Abysm - Waves (+ comic update?) (Patreon)

a much larger project from me, as well as a bit of an update regarding some larger workings.

Its been a long time since i've done a personal splash animation, and I know it's a bit of a dated thing, i dont think a ton of people animate like this anymore, and 3d and styled animation seems more prevalent, but I used to do this quite a bit. I decided that while i was working on the comic planning for Abysm Chapter 1 that I consolidate many of the ideas and put it into motion. this is after quite a few exercises with redesigning the visual appearance of the maze and the universe as a whole with Kerb over the last few months.

I've been reworking Abysm to take place entirely inside an eternal maze with no universe separation such as portals, and trying to design a dark fantasy universe around that is proving to be a bit tricky, but there's some progress.



pardon the ugly photobash moodmap featuring link.

The idea was to center the events of Chapter 1 in the maze proper and in the small settlement of Anchor at the entrance of the maze wall on what appears to be a coast, which is just the base of a gigantic maze entry point in the vast sea of endless canyons and alleyways.



A while back Ash had mentioned to me that it keeps the story tighter with less layers of abstraction to sell the idea of 'infinity submerged maze with rats living it', but its turning out to now manifest into its own personality a bit. Lovecraftian Sark Fantasy Brutalism with trace amounts of scrapper scifi thrown in for some genre fun is definitely a flavor.

Anyway, I started wanting to condense this into an animation which was more of an invitation to the setting which I havent actually done yet. Matilda has been seen more as an OC for a long time, not so much a story character. Based on these concepts and the overall items ive used to lay out the visual style of the universe, I decided to take it for a spin in a short looping environmental piece, nothing too fancy.

Abysm - Waves is a short 22s animation with a small bit of a teaser thrown into the intro, and using a lot of concepts ive picked up since I've animated last. That said, Aftereffects really isnt too suited for this anymore and I'm working on shifting this type of stuff to Blender, and just get some models for her done.

The animation is simple, Matilda, the Maze before her, and the Omega Sword from within, as well as a strong sense of water/ocean which was key to the overall story we want to tell. that said i think for more of this i'll tone down the fan service a bit. the sketch i was working on just turned into a larger project.

as for actual writing, Ash and I have actually taken a bit of time to actually blueprint, outline, and begin dialog coordination on chapter 1. We both decided we want to write it first before I actually give this a shot, because I want to be sure i can conclude the chapter elegantly. no idea on length pagewise, I'll update that later. Chapter one is designed to introduce the maze, with a focus on only a small handful of characters tasked with simply getting back to safety and the emergence of the Omega Sword.

I unno, thats about it. Working hard, learning new things in the off hours, and climbing mountains on the weekends. thanks for letting me be a nerd and for just being supportive. It means alot that my antics are still worth hanging around and you give me the guts to keep pushing in a world that might call such things silly. Thats a wonderful. feeling