Hello,
I hope you all had some pleasant Holidays, and a good time in general!
I didn’t do any real work during the holidays, now that I don’t live in Berlin anymore, I’m a lot more (forced) involved in the whole Holiday prep.
#SG
I didn’t manage to finish the entire cinematic before Christmas, I assume it’s the environmental asset, but the test renders take about two hours (for 120 frames).
When you see the cinematic, you might also be able to guess why I needed a few more test-renders than usual to dial things in.
Oh, before I forget for the fifth time: I switched Sasha and Bella back to Gensis 8. I made a post a while back where I talked about porting the characters to G8.1.
And it has been a success for most, but I don’t like G8.1 Bella and Sasha. Something around the eyes looks different when I dial in the expressions… I thought I’d get used to it but no. I went with my gut and reverted the two to G8.
#WIAB
Development will start on January 14th. Slow at first, because I must get through the Steam/GOG release. More info in the next log.
The way forward
After Patreon unrightfully nuked both accounts, my plan was to bring at least SG back, which as I mentioned in a previous log, I wasn’t allowed to.
This was my plan to stabilize everything; however, it didn’t work out, and now I have to look for alternatives.
Starting 2026, you can earn 603€ a month tax free through mini-jobs in Germany, and that would cover my electricity bill.
In 2027, my leasing contract for the single A6000 ADA runs out. That alone is about 380€ a month.
I’ll get a mini-job in January and help support the games through that. It perfectly covers my electricity bill plus a few high protein snackies.
It’s about 40 hours per month, I will, of course, still work full-time on the games. Afterall, I only do the mini-job for the games. To bridge 2026 and the first leasing contract.
I know I have a steam release around the corner, which on paper can change everything, but after the last two years, I don’t feel like being optimistic about this side of the coin.
If after 2024s WiAB nuke I lost the feeling of security, you can imagine how it is now... and after a while it wrecks you.
I think this mini-job can stabilize more than just the finances. Get my head out of the office for once.
On the other side of the coin, I ported Zara to Blender and will soon do some stuff with her. I have something planned… But I want to finish the cinematic first, as it will require me to render a few Blender animations.
The cinematic I’m currently rendering for SG has something in it that makes me smile every time I see it… I’ll talk about it after the update.
It’s a small detail, but it makes my day.
