Never messed with inverse kinematics before and it's kicking my ass. I'm slowly learning how to work with it, tho. The going is slow, but I'm still making progress.

OH YEAH! Amy's all done and I'm ready to start animating! LET'S FUCKING GOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

Got Amy done and rigged up! Just gonna animate a few textures and it'll be onto animating her trailer. Once that's done, work can finally start on episode 1 of the reboot! We're so back and ready to go!

Late update, but life has a way of keepin ya busy sometimes, ya know? In the meantime, I've gotten plenty done with my animations! I've refined Sonic's model and added some dynamic textures to his mesh. I wanted his eyes as textures. I got it. I wanted them animated. I got it. I wanted them to move dynamically around the mesh. I got it. I wanted eyelids as textures to overlay his eyes and also have them move and tilt dynamically. I got it. I wanted shading overtop of all of it. I got it. And the shader nodetree I made is a wide awake nightmare that nearly killed me trying to make it all work together the way I wanted. But I got it! I've also been busy on Amy's mesh as well. I feel like my techniques have gotten better since I've been learning Blender over the past year or so, but still novice stuff. Regardless, I've made plenty of progress on her model! Once I'm done with it, I'll move on to rigging her model for animation. Still plenty of work to do, and I'm not slowing down anytime soon!

So yeah, two weeks was definitely optimistic, but in that time, I've been busy making a font for my animations. I'm really diggin the radical 90's aesthetic it's got, but now I've gotta figure out how to ACTUALLY turn it into a font. Don't mind that the question mark is missing, though. We don't ask questions here. (I'll get around to it, eventually.)

Feel like I went a lil ham with the camera. In all the animations I've done, there's always been some sorta limitation, like it's an in-game camera, a static camera, or a 2D camera. Now that I have full control of the camera in blender, I feel like a baby elephant that just discovered its trunk. I'm swingin it around doin helicopters and shit. I know not how to wield the power I now possess.

I first started animating at the beginning of the school year in 2007, and my passion for it died after I graduated in 2009. My time as an animator lasted less than 2 years, and all my stuff was posted within 2008, so effectively, my series lasted less than a year, and yet 16 years later, I still find fans dedicating time and effort to this series I made so long ago. My passion for animation was reignited last year, and I've been slowly working on it ever since. It's been slow going, but what else can I do as one person doing all this in my spare time?

As of right now I'm still working on Sonic's trailer. His animation is all done for it, and right now, I'm working on building the scene. Once I'm done with that, I'm gonna animate the camera and then put together the trailer. Only then will I feel I've proven my resolve and motivation in reigniting my passion for animation enough to justify having a patreon. So be on the lookout for that. Maybe another week or two? We'll see. Plans are made to be broken, after all. Whatever happens, that fire's still in me, and I don't plan on letting it die again!

OH YEAH! Model's built and rigged and I'm ready to start animating!! NOT EVEN DEATH COULD STOP ME NOW!!!

So big news from my workplace. They're finally matching our pay with other Honda plants, dropping time to top pay from 6 years to 3, and on top of all that, increasing our pay by 11%. No doubt they saw what the UAW accomplished and collectively, and in unison, shat their pants. Whatever motivated them, this is amazing news for me! Since I'm already 4.5 years in as full-time, I'll be going straight to top pay in January. I'm looking at going from $26/hr to ~$35/hr. That's a gigantic jump in pay and opens up so many possibilities for me!

My plan now is to get all my financial ducks in a row and, with that done, see if I can drop my schedule by one or two days a week, and dedicate that extra time to animation. Prolly won't get to that point til the summertime, so until then, it'll be a slow trickle in progress for my animation.

I can't tell you how relieving it is knowing I'll actually have the money to not only catch up and keep up on my finances, but also get shit done around the house and dedicate more time to my hobbies! My future just got a whole lot brighter! Unions are an amazing thing, and they even help push jobs that aren't unionized to be better.