Week of 9/11 Progress Report

"Just like the good ol' days after 9/11..." - Sundowner

If there is a good day to start writing progress reports, I guess it has to be today! This week I focused on getting the first two episodes of /Conspiracy/ Girls up to par, so everything except for the sound and background images needed to be mocked up.

Expect More Images

I started dabbling in using COM3D2 to pose key scenes, it works pretty well! I expect to spend a lot more time here, because I imagine when I am ordering art, it will be much more easier to give an artist a key scene and say 'go'. The character designs for my favorite girls were done here after all, hopefully I won't get into no trobbu for this.

I think that I can offer some images I take inside the COM3D2 engine to patrons who want a sneak peak. Mostly stuff that would not fly if I made them public. It does take a fair bit of time to pose and position the actors, hope this makes people happy!

But What About the Story?

While I have most of the beats down pat, fleshing them out, I ran into quite a few problems. For example, my editor tells me that it makes no sense to separate the three characters in the first episode, even if I wanted Madison to take the spotlight. Ayano and Sachiko are also main characters, damnit! So some part of my week was spent reworking the first few scenes while testing the fidelity of the ending.

Of course, now that /Conspiracy/ Girls is a bonna fide Thriller, I do have some doubts about the SS Marianne arc, which treads heavily into Mystery territory, and poor Sachiko is sidelined in her own hometown, so I have to find ways to resolve this.

Will Using a Structure Make My Memes Go Bad?

It's no secret that I am using a modified 'Save the Cat' structure, mixed with some patterns I see in anime. I don't want /Conspiracy/ Girls to be a cookie cutter visual novel where you can tell where the plot is going, but at the same time, the white side of me is telling me that I need some sort of scaffolding to get the story out on time.

In Conclusion

Writing /Conspiracy/ Girls makes me smile. I do realize that I will have a lot of work to do, so even though I told myself I wanted a 10/31 release date, it definitely has to be pushed back now to TBA. But! I will dedicate my heart to making it happen! This progress report is really more for myself, a means of keeping myself honest and to keep moving forward.

I also promise a better, and more satisfying ending than SNK. So there's that too. (heh)

Written 210911