The second chapter of Syphilis Rice is finally over. I really did not see that taking four months, but I guess that's just how things are in this modern age of quality standards. With the first chapter, I had a vague plot outline but was mostly making it up as I went along. Very transparently, I ran out of steam when the fight scene rolled around and elected to just drop it on its face.
This time around, I scripted the whole thing in advance to prevent this and I'm impressed that I managed not to flake out and see it through. The third chapter is outlined and, like the rest of my series, I have an ending in mind but frustratingly will have to wait for years in order to finish it thanks to all my other ongoing projects, leaving me Sisyphussing all over the place.
BarfQuestion Films is only a few years shy of being a decade old. That's a big and kind of frightening thing for me, because the average person only has like eight or ten decades at most, and I've wasted the first two just growing up. This third decade has seen a lot of tedious and inefficient self-education and progress in what I want to do with the rest of my decades, but as of Empire, I'm finally at a point where I'm confident enough in my abilities and want to try and tackle bigger projects. As I've previously mentioned, there are 2-3 big film festival pieces I really want to begin undertaking.
Furthering this ambition is the realization that the internet and I are not a good match. Agonizingly slow updates, original ideas instead of pop culture references, obstinate refusal to use social media, etc, etc. It's not an ideal primary venue for my work. Starting fresh with a more suitable outlet is increasingly tempting and it just feels like a waste of time to postpone this first film festival project any further. This is not to say I am abandoning my series, nor Tales of BarfQuestion in any way. These new projects are still extremely relevant to what I've been doing all these years. More on that later.
However, before this first behemoth of a film festival project would be the perfect time to wrap up Valentine's Day and maybe even Syphilis Rice (and get another comic anthology published). If I wait until after the first festival project is done, it's going to be awkward because I'm going to be caught up with the site redesign (which will be super user-unfriendly). So do I continue to shelve my burning passion for this new project in order to take an opportune moment and end one or two series, or do I awkwardly postpone those final installments for many years in order to do some much needed horizon expansion? Since I'll be doing both anyway, this normally would not be a big deal, but the amount of time they will both take makes this a big decision for me.
I kind of wish I had just let Spacelope be the final installment of Valentine's Day (those end of credit taglines promising future episodes are really kicking my ass), but I've already sketched out some character (re)designs I'm very attached to, so now it kind of has to happen. I was going to try and tackle it immediately after Empire was completed (in time for Valentine's Day 2015), but after seeing my shot list, Danielle pointed out that I'd have to complete at least one shot every day between then and Feb.14th to finish in time, which would have entailed like 20+ hour work days every day so that got pushed back.
For now, I have a couple more Hitting Stuff at a Building cutscenes and assets to make. Since we conceived the project in, what, 2010 (?!), the game has been spending years at a time on the back burner gathering dust since we keep losing interest in it. As such, it looks pretty dated. As such, I keep getting insecure about it and adding more junk to it, postponing its release even further. The further it gets delayed, the more it aggravates my fear about how dated it looks, and the cycle repeats. Fortunately, this will give me some extra time to decide on what course to take next.
P.S. - I've been faithfully updating the comic for like six months now at the cost of getting regular animation work done, so it's time to go back to sporadic updates again until I can get through another project or two. I definitely won't let it die before hitting 1,000 comics!
