Minor announcement/update for Whimper fans.

As you may have heard in some of my earlier blogs, I've been toying with the idea of making a Blender animation featuring my favorite OC, Doldrum Whimper., a project I'm codenaming Project Horseapple, because I'm weird like that. This idea's been floating around for about a year now.

I have a basic idea for a story, which you can find here. It'll be a breath-taking, show-emulating story about learning to respect yourself even if others keep bringing you down, showing how Whimper went from the short of breath whimp in class to being a short of breath bullhead. It'll have tons of characters, show our hero at his best in many different sets like his school, his home, and of course the fields of the Applecross Games. That's what I had in mind when I had this idea.

But more recently, I've started having this other idea, but it's kind of silly. I hope you're sitting down for this, because it's really out of the box. Scratch that, it's a crazy idea, completely ludricous. Out of this world, mind-bogglingly insane.

I want it to be an animation I can actually finish.

Yeah, the original idea was to even do it in 2D, which isn't what Blender is designed for. Then it became a sort-of technical challenge to show off Blender as a character creator tool, and then people pointed out the original story of Whimper getting in trouble for standing up to a bully was too much of a downer for an animation, leading to the somewhat confused edit that's online now.

I've got the books I wanted. I have the means of putting Linux on both my laptops, meaning I can cut render times. But the story, as is, would be beyond my skill to make and make appealing. I'm not talented nor patient enough for it, not for what I want it to be. I don't even know how long a minute-long pony animation would take me, even if I use character creator tools, which I haven't even fully explored yet. I have zero standards to go off of, no real way of knowing what will take how long, and no desire to get outside help. This is my pet project, mine. It's my idea, my desire, my challenge . So here's me, looking at what I really want.

I want at least one animation to my name. I want to go on Youtube and be able to say "See that? I made that." and say it with some modicum of pride. I want the story told to be about effort and persistence, two values I am currently lacking but wish to regain in my personal life, two values I think get misrepresented and underrated because of it. I want the main character to be Doldrum Whimper, because he's the character I had the most fun developing and writing. It doesn't really need to be a long animation, the more I think about it. If I just took a snapshot of him training for the Applecross Games, I could convey the things I want.

All I really need to do is show him during one of his workouts, showing exertion, somehow conveying he has a breathing problem and is bad at gym (zoom on a report card and/or inhaler or box of Vaporub proxy), show him giving up because he's reached his limit, marking the result, moping, then looking to the side and seeing even if he's not hitting what he was aiming for, he's been getting higher results than before.

So here's what I propose:
-once this TwiDash thing is done and my thesis is more or less on the right track again (which I hope will be soon, but the distractions around the house continue) I'll turn my attention to whichever sequel needs it the most and to the Horseapple script.

I might just turn the original story concept into an actual fanfic, to serve as a sequel to Passiflora's Plight and show what happened before Whimper got... you know, the thing at the place.

-I'm going to redesign Whimper in Inkscape, probably using Chip Mint as a reference for the body proportions, but adding definition around the shoulders. Think of the arms looking more like hourglasses than they do tubes (because most of the time, the shoulder joint isn't visibly on ponies, except for Snow Flake) and you get the idea. This serves the dual purpose of practising vector art as well as making storyboarding a lot easier. 'Mastering vector art' has been on my wishlist for a while now, might as well start when it's relevant for my purposes.

-I'm putting Filly Funtasia models on my 'to do' list, so I get some practice in modelling and rigging. Much like the point above, I need practice so I know how to do it well when it's 'for real'. Might have to resort to testing the 20-hour rule for both, in which case I'd have a lot of stuff to post but not that much stories.

-when I have finished storyboards and I know I have the skill to make the pony models, I'll upload the storyboards themselves so you can see what it'll end up as.

-I'd be doing all of this on the side, with fanfics being published when they're done. Right now, I have no idea how I'm going to plan this, but if I don't set some kind of goals, I'm going to get stuck on everything and basically turn into a useless bag of wasted effort. As for the college work, because it always comes down to the college work, I am trying, but stuff keeps getting in the way. It's a good thing I've got a reserve on TwiDash chapters, because I think I'm behind one chapter as of this week. Hopefully I'll get to do more work this weekend, clear out as much non-college stuff as I can and then just go fully into thesis writing mode.

tl; dr: Expect another Whimper prequel, possibly, and expect Filly 3D art as well as new Whimper vectors in the (distant? I hope not) future.

Happy holidays, everyone.