Production Update (Nathan):
This week was a bit crazy, trying to adjust all of our production releases due to some actor scheduling issues. Unfortunately, working from a budget of $0.00 means that we are at the mercy of everybody’s kindness and open time. When you couple that with the fact that we can’t pre-write and record much because of the interactive nature of Shattered Sleep, then sometimes schedules get delayed and we’ve got to adjust things. This week has also been a lot of getting things ready for our next season of content. We’re excited to continue the story of Hypatia and the Ark at a greater scale, now that we’ve gotten some great experience with Shattered Sleep. To make sure everything for that is ready on time, we’ve had to start now! In addition to next season, we’re close to revealing a new line of Celestial Horizons-related content that will be rolling out to you all over the next few weeks… for the next few days, keep your eyes on our YouTube page for some bonus video drops! It will be SO REFRESHING to be able to get that stuff all out in the open instead of needing to be cryptic and vague about it all. Research this week was still more history of the Byzantine empire, sociology, and human rights. As heard in my meetings: “I’m just going to bury my feelings in imperialism.”
Animation Update (Brianne):
This week was filled with a lot of tangible progress on a few fronts. My implementation of ffmpeg worked mostly, and just needs to be tidied up. I’m going to set up a new scheduler pattern to make the API more internally consistent and make it easier to implement new job types. Like maybe physics baking or texture baking. Lots of baking. Our next episode is going up soon, and I’m really excited to see where our audience decides to place their support. I’ve loved this type of experimental storytelling, and I’m excited to keep doing it. James and I also really dug in together on a shared project we’re excited to reveal soon. We’ve had ups and downs with it, but I feel confident we’re on the right track. I’m also very grateful for both of our abilities to experiment and try new things.
Technology Update (James):
I worked a lot on our website this last week to get it ready for our overhaul. We are hoping that our website will make it easy for people listen to the latest episode of Shattered Sleep, know how to join the Discord community, and learn more about our project! This website redesign may take the form of an entire new website framework or it might just be a simple re-theme. We will see what works best for our needs. Brianne and I also had a meeting to discuss the software that we are writing. We had some great discussion and started to build a lot of momentum! Starting up a small business like this is a lot of fun, but there are definitely challenges along the way. One of the things we are all trying to improve right now is how to be more efficient when we are collaborating on projects together. Since we don’t all work in the office at the same time as each other like we would do at a regular job, we have to find ways of staying organized and communicate effectively even when we aren’t all online at the same time.
Community Update (Christine):
Hey everyone! This week has been a bit difficult outside of Celestial Horizons, so there isn’t a ton to report from my side. Our core team got together last minute this week to finish solidifying our plans for what’s coming up after Shattered Sleep. I’m SO excited to finally start revealing all of that over the next couple of weeks! Again, none of it is possible without our amazing community! We’re so thankful for all of those who have participated in discussions on Discord (whether that be by commenting or just lurking and reacting) to help shape the story. It has been such a wild ride and I cannot WAIT to see how Shattered Sleep is going to end. It’s a little weird to say something like that when I’m a part of the writing process, but the fact is that because of the interactive nature of this whole thing there’s a lot that can only be written once we know what our community is going to do. Thank you to those who have participated and for those reading this who haven’t participated yet, we can’t wait to hear from you!! If you’re enjoying Shattered Sleep and want to see future Celestial Horizons projects, make sure to follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube! And don’t forget to share it with your friends!