations have good outcomes, something Gildedguy will have to confront in the form of Yupia.

I’m glad to have finally depicted the weird paradox of her: She wants to die, but cannot. People have asked me how I found such a fitting song for her and the answer is:

Hundreds of song requests! The livestream truly is a great way to expand your music tastes, and I wouldn’t have discovered “as good a reason” if not for a viewer’s random song request. It has a dark, vengeful vibe that also has a very catchy hook to it. And the lyrics are apt for our particular plot.

Her goal is made apparent by the end of the animation: destroying the green star that keeps her alive every night, the Stellapen, and it’s wielder.

What will happen? Find out next time!

Actually, find out now, cause I’m gonna tell you.

What’s Next

Next time, we’ll be seeing the beginning of Gildedguy’s DUELS Event!

It’s already been progress these past couple months, and we already have dozens of participants working on animations, audio stories, and comics. This event is my solution to the question of “what now?” for Gildedguy, for when you defeat a dragon, the next thing to do is foster more heroes. I believe it to be fitting, since I’m grateful to the Hyun’s Dojo animation community for giving me a starting place to share art and build friendships.

For fairness, I’ll be animating this battle completely solo (at least for the premiere), against a relatively unknown speedster: Kamise

He’ll have to seriously level up his skills and mental game if he is to stand a chance against Gildedguy. It’ll be interesting to have Gildedguy fight the underdog, instead of being one for once!

His creator is CHorange, a prolific stick animator who has actually done quite a few battles against others already. I find Kamise’s understated, relaxed (almost casual), demeanor very refreshing amongst my current crew of characters. It’ll be fun to see how that might collide with who Gildedguy is.

But it’s still been a challenge for both of us, since we’ve only had a precious couple months to animate our parts for the fight.

The name of the game is speed and glory, and I look forward to showing it to you all in…

2 weeks..?

DAMN time to get back to work!

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