Why are the monster x monster scenes pixel animations?

This question comes up a lot and because of that I’m going to try to explain it in full.

Updated December 5, 2018

The animators

Cloud Meadow has gone through a lot of animators. Two full animations  a month is a lot of work and it’s difficult for animators to complete animations for Cloud Meadow and have time to work on their own projects. Because of that, animators often decide to move on.

Fuzzamorous started on Cloud Meadow in the beginning, in August 2016. Starting in January 2017, Fuzz decided to transition to working on commissions. 

SpaceDust worked as a concept designer and animator from the beginning of January 2017 to the end of March 2017 to fill the gap as Fuzzamorous transitioned to other work. Fuzzamorous initially switched from 40 hours a week to 20 hours a week in preparation for the shift.

Fuzzamorous and SpaceDust left Cloud Meadow, and Dieselbrain started on March 27th, 2017.

In October 2017 Sethpup was added to the team to assist Dieselbrain. Seth stayed on the project until July 2018, at which point RedValentine took over until health issues forced them to leave.

Carbonoid and LucidLemonLove were both brought on to the game in October 2018 as part time animators to help Diesel.

How many monsters are there in the game?

The game currently has five sexable male/gender undefined Monsters and five sexable female/gender undefined monsters with their own dungeons, for a total of ten monsters. There will likely be more monsters, but let’s start with ten.

At this point in the game the plan is for 20 barn monsters. The original 10 monster were chosen by $20 level Patreon supporters. They are:

• Catgirl,
• Wolf,
• Harpy,
• Centaur,
• Cowgirl,
• Demon,
• Dragon,
• Chimera,
• Lamia, and
• Cyclops

After a focus vote, it was decided that the next 10 monsters in the game will be genderswaps of the original 10 monsters.

Since a second animator has been added to the team an intersex monster, the crab, has also been added to the farm roster. 

Therefore there will be 20 breedable farm monsters in the game.

How many monster pairings are possible?

With one monster in the game, catgirl, there is one possible monster for her to breed with: catgirl. So there is one pairing, catgirl x catgirl.

Adding a second monster, cowgirl, means two more possible pairings: cowgirl x cowgirl, and catgirl x cowgirl.

The two new pairings, plus the original catgirl x catgirl paring means there are now three possible monster pairings in the game: catgirl x catgirl,cowgirl x cowgirl, catgirl x cowgirl.

This pattern hold for each new monster added. Adding a third monster, harpy, means three new pairings: harpy x harpy, catgirl x harpy, and cowgirl x harpy.

Adding harpy means here are now a total of six possible pairings. 

The fourth monster adds four more monsters for a total of ten monster x monster pairings, the fifth monster adds five more monsters for a total of fifteen monster x monster pairings, etc.

At 10 monsters there are 55 possible monster x monster pairings. 

• At 11 monsters there are 66 possible monster x monster pairings,
• At 12 monsters there are 78 possible monster x monster pairings,
  
• At 13 monsters there are 91 possible monster x monster pairings,
  
• At 14 monsters there are 105 possible monster x monster pairings,
  
• At 15 monsters there are 120 possible monster x monster pairings,
  
• At 16 monsters there are 136 possible monster x monster pairings,
  
• At 17 monsters there are 153 possible monster x monster pairings,
  
• At 18 monsters there are 171 possible monster x monster pairings,
  
• At 19 monsters there are 190 possible monster x monster pairings, and
  
• At 20 monsters there are 210 possible monster x monster pairings
  

All of this information is excluding the protagonist (male and female) x monster pairings, which mean an additional two animations per monster, for a total of 250 sex animations on the farm only.

How much time does it take to complete a single animation?

So now that we’ve covered how many animations are possible, let’s looking to how much time it would take to complete each one.

There are two types of sex animations currently being used in Cloud Meadow. The first are full detailed 2D animations.

The full detail animations have two stages – a fuck loop and a climax sequence. DieselBrain can complete two HD sex animations per month.

At a rate of two animations per month, Cloud Meadow could complete all 250 HD sex animation in 125 months or more than 10 years.

The second type of sex animation is sprite animations.

A sprite animation can be completed much quicker. Most animations at six frames and are simple loops that can be created in less than a single day

Even assuming only one monster x monster gets finished a day, doing all 210 monster x monster pairings as sprite animations would take about 30 weeks or 7 months. 

Why not hire more animators?

No new hires are made until it’s guaranteed the new employee will be paid $3000 a month. It’s a rule implemented by Team Nimbus early on in production to insure a skilled employee is being paid appropriately for what they are worth. 

With the addition of Carbonoid and LucidLemonLove it’s possible there will be time form more HD sex animations, but if there is time it’s more likely they would be put to work making animations for new monsters.

A single new monster means two new sets of animations. It’s much easier to predict how long two animations will take to create.

TL;DR

With one animator, making full, detailed animations for all monster x monster pairings isn’t feasible. It would bloat the development timeline from 3 years to more than 10 years. 

Additional animators shorten the timeline, but those additional animator resources are better used improving combat and creating sprite sex scenes.