Well even though the poll seems to be changing now, within the first couple days most people voted for me to finish Civil Protection first, so that's what I've been doing. In breaking my usual trend, I'm releasing a few details about the next episode. They're not a lot, but for an episode that's only a few minutes long, I can't reveal too much without spoiling things. I'm probably going to call this next episode "Morning Patrol". It'll be about average length, take place in City 17, and you'll get to see a little bit more of the HL2 world in it. It's definitely not one of my more spectacular episode ideas, but I think it's the most well-rounded one I've produced so far. Here's a preview shot of it:
If you're a fan of other CP episodes, I think it's very likely you'll enjoy this next one. While I'm extremely happy with how it's coming out, I don't want people to think it's going to be most magnificent episode that's ever been produced. It has been a long time since the last episode, but I've been working on many other things besides Civil Protection.
Rant:
I get a fair chunk of hate mail from people who are angry at me for not producing episodes faster. Most of these people don't seem to possess any sense of perspective or logic, but for those that do, I'd like to elaborate a little more on this. The biggest barrier to me producing more episodes of Civil Protection is animation time. While sometimes I don't mind, much of the time I HATE animating. While I have been getting some help, that's been a mixed bag. Pretty much everyone who assists with animation right now prefers to work or only has time to work on one aspect of production. While this has undeniably increased the quality of the episodes being produced in areas, it's questionable how much time savings there have been. This is to say nothing of people who for different reasons, have had to abandon work on episodes. The past episode and the one I'm currently working on were both written in such a way to make it easy for additional animators to help out. In both cases, multiple people bailed and I ended up filling in a lot of the gaps for animation. I never would have started this particular episode idea next if I had known that was going to happen.
Believe it or not, I get more frustrated than anyone else that I can't produce episodes faster. I'm overflowing with ideas and am totally confident I haven't gotten to the best ones yet. I sincerely wish I could afford to hire someone to help me animate in the Source engine. I would LOVE to unload almost all aspects of animating the episodes to someone else or other people; though I haven't come across anyone who can animate in the programs Face Poser and Hammer and has the same time and drive to devote to it. I can't blame anyone for not wanting to either, I hate that aspect of it myself.
For fans of Freeman's Mind:
I promise the production rate will pick up a lot as soon as the next CP episode is done. Some of you may recall I promised an increase in episode production late last year and that actually did happen. They have still been relatively few and far between because Freeman's Mind hasn't been my main focus. However since far more people have become interested in it than I would have anticipated, I plan to make that my new priority soon. In addition to devoting more time towards it, I'm planning to move soon to where I can record at any time without disturbing people. Right now I can only record during certain windows of time without disturbing my neighbors, which limits how fast I can produce episodes. I know many of you may not believe me, but I can promise the production rate is going to become much, much faster than for FM than ever before.
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