Reflecting on 2023 & Setting Goals for 2024

Happy belated New Year everyone! 

I know, I'm way too late with the Christmas and New Year's wishes, but I guess better late than never?

This is a render I made for Christmas as a gift for a very close friend of mine Lajest and his OC Evelyn or Evie for short, who is a really adorable cutie pie! 

They both had a little too much wine as Huzme tried to convince and encourage Evie to try out bondage for the first time! Poor innocent girl, doesn't even know what that is! Well, Huzme decided to open her gifts out early as she gives her a demonstration!

I'm sure you've seen this image on social media before and I wanted to share it here with this post back then, but I wasn't sure if I should be even publish this wall of text, so I held off on posting.

Wall of text below!

Feel free to skip the rest of this post, if you are here just for the animations and renders!

Having said that, I think I should come clean with what has been going on behind the scenes, what my intentions are and set up some expectations with you for this year, so that you don't keep wondering if I'm dead or not.

First off, I just want to sincerely express my gratitude to everyone once more for your continued support and I'm very happy to hear you've liked the previous animation! Not to sound super corny or too cliché or anything, but I truly think without your contributions here, commenting and sharing my posts I really don't think I would be here today. So, thank you very much!

I want to take this moment to be honest with you and reflect back on the past year, what went right/wrong and what I've learned.

Reflecting back on 2023:

I'm sure you have noticed the rate of production of new animations has been very inconsistent throughout this year. Furthermore, despite doing character polls, I didn't release some animations that I had promised to do, like the Tifa and Dva & Widowmaker ones and my lack of communication on this in addition to just not showing WIPs overall has been unsatisfactory, which is unsurprising when looking at some of the exit surveys.

I apologize for the confusion and disappointment that has resulted from my inaction and silence on this matter. I will clarify in a bit what I will do to address these issues.

For context, this past year and half I was living a vagrant life with no permanent place, income or even a stable plan admittedly. Like I've mentioned before in another post, I've been burning my savings from my previous job to get by, while accepting and depending on the help of a close friend of mine to support me during this difficult time. Honestly speaking, I've been feeling incredibly guilty about just existing during those times, as it was also deeply humbling and embarrasing for me to be in this situation to begin with and I didn't feel like I deserved any help. However, I've come to recognize now how lucky and grateful I am (should have been) to be getting this support from everyone, despite how I felt about myself. Nevertheless, that is how I felt and it was a huge emotional burden I've been carrying in addition to the constant moving, traveling, planning, while keeping in touch with everyone that I know.

I'm not looking for any pity nor am I trying to paint myself as a victim, as that is how my life was. Rather, I wanted to elaborate on this to explain how this has impacted my response to these cirumstances, so I'm taking the blame here.

Taking a step back to look at everything, I realized that it was through my excessive obsession over my survival and my work that I had lost oversight over projects, promises, deadlines, etc. so much so that I was actively working against myself without realizing it. This created a huge problem where there was no room for failure and I was forcing myself to work harder and harder, believing that my work ethic was the problem. This behavior lead me to setting impossible-to-meet deadlines that I couldn't keep which deepened my guilt further, while taking risks that I shouldn't have been taking like challenging myself too much with animation complexity, severely underestimating project scope, taking on ideas and commissions I didn't personally feel too strongly about, etc. This created a constant feeling of falling behind and never feeling like it was ever good enough. It seemed like there was no end in sight, which continued this vicious cycle over and over.

I realize now that my mindset and response to the problem was the reason why I haven't been producing as consistently as I could have.

I also recognize now the importance of self-care and will try to maintain this balance as much as I can moving forward. I've already been taking steps to mitigate this problem. Getting exercise, improving nutrition, journaling, reading books, writing my story (which I will get into later) and even playing old games and movies I used to enjoy has helped me enjoy life a lot more overall and ironically help me better deal with battling my own mind. More importantly, I'm going to stick to a routine that ensures that everything is taken care of and nothing gets neglected. Sure, I will have hiccups along the way, but I will do my best and improve.

On a more uplifting note, I can say that I have gained a lot of experience and confidence in my Blender and problem-solving skills last year compared to 2022, which is something I instinctively feel guilty of being proud of to be honest, but confident no less! I've been working on different kinds of projects that have challenged me sufficiently and I've always have been able to figure out solutions on my own in order to reach my goals in one way or another. It will be no different for this year and beyond as I will continue to create different DID scenarios with different bondage poses, ties and restraints to switch things up. So, I'll always have a sufficient challenge! However, I will also try to balance it out with simpler animations in the future, which I will elaborate on later in the post. Anyhow, I can finally look back at my previous animations and how the quality overall has been improving, without cringing too much. I'm sure some here can relate.

Additiontially, I owe some gratitude to SilkJamJar and Sigma, who have been making the audio versions of the previous and current animations to help smooth over the bumps I had been dealing with this year.

Conclusion:

Overall looking back, last year was pretty crazy personally speaking and even if I didn't finish all the projects that I had promised to last year, I also recognize that I've learned so much even from the negative experiences. It certainly won't be the last time I make mistakes, but equipped with the lessons learned from 2023, I hope not to repeat them again in the future! Even if I do, I will make sure to reframe issues in a more positive way, as my life is much more stable now and I'm ready to jump over my own shadow to a better and more exciting path for the future!

Changes:

There will be audio versions for every future animation from now on and storyboarding for longer animations. If you're interested in seeing the storyboards, let me know and I'll post them here! In addition to that, I will be focusing on keeping more realistic deadlines that are a lot more forgiving and allow me to rest and take care of myself.

Even without looking at the exit surveys on Patreon, people seem to have gotten the impression that I'm not as active here as they had expected, to which I agree. Thus moving forward, instead of just posting my usual frequent WIP updates on the the Discord, I will also post them here on Patreon for those of you who aren't avid Discord users. These are usually low-quality snapshots directly from the Blender viewport without any shading or audio, so please keep that in mind! Feel free to skip those updates if you don't want to be spoiled or are here for the final releases! I'll also tag them as such if you are only interested in full releases.

Plans for 2024:

Alright, interesting blog post, but what about the future?

These are my goals for 2024 that I will reach:

- Femme Fugitive Part 2 & 3 (~1-2 minutes each)
- 2 new OCs (custom models & concept art) + Intro animations for each OC (~1-2 mins each)
- 2 new outfits for Huzme (V2 outfit + Dress)
- Finished story for the OCs + Finished Wiki

As eluded to before, I am currently writing a story called SOULBOUND.

The story I want to tell will be an original DID story following my OCs that get into different DID scenarios with plenty of animated bondage. My long-term plan is to make short episodes like Femme Fugitive and Impel Bound that build into a greater narrative story you can follow along, which is an OVA for a lack of a better term. There will be some hints and easter eggs in the renders and animations themselves as well as the wiki in order to fill the gaps in the story if you are interested in the lore.

Rest assured that these animations are always focused on telling a compelling and kinky DID story first, but I'm also focusing on writing an interesting story that ties in DID & bondage (pun intended)! Femme Fugitive and Impel Bound will be a benchmark for what you can expect in the future. I will reveal more details and plans later this year that will build upon the established story and knowledge as it's a big project I intend to work on for the next few years!

What about the commissions?

As for the commissions, these are ones that are confirmed to be completed this year:

- Impel Bound Part 2 & 3 (~1 minute to 1m30s for each Part)
- Froppy (My Hero Academia) (~1 minute to 1m30s)
- Junko (Desert Punk) + custom model (~2 minutes)
- Karin (My dress up darling) (~1m10s)

What about the other commissions on the Trello?

Those are mostly short animations that can be worked on quickly in between the longer and bigger projects, but don't have a deadline. I can hold character polls to decide which ones you'd want to see first. There are other ones you might see, like the Fujiko Mine or Ballroom Auction animations which would be nice to have if I have spare time left, but are actually planned for 2025. As it stands now, commissions will stay closed until the backlog is completed.

Wait, so what about the girls from the character polls from last year?

I think the same goes for them as well as the other smaller commissions that I have in queue, which is that I will eventually get to them, but I can't make any promises for an exact release date as those can be done rather quick compared to the longer ones!

Closing thoughts:

All in all, I will pace myself better with a routine that works for me and I'll do what I can to stay healthy this year so as to keep producing consistently, which is ultimately my personal goal for 2024! You can expect the commission backlog to be completed this year too and I'll also be posting more frequently, so that you are up-to-date on things, as it's my responsibility to inform you. I promise, I won't be oversharing anything that you don't need to know! This yearly review thing is just something I want to make a habit of where I take an honest look back, learn and plan ahead. I'm curious to hear what you think, so let me know in the comments!

Anyways, I will head back to animating my busty damsels in distress again. 

So, I'll see YOU... on the next... Angry Joe Show! >:O


- BustyD