Jock Studio 2 Year Update

Fellow Olympians, July is a special month for Jock Studio – on July 11, 2023, we launched the Jock Studio Kickstarter Campaign – Blits’ first-ever Kickstarter! This Kickstarter was amazingly successful, with us reaching our original funding goal in less than an hour, and then eventually ending the campaign with the highest-ever crowdfunding total for a Yaoi / BL game, all thanks to you, our fans!

Over the last two years, we’ve been hard at work developing Jock Studio, and have already achieved several major milestones, including the launches of both Demo 2 and Demo 2.1, allowing everyone to experience the major mechanics of Jock Studio, as well as get to know the cast in more detail!

As you’ve all seen in our Development Updates, we haven’t just been working on Demos, though! Our team has been doing tons of development on the story, art, mechanics and more – to checkout where we’re at, we’ve broken everything down by department below!

Please check out the individual sections for full details!

Department 1 – Physical Merchandise

First up, just like we mentioned last year, one of our first priorities after the Jock Studio Kickstarter Campaign was the design & manufacturing of all physical merchandise items! We are happy to report that, as of this update, all Product Designs have been complete, and Manufacturing is almost complete as well! You can see a detailed breakdown of each item, updated from our last development diary, below:

As you can see above, almost all merchandise has been manufactured, and our last couple remaining items are already in production, and should be completed very soon! Just like we mentioned in our last Development Diary, we expect shipments to begin within a few weeks, so please stay tuned for more updates!

Additionally, if you are entitled to any physical merchandise via Kickstarter, please double-check your address on Pledgemanager – if you need to update it, you need to do so as soon as possible, prior to shipments!

We will also send out one more email prior to shipments beginning for address changes, so please update your addresses, Olympians!

Department 2 – Story

Next up, Jock Studio’s storyline has been making great progress, especially over the last few months! Like we mentioned in our previous development diary, we are already totally finished with the Main Plotline’s concept, and we even have a detailed in-game calendar for all events that will take place throughout the game’s story! You can see a quick preview, shown in our previous Development Diary, of the game’s format below:

After the Main Plot Concept was completed, we immediately began working on the Individual Route Plot Concepts for each of the pursuable characters! These have been quite challenging, but we are satisfied with the results so far – Avan, Bryce and Yuuto’s story summaries have been completed already! Currently, we are working on Leo’s story summary, and will begin Zayne and Derek’s next!

As we finish these story summaries, we are actually able to go ahead and begin some Detailed Storyboarding, which is the final phase before scriptwriting! So far, we’ve already begun Detailed Storyboarding for each of the Jock’s very first dates with Ace, as well as the first major event of the game! We’ll have more previews for these later, although as always, we want to keep story previews as minimal as possible, to avoid spoiling anything for the game’s release!

Department 3 – Art & Graphics

Next, the largest department in Jock Studio, the art department, with a ton of different categories! First off, let’s look at main character sprites!

Like you’ve seen in several previous updates, the Sprites for the Main Characters have been one of our biggest goals, and we’ve already created four poses for Ace, three poses for the main characters, and multiple arm / head movements for each! Not only that, but each character has a ton of different costumes – like their casual, gym, sleep, undies, and birthday suit!

These costumes aren’t all, though – there’s even more that have been added throughout the game, including some that were part of our Kickstarter goals! Checkout a preview of the Swim and Beach Attires for each Jock, fully rendered on their sprites, below!

The boys are looking wet AND sexy, aren’t they? Previously shown as design sketches, now you can see the Jocks in all their fully-rendered glory! These costumes aren’t the only ones with an update, though – we’ve also been working on the Superbacker Costume Designs we previewed before, with some updates and changes! Check them out below, now drawn onto the Jock’s individual sprites:

That’s all for sprites this update, but we have a couple more costumes to be shown very soon in another development diary, so please stay tuned! In the meantime, let’s look at the next art category – Puppets!

Puppets have been a challenging and exciting new aspect of Jock Studio, allowing a great degree of versatility and flexibility, being used for three different minigames! Thanks to this large amount of use, we have added lots of new outfits to the puppets – in the Demo 2.1, you could dress the characters in their Gym, Undies or Birthday Suit, but in the full game there will be many more costumes!

Check out a preview of two of these new costumes, Gym-Swim and Sports, below!

You’ve seen the gym swimwear before, but we wanted to show another work in progress of the sports attire for each of the jock’s puppet! These aren’t the only costumes the puppets will have either – there will also be casual, swim and sleep attires, and half-dressed versions of these for your viewing pleasure! You can expect more puppet previews as these costumes are completed!

Next up, side character sprites started off with our major supporting cast – Matt, Jacques and IO, but have since been expanded to include route-specific characters! As we complete each route’s story summary, we identify where we need new supporting cast, filling out the roster of Olympus University!

Some of these characters, featuring in Avan, Yuuto and Bryce’s stories, have already been previewed, but check them out again below:

As you might’ve guessed, these side characters are just for three routes, and as Leo, Zayne and Derek’s stories are being worked on, so are their side characters, too! Though we’re not quite ready to show them off just yet, you can see a little teaser of them below:

Intriguing, aren’t they? Don’t worry, you’ll get introduced to each of these new faces soon, in a future development diary! That’s all for our story-specific characters for now, but let’s talk about one more set of sprites – our superbacker characters!

It’s been a while since everyone saw these three boys, designed by our Olympian Tier backers, and our last showcase featured their naked sprites. As much as we know that’s what everyone wants to see, we also have completed their casual attire, so check it out fully rendered below:

That’s all for sprites, so let’s move onto our final categories in the art department – Scene Images, Sex Scenes, and Comic Panels!

Jock Studio Demo 1 and 2 already featured a ton of each of these three categories, giving each character a sexy, emotional or comical introduction, teasing and more! Even though there were already so many included in these two demos, they barely scratch the surface – we expect there to be over 200 Scene Images and Sex Scenes included in Jock Studio, over all the different character routes! We already previewed some of these new scene images in a previous dev update, check out the preview again below:

Don’t worry, we have something new to show as well and we’re sure this one’s going to make a splash – check it out!

This is as much as we can show for now as we continue to write the story – we want the full game experience to still be full of surprises! You can expect the occasional preview from these three art departments throughout development, but most will be experienced in the main game exclusively!

Department 4 – Backgrounds

Next, the background department! Those of you who remember last year’s update might notice these percentages have been recalculated – this is because, as we have been writing the story, we’ve identified lots of new locations to explore around Olympus University and the surrounding town!

Speaking of, the first of these categories, concept, has been actually now divided into two categories: Campus Concept, featuring all locations around Olympus University, and City Concept, which features all the travelable locations around the city, aptly named Olympus City! There are various districts around the city that you can visit, and we’ll be previewing the map, as well as locations around town, in a future development update!

Next, we’re happy to announce that Crowd Art has been progressing well – especially since we have a brand-new team member working in this department: Fuschia! Fuschia is a brand-new artist on the BLits Team, working on Crowd Art, Graphic Design and more! Please welcome him to the team, and we’ll have more previews of his work to show later!

We’ve also been working hard rendering 3D Models of each of our travelable locations, and there’s a ton of new renders made by our 3D team! Checkout a 3D round-up of new locations below:

That’s quite a lot of 3D Renders! Not only that, but there’s some extra-special locations you can see previewed above too – zoom in and see what you notice, Olympians!

And like we’ve mentioned before, after the 3D Rendering is complete, our painting department takes all these amazing works and brings them to life in the Jock Studio color style – checkout a Background Painting Round-Up showcasing all these new backgrounds too!

Olympus University sure is beautiful, isn’t it? As you can see, all areas of the background department are progressing smoothly, and we anticipate completing all backgrounds needed for the game by the end of this year!

Dept 5 – Animation:

Next up, our animation department! This is another department with a wide degree of categories – from Sex Scene Animations, Puppet Animations, and UI Animations!

First up, Sex Scene Animations are currently on hold, as of course you can’t animate what hasn’t been fully rendered yet! We are still of course planning on doing many more of these animations as development continues and sex scenes are completed, and you can rest assured that scenes which may not be animated in the initial release will be animated in free updates for Jock Studio post-release!

Next up, UI Animations are another exciting category which bring the interfaces of Jock Studio to life! You can already see how much the interface designs pop, but we also plan to add an even bigger pop with these animations! We’ll begin working on these stylistic changes as soon as the main game’s programming has been completed, so stay tuned for more previews later!

Finally, the area that we’ve been spending the most of our animation team’s time on – the Puppets! As you all know, in Demo 2.1, there were three available Workout Minigames, and each Jock (plus Ace) had their own unique puppet animation for each game – we’re doubling that number now, and adding three new minigames, each with individual animations for each Jock! Check them out below:

Whew, those are some sweaty (or soaked) Jocks! You can look forward to all these animations in game on the full release of Jock Studio!

Finally, we want to give one final update about the remaining Puppet Animations – Photoshoot and Filming! As we’ve previewed before, we’re working on several new and sexy Filming Animations, and we’ll have more of both them and the Photoshoot Animations to show in the future! We can guarantee that everyone will love the versatility these new poses bring, and how much they can make your fantasies come to life!

Department 6 – Programming

Now we’re moving onto the Programming Department – one that’s been particularly busy over the last year! Not only have they completed Demo 2 and Demo 2.1, but they’ve also been hard at work on tons of other in-game features, and are making solid progress on having the game’s foundations in a completed state!

First up, the Core Mechanics of the game, shown off in Demo 2.1 such as Character Stats, Free Time, Status Effects and more have been fully set up by the programming team! While there’s not much to show here, trust us, this process has been quite difficult and the systems that have been created will make your gameplay experience even better in the full game!

On a much more visual note, like we mentioned in the Animation Department, there have been three new minigames added to the Workout Phase – Calisthenics, Yoga and Swimming! These minigames, unlike the previous trio, are Hybrid Minigames, and allow you to workout multiple performance stats at once! Check out previews of each below:

With these three new ways to earn Performance Stats, the Workout Phase is now fully complete! You can play any of these six minigames inside of Jock Studio’s full release!

We’ve also got quite a few features that we’re updating in the Photoshoot and Filming Minigames, and we’ll show more previews of those, particularly the animations, later!

Next, another new mechanic and Kickstarter Goal were Dates! We’ve had a whole Development Diary focused on this mechanic, but we thought it’d be nice to recap the progress here, starting with the interfaces!

Anyone eagle-eyed might notice that these interfaces have changed slightly, as part of their design process! These interfaces are now almost complete, and the mechanics will be implemented soon for previews!

The interfaces aren’t all of the Dates – there’s also the brand-new Date Models, which are bringing our beloved Jocks to life! You can check out the first preview, previously shown, of Yuuto below!

Yuuto is as handsome as he is dorky! Don’t worry, we’re still working on the other five Jocks – you can experience intimate dates with them in the full game!

Finally, the last part of the programming department are the Oracle Phone Apps, another Kickstarter Goal! This useful device has so many different mechanics and apps involved already, and there’s just one more that has been designed and will be included in the main game – the Jock Studio App! Check out previews below:

This handy app has tons of uses – you can unlock new features for your films, change your filming moves, view previous films, and more! There’s a lot to unpack in this app, and don’t worry, there’s someone to explain it to you – but it’s not IO… So who could it be…?

The Jock Studio App is the final app in the base game of Jock Studio, and will be available on release! Any additional apps will be added post-release as bonus content!

Department 7 – Audio

Finally, to wrap-up our department round up, we have the Audio Department! This department has made great progress, and as you were able to see in Demo 2.1, almost all of the game’s soundtrack has been completed!

While you’ll have to wait a little longer to access the game’s soundtrack on Spotify and other streaming devices, you can listen to as many as you want inside of the game’s music player – check out the preview, previously revealed for Demo 2.1, below:

There’s a few spoiler tracks that weren’t included in the music player just yet, but don’t worry! You’ll get to listen to all of them in Jock Studio’s full release!

Finally, all other audio departments are currently on hold while the story is worked on – we’ll resume Voice Acting, Sound Effects, and more further down in development!

Closing Word

That’s all for the departmental round-up, and we hope this gives everyone a clear idea of where the team is from the past year’s development! In case you’d prefer a quick summary version, please check out the graphic below:

As you can see, we’ve made a ton of great progress over the last year, and there’s still more to do! Let’s check out our Jock Studio Stretch Goals, and see where we’re at on what was unlocked during the Kickstarter Campaign:

As you can see, we’ve already completed a couple more of the Kickstarter Goals for the base game, as well as moved several into the Work In Progress phase, with some of them even ready to be completed soon! We’re very happy with our progress so far, and we hope everyone else is as well!

That’s all for this Yearly Update, but we hope everyone has a much clearer picture of where the team is at, and what we’ve been working on for the last year! We have lots of exciting work planned for Jock Studio, and we promise to always continue to update and be transparent with you, our fans, as much as we can!

With that in mind, we are still not ready to announce a release date yet for Jock Studio, but we can assure everyone that as soon as we are confident, we will let everyone know when to expect the full game!

That’s all for now, Olympians, but thank you all for your support and dedication as we continue this development adventure! We hope that everyone is satisfied and excited with what has been shown, and we can’t wait to show you more!

We’ll be back for another update next month like usual, so please stay tuned!

Lots of love,

~BLits Games