July 2022 Production Update

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In case this is the first of my production updates you’ve read this year, I’m currently working on 50 Ways to Die in Minecraft Part 15. To make the video, I need at least 50 clips (I usually aim for 60 so I have some wiggle room) of Minecraft players dying in funny ways. For part 15, I decided to start by producing the most time-consuming clip (the “Big Clip”) first to get it out of the way. I think I originally expected it to take about a month to produce. I started work on it in February and by the time June came around, I had only finished about 6/7ths of it. Needless to say, I vastly under-estimated how much time I needed to produce this clip.

At the beginning of June, I said I would probably need an entire month to finish the Big Clip, and I was sort of right. I said that because I expected it would take a month to complete what I believed to be the last thousand frames of animation and, indeed, since that time I have finished more 1,150 frames of the Big Clip. The problem is that as I got closer to the end, I realized that the scene needs about 500 more frames than I had originally expected, so I’m not as close to done as I thought I was.

On top of that, I’ve just reached the climax of the scene, which is going to require a new special effect that I’ve only imagined and never actually tried to make. The Big Clip has been full of things like that, but this is probably going to be the hardest one. I don’t know how much time it’s going to take me to animate the next 20 seconds, but it will probably take a lot.

And on topper of that, once I’m finished with the main animation of the Big Clip, I have a huge list of small embellishments I want to try to add to it. Most seem like they’d be pretty quick and easy, but the list is long, so they’ll probably also take a good chunk of time.

Even though it feels like I’m close to the end, I still think I have a lot left to do. I really hope July will be the last month I spend on the Big Clip, but I said that last month, too. If I lose August to the Big Clip as well, I might just have to delay part 15 to 2023. I really don’t want to do that.

Part 15 Progress

90/90 Clip Ideas

4/60 Clips Recorded

4/60 Clips Edited

Big Clip Progress

About 7000 out of about 7500 Frames finished