I’m getting close to finishing the first of the four main sequences for Tarboy 2. Pre production is well and truly finished now and it’s just a matter of grinding through animation and backgrounds.

The first sequence is mostly comprised of background art, which isn’t a strength of mine, so I’m looking forward to getting stuck into the second sequence and animating the character rigs which took so damn long to complete.

There’s a lot more detail this time around, as I’m trying to focus less on designer-ey style graphics, and more towards something which gives a bit more dimension to the robot world. I’m running into problems with the output severely lagging now, as I’m not too willing to compromise on all the effects I’ve loaded into it. I’m at the stage where I have to decide whether I’ll be rendering out as video; embedded in an SWF for Newgrounds release, or whether it’ll be a hybrid of vector graphics; with the more detailed scenes rendered in video.

We’re aiming for a release later this year, so hopefully too much doesn’t get in the way in the mean time!