Bacon Wrapped Avocado

We ended up choosing … (drumroll) … a new game engine! Summer was split between trying to get our app ready for the Meta store and a few other projects. We completed the audiobook for Laurel’s sci-fi novel. She also finished grad school. Then we took a hard look at our VR app and realized our current setup wasn’t ideal for such a small team. After Jose did some research, we decided to transfer the project from Unreal Engine to Godot. We started at the beginning of September and are almost done creating a new app framework already. This has been a whirlwind of learning, redesigning and coding. We’re really happy with how it’s turning out and excited to start making content again in the next week or so.

Meescha’s part in this hasn’t been quite as fun. Apparently Godot wreaks havoc on texture UVs from Blender. We’re hoping that once she finally gets the diner sorted out, things will start behaving better. Still, she’s doing an amazing job sticking with it and maintaining her sense of humor. At least the process of “importing” things into Godot is fast — you just copy the blender file into your project and then Godot will automatically update to the latest version of the file whenever you switch to it. Nice! Earlier in the summer she was able to create some new characters and we’re all looking forward to introducing them to you and everyone else in our new episodes.

I’d better get back to coding. Catch you later!

I have no idea WHAT happened to February. We were very cold and very busy.

Our latest video is up: Elle’s First Day

That one took a lot longer than we’d originally hoped, but there were good reasons for it. First of all, we started working on it in December, so Christmas. Then we ran into some issues that we solved by researching a new workflow and a new way of editing character movements. Then we decided that for the YouTube Shorts we wanted higher resolution images, so we migrated the project from a VR template to a game template in Unreal Engine…and also updated it for the most recent engine. So, yeah, it took 10 weeks to complete, but I think the time was well-spent. Not only does this one look better than it did, but the next one(s) should come together faster and also look better.

Actually the next ones will look better for a few reasons. Not only will they be in the higher resolution, but Meescha is tweaking all the textures.

Jose has been doing some work on our servers. That will fix the problems we’ve had with reliability. (Apologies if you ever tried to show our site to a friend and had issues connecting!) It will also make it MUCH easier for me to post updates.

Don’t worry! We haven’t given up on VR! Giovanni is working on the app, so that it will hit the benchmarks required for a beta release.

In the meantime, we’re looking at making more shorts and/or making another episode for our app. Check back here to find out which we choose next!

Happy New Year!

(Can I still say that near the end of January??)

What’s new here?

Well, we did take some time off over the holidays, but we’re in the middle of making another short. We hope to have it up in a week or so. It introduces our newest character, a waitress at the Dark Alley Diner. We’ll add her to the cast list above once we publish her short.

Meescha has yet another character in the works for us.

Giovanni is smoothing the way for us to upgrade to Unreal Engine 5.4.

Jose is working on new scripts for complete episodes, as well as more shorts.

Laurel is working on the short that is currently half-finished—getting all the characters assembled and synched, etc.

We also have a new episode up for our podcast, and a second one recorded that we’ll post very soon. Also, our podcast is now available through Apple Podcasts, as well as Amazon Music, and Spotify.

We’re still waiting for word on the Epic MegaGrant we applied for in October, but we’re working hard while we wait. We plan to submit a full episode to some film festivals that accept VR animations. It’s amazing how many do that now! We’ll keep you updated as that progresses, too.