I haven't posted on this blog for a while. Here's what's been going on. I managed to post a new giantess comic to http://www.begiantess.com . My pace there is about one comic per month right now. A lot slower than I'd like. But I'll try to keep plugging along and see if I can update there more frequently. One shift there for me has been to start focusing more on gentle giantess stories. I have lots of dominant giantess stories and comics on the site, so given that there were requests for gentler stuff I've tilted that way for the time being
I realized recently that I hadn't posted an animation to deviant art in a very long time. So I'm working on one right now. More details on that below
On the strongandstacked front, I'm hoping to kill two birds with one stone by leveraging the deviant art animation to make a comic for strong and stacked. I should be able to take a bunch of selected still images from the animation, add some more renders to them, and make that into a comic. At least that's my plan, because it seems like a reasonably speedy way for me to get an update out for strong and stacked without having to start work on a brand new comic from scratch and have any hope of updating in the next few daysBE ANIMATION FOR DEVIANTART
The animation I'm working on right now involves a modern day witch who casts a Breast Expansion and Butt Expansion spell on herself. She's a newbie witch, and this is the first time she's attempted using magic like this .I wanted to use some dynamic clothing that stretched as her tits grew. My first attempt at that didn't work so well - more below on that. But my second attempt worked ok
The flow of the animation is that first there's growth with a top on that stretches, then there's a magic flash and the shirt vanishes, then there's topless growth. Reason for that is that I'm not great at getting the dynamic clothes to look like they are ripping. As far as the little narrative in the animation goes, the vanishing shirt is explained by the witch casting a spell to do that.The butt expansion is a minor part of the animation - its mostly breast expansion.
My computer is churning out frames as I write this - it sounds like a jet engine with the fan pegged to max while it does the raytracing. For an animation like this, it's going to take a sum total of maybe 20 hours or so of the computer just churning out frames.
FIRST ATTEMPT AT CLOTHED EXPANSION FOR THIS ANIMATION: FAIL
I first tried having the witch wear a half tshirt. When I ran the cloth simulation, it looked like the shirt sort of ripped and crumpled up and ended up on her head. Yeah, a crumpled up cloth hat. Exactly what I was going for. Not.After this attempt, I switched to using a different top and things worked out ok
LACK OF NEW MOCAP DATA
When working on this animation, I realized that my library of mocap data - pre captured motions that I use to make characters move - hasn't been updated in a while. It's really hard to find new good mocap data. I'm still trying to find a lot more of that
For a while I entertained the idea of making my own mocap stuff. You can use fairly cheap or even free software packages that work with the Kinect for example. But the problems I ran into when I tried that were that the motion capture does work, but it often requires manual cleanup. I just didn't have the time to do that.
Carnegie Mellon University released a massive load of free motion capture data a few years back. This week I tried using some of that, but it still had some issues when I tried to apply it to Victoria 4 (the model I usually use for my animations). Things like her arms going through her body or other various problems
There's a site http://www.mixamo.com that does sell mocap animations that work with Victoria 4, but they are so expensive. At least for my limited budget
So I'll have to continue to keep an eye out for new mocap data or else figure out a way to hand animate that doesn't take me a long time
SHOULD BE DONE IN A DAY OR TWO
This animation should be done hopefully within a day or two, and a comic based on it will be ready for strong and stacked within a day or two after that.
