kaptorka-prod

[kaptorka-prod]

I made it!

The premiere of my CG animation Higgs Journal #23 will take place tomorrow at 12:00 PM (GMT -5:00). To check the exact time in your region, please follow the link to the video. Sorry, I’m not great with time management😅.

I’ve been working on this project since May, and there might be a few minor issues in the animation or asset placement — but I’ve put my heart into it and did my best. But you know, I can say that the performance is much better than in last Pizza Movie, so follow this logic i will fix my mistakes in the future works.

PS if this video gain at least 50 likes - I'll make 'postmortem' video in English and explain all the process of the development and why it's so hard and expensive for solo-CG-lover.

Here's some dynamic stills from the movie. You can see static frames in my post on X. Thank you for your attention to my work. Your feedback motivated me to finish this despite of all circumstances.

[kaptorka-prod]

Wow this 3 scenes even synchronized with track in realtime. Usually fps is fckn low even in solid mode on my laptop. One more evening with rendering 😭

[kaptorka-prod]

I see that many of you really enjoy following the development of my new fan short film, and I want to thank you for your feedback ❤ — it gives me an incredible amount of strength, especially considering my current mental state and the challenges I’ve faced over the past few months.

So, I’ll keep sharing more about my workflow. Here’s a fragment from the intro that took me three damn render iterations to make it look exactly the way I envisioned.

The scene features dynamic ocean waves (they’re not so visible from this angle, but you’ll see them in the cinematic) and fog imitation over the icebergs, and the Strands add a sense of epicness to the Beach.

(Most of assets and textures are property of Kojima Productions)

[kaptorka-prod]

"Pufff.... Gone". Working with facial animation keyframes. Don't look at strange lighting and ugly background with messed up UVs it's just draft layout. I showed the ready-for-production Beach scene in the posts below. If there will no working tasks on the next week, I think that I can polish the all moves to the end of August and begin to make shots.

[kaptorka-prod]

It’s interesting how Fragile presses her lips behind the scene before approaching to Sam and offering him a cryptobiote. Full scene on my Short on YT

She also made a half-second smile.

[kaptorka-prod]

That's how singularity in 3D animation looks like😆 Why did it happen? Just went to the phone to turn of the record and Lidar couldnt determine my position behind the frame. Anyway 95% of my mocap workflow was based on pre-recorded vids, cause in realtime its more expensive and i need an operator, but for now I do all the stuff alone😭

PS Don’t worry about Alan, he’s fine — in this situation he was just acting as a placeholder😅

[kaptorka-prod]

Some news about the development of Higgs Monaghan 23 diary short movie. There will be mocap animations, but partially, cause it’s fckn expensive even in digital form. Anyway, I’m glad that im slowly move to another level of cinematics 🤗 Lipsync will be more realistic too, though it will be generated like in Pizza Movie, but in more advanced version with working facial muscles. Stay tuned if you are still involved with canonical original game.

[kaptorka-prod]

More Kurtis🥰 I split posts because these ones are in Full HD. It's a pity that the engine doesn't support cinematic DOF, but still we can implement some in'game and third-party post-processing.

[kaptorka-prod]

¡Carajo! Because I had to ignore the feed that’s completely flooded with damn DS2 — any mention of it drags me back into a depression (i'm not exaggerating, i had to close *hope its temprorary* my community which i developed for 5 fckn (!!) years and my mental state was bad all the July till recreating AW models made me to switch) — I didn’t even realize that in TRAOD they brought back Kurtis original hairstyle! And now I can play again and make sexy shots of him 🥰

P.S. Yes, I updated my review from negative to positive in Steam just like I promised.

[kaptorka-prod]

Grown ass man over here, sitting in his car, crying over fictional men.

[kaptorka-prod]

Brought some WIP and little about the current situation.

Hey everyone. I’ve been away for quite a while, and there are a lot of reasons for that. As some of you know, I had to distance myself from the DS fandom—scrolling through DS2 content has been putting me in a really bad mental state. I’ve been trying to balance it out with the original game and other titles, but it’s been tough.

I also spent all of July working on a 3D animation to bring a painting to life—part of a creative collaboration with an Ecuadorian artist whose exhibition is scheduled for September. The footage isn’t finalized yet, since he’s been away and I can’t render the final version until I get approval.

But the hardest part has been this: like many others in the industry, I got laid off from my main job. It wasn’t entirely unexpected, but I thought it would happen in the fall, not now. On one hand, it gives me a chance to return to my creative career full-time. On the other—it means months of financial struggle ahead, because monetizing your art and knowledge takes time.

Thank you so much for supporting my work across platforms, including X, TGs and YouTube. Starting in August, I’m going to focus on bringing a lot of my plans to life.

BTW here’s a model for a new short film #23 (in production)—I don’t think I’ve shown that version of Higgs yet. While converting to a new mesh, the shadow under his right eye shifted a bit—but after asking around, I decided not to fix it. The bruised look actually added more drama and realism. Also made a new dirt mask on face—the original from the game was way too stretched.

[kaptorka-prod]

I looked through the archives of my workflow renders and thought that it could be the base for actual meme. Really.

[kaptorka-prod]

Thanks for the attention to my artworks these 2 weeks❤, but I don't feel myself as a part of DS community anymore and here's why

If the original Death Stranding helped me survive some of the hardest times in my life, gave me strength and inspiration — then the sequel, despite my efforts to resist it, dragged me into a really dark depressive state. You know after moving away, I had finally begun to recover. And now... looks like I’ll be climbing out of this depressive hole for months, all over again. These are definitely not the feelings I was hoping for after five years in this universe.

I’m not saying Death Stranding 2 is a bad game. Visually, technically — it’s a masterpiece. It has some attractive ideas and mainstream should give it GOTY. The story? IMO, it doesn’t feel like a sequel. It feels like an AU, where emotional depth in many places is replaced with spectacle and kitsch sometimes. Flashy. Entertaining. But hollow. So it feels more like another AAA-mainstream product. And some characters who were deep and complex in the original… some of them didn’t deserve such arcs development. It feels disrespectful. It feels like a spit in the face. I’ve really seen some shit.

Yes, Kojima had every right to do what he wanted. And he did. But in doing so, he managed to split his own loyal fandom.

Now it consists of the majority — either fully satisfied or willing to turn a blind eye to controversial choices. And the minority — people like me — for whom the original game (without DSDC, where the lore issues started) will always remain THE BEST, THE MOST CANONICAL, THE MOST COMPLETE. One more time: I’m not here to argue or convince. If you liked the sequel — you’re 100% entitled to that. And I’m entitled to feel the opposite.

And sadly, this minority is now facing constant mockery and hate. Just look at how reviewers were treated for giving the sequel a 70/100. I’m not here to fight, not trying to convince anyone. Well, as you can see — the slogan "We should not have connected" is far deeper than it seems🤷‍♂️

I’ve given a lot to this fandom over the past 5 years. But right now, I don’t feel like I belong it anymore. And honestly, I don’t think I’ll ever find a common language with those who are fully satisfied with the new story. That hurts me a lot and that’s why I wanna temporarily isolate myself from it and focus on my own projects including works on the ORIGINAL DS game, multifandom  and other non-game 3D projects which are important for the future of my own Kaptörka_Prod studio.

The short film based on Higgs Diary (#23) is still in production. I’ll let you know when it’s out. I hope it’ll be a WORTHLY finale to his story. YT shorts with free camera footages from DS will be published daily as usual. If I get to use DS2 models, it’ll be nothing more than “fanservice” — no deeper meaning. 

Because for me, there is no meaning there anymore. If you’ve enjoyed my content — thank you, it means a lot. And now you understand where I stand. For me, only the original Death Stranding will remain the real canon.

Some people might find my post strange, but I genuinely take things like this very much to heart. Actually, I’m not okay right now. Especially in the mornings. If anyone from fandom feels the same or just wants to talk — I’d really appreciate that. I even almost fought with my editor over the DS2 review he was writing, ha-ha.

I don’t believe in the connection anymore.

[kaptorka-prod]

Sadly, I’ll have to skip the PS5 release of Death Stranding 2 due to financial reasons (if the game had come out a bit later, I might’ve been able to solve this). Still, I truly hope I won’t lose touch with the fandom before the PC release — and I’ll definitely continue creating content around the game.

Here’s a list of my upcoming projects for the next few months:

Higgs Short Film #23

Kurtis Trent hot stuff and FF (possibly in an interactive format?) - thanks for 600+ views you're breathtaking!

DS2 renders (If assets from PS5 will be ripped)

A series of short video lectures on working with 3D and in-game assets on YouTube

Daily cutscene YT shorts from various games using free camera tools (appear everyday on my YT)

A non-game short film — a visualized story set in one of the historical districts of Cuenca, Ecuador (we’ve recreated an entire city block!)

So let's stay connnected there will be many cool stuff in future. Love you all<3

[kaptorka-prod]

Wow found a backstage slide of this work below from my archives.

[kaptorka-prod]

A few years ago I was asked to record Heartman's POV. I did it, but due to overlapping projects, I ended up forgetting about the footage. It's probably no longer relevant, but maybe someone would still be interested in watching his facial expressions during the cutscenes.

[kaptorka-prod]

Wow, thats so cool🤗😍❤️ thank you for sharing your vision 🥰

The doodle is based on the picture that @kaptorka-prod created, thank you so much for sharing this!

Higgs you're the hottest man in the Death Stranding🤤