Sorry this took so long

The following has been translated for your ease of reading.

I just wanted to make a post to apologise for the last few months of reduced content. It's not what I wanted and even though I suspended the patreon on months where there was no content posted, I still feel it unfair to you guys who have been so loyal to me, that I would let you down like this.

I made a lot of mistakes over the last few months that either slowed things down on their own, or made bad situations worse. I want to prove to you I can be better. I want to prove to you guys that I've identified what I did wrong and that I'm going to avoid doing those things in the future. Below, you'll find a list of all the fuckups that I did, or that happened to me, so that you know I've learnt from my mistakes, and hey, maybe you can learn from them too.

1. Don't try doing 10 things at once

Over the past two months I'd tried making two protogen animations, plus the Shark x Dragon animation, plus the Jumper/roo animation, plus flip flopping between drawings, commissions, learning a new technology (mocap) and deploying two new pieces of hardware (both of which had issues). This was far too much and led to me not being able to focus on anything, reducing my efficiency and making work slow to a halt.

In the future, I'm not going to start one thing until I finish another one. If I'm trying new methods or new tech, I'm going to practice them on ONE project, and I'm not going to try more than one new thing at once.

2. Keep old tech as a backup and don't rely on the new stuff until you've proven it works

In January, I replaced the array of GTX 1080 Tis with two RTX 3090s and two RTX 3080s, as well as upgrading to a Ryzen 5950x. However, the studio drivers for the 3080s are still very much a work in progress, and the 3090s both suffered power delivery circuit failures that required RMA. Each took a month to be returned and they happened one after the other, halving the render efficiency for 2 months.

I should have kept the old 1080 Tis around so that I would have been able to fall back on them, instead of giving them away to other creators before I had proven I was able to manage without them

3. New tech takes time to learn, don't assume it will be time saving instantly

Thanks to your funds, I thought I'd increase my efficiency in animating by buying a motion capture suit. Whilst mocap can reduce the time it takes to animate dramatically, it also takes time to learn, and the first few tests are generally lower quality and take significantly longer than animating by hand.

In the future, I'll test out new technology on side projects, rather than depending on them to finish already planned projects

4. New and Improved doesn't mean bug free

I made some projects in a beta version of blender which later turned out to have a bug that would cripple my ability to work efficiently with it. It actually had several, and instead of letting the blender developers fix it, I spent time fixing them myself that I could have spent downgrading to a reliable version and animating.

In the future, I should animate first and program second, even if it seems like programming would be the more efficient thing to do, simply because by doing so, I revoke my ability to delivery any animations.

5. Fuck COVID

I went to visit my parents and ended up testing positive for COVID, meaning I couldn't get home due to travel restrictions. The render PC had shut down and I couldn't remotely restart it, and I'd left my 2 factor auth token I use for google - which lets me login to discord, patreon, and a bunch of other services - meaning I was locked away from you guys when I was in quarentine.

In the future, I'll try and avoid a global pandemic

6. Set supplier expectations better / communicate better with suppliers

I did have another animation lined up that I ultimately have scrapped (and thus have wasted time and money on) because the modeller that I had asked to make the charecter model didn't understand the expectations I had and as a result failed to fulfil them, either through a lack of appropriate compensation, or a lack of capability.

In the future, I will leverage my other contacts and collaborate with others better to ensure that before I take on a project, all the people who I rely on to deliver that project are 100% confident they can deliver what I need.

7. Worry less

All of you guys are the most patient and understanding audience I could ask for. In a time where we're all stressed and all looking for ways to relax, you gave me the ability to do that, and I squandered it by constantly worrying that I was late, worrying that I wasn't good enough, and worrying that I wouldn't meet your expectations. This made me rush things instead of making them to the quality I wanted to acheive, meaning I had to start over because I wasn't happy with the result.

There was no need for this; I have supporters like you guys who trust me - maybe a bit too much - to do the best I can do and have fun doing it. In a world filled of political strife, inequality, and 'bad takes', having a sympathetic audience who supports me through the good and the bad is an honor, and nothing but the purest of thanks could ever express my gratitude for: Thank you.

I'm going to spend the next month dedicating my time to a Mamagen x Zend animation. Nothing long, nothing over the top, just the DreamerTooth content - complete with all the mess - you've come to enjoy.

Thank you so much for your patience, I love each and every one of you.

Man it feels good to be back

DreamerTooth <3