Bi-Weekly Report #28

A day early, for reasons! Let's start with that one.

ANNOUNCEMENTS

Monday evening, around 5 PM PST if everything goes smoothly, I'm gonna be dropping a link on the Patron Discord channel for a Drawpile session.

Drawpile is a nifty little thing that's been around for a pretty long time! Basically, it's an art app designed around everyone sharing one canvas and desecrating it like an unattended office whiteboard. You could also do other collaborative things, like animations or group projects, but let's be real. There's probably gonna be a lot of hastily drawn wieners on this thing.

There's also an integrated chat, but I'm also planning to stream the affair and maybe even use the long-silent Patron voice channel to let everyone have a grand time. If things go well, I'm planning to add these sessions to the $5 tier, because right now the $5 tier kinda sucks. It turns out a tier mainly about accessing WIPs only matters when my one-session-or-bust ass produces such a thing, which is basically an anomaly for anything that isn't animated. So I'm hoping to add these, as a treat. At that point, I'll probably share the links via backer posts for the appropriate tiers. Nice self-destructing ones, like in the private stream days. Who doesn't like those?

On the note of streaming, I've reintegrated Streamlabs' donations and notification pop-ups into the stream setup, and reworked my sidebar a bit. Donations should pop up on-screen with a fun little message now, and anything over $5 will result in a sound effect playing that will make everyone deeply uncomfortable. It was a stock sound effect. I did not have to upload it. They put it there on purpose. And I'm evil. So, you know. That had to happen.

I thought I could let people choose which image and such popped when they donated, but I guess not? Oh well. In any case, it also goes off if someone subs on here. Hopefully between all that it adds a little life back into the streams, but failing that I've also fucked around with screen transitions and now have a pretty fun little noise wipe going on, so there's that? I'm learning. It'll get better with time. Maybe. We'll see.

On to all the other shit!

WRITING

There's been a couple developments on different fronts, and one of them will excite those of you here to peep tits instead of just read about them.

To lead with, I've finally busted out the back half or so of Chapter 17 for Thralls. There's a lot to juggle in the story right now, so pardon the dry spell while I assemble the bulk of Act 2 into a coherent narrative instead of a bunch of semi-related brain thoughts. There's a whole Nidrah storyline happening on the side involving a mountain village and a lot of ominous warnings. There's a through-line to an important takeaway that informs a lot of Lyselle's actions going forward, and that's weaving into what's happening in the present-day narrative as well (as ever), so I wanna make sure it all makes at least a little sense as to why I went about it this way once all is said and done.

Oh, and if you're low-key way into my dumbass worldbuilding, I've started a thread on the Ketirz forums specifically meant to help me flesh out Karnan Demonic. I'll be poking at that from time to time.

For the rest of you: I have finally fixed the scripting inconsistency in The Contest. I am slowly chipping at the next page between things and will ideally be pleasing your boners soon. Thank you for your patience on this matter; I've had more than one person ask if the comic is dead. It's not! I've just been stuck with a terrible bit of writer's block on fixing my own mistakes. We're finally getting past that hurdle. Hooray!

GAMEDEV

Not a lot of energy spent on Slime Forest these last couple weeks, but a fair amount spent mentally revisiting project ideas I've wanted to work towards, and even some time spent writing out some ideas and notes.

The most notable of these is a fair bit of effort spent consolidating a bunch of stray concepts and ideas for Orphan Wood the other night. Remember Orphan Wood? The project that started this whole GODOT adventure because Game Maker just wasn't built for like half of what I wanted to do with it?? The reason I started learning a new engine and making a "quick" and "simple" puzzle game, before my desire to polish everything to a mirror sheen got in the way and sent me down the path of making something good??? Well, I remember it. I still wanna do it. Most of my prospective projects are in mind to work my way up towards it.

But not "I Got Mad At Phasmophobia's Shortcomings And Started Brainstorming My Own Ghost Hunting Bullshit," though. That one's just intrusive thoughts I've been jotting down on paper. I don't know if anything will actually come of that one, but I may as well mention it. If I do it, though, rest assured that it will be vewy scawy, uwu

ANIMATION

Jesus, it's like a shotgun blast. I've still got no damn focus (demonstrably; look at this post), but I've been hellbent on doing something, so I very much have.

For the manor, I've set up canvases for a couple of the other parts and figured out the import process to get the finished piece into the whole orchestration. Frankly, I've been putting off trying to sit down and work through the subtle animation of someone getting eaten out, I think, but I'm planning to sit and do something with that tonight, one way or another. (Wish me luck? It'll probably be fine, most of the shit I fret over ends up being absolutely fucking nothing. It's when I'm confident that we should all start to worry.)

As the WIP tier can tell you in their rare bit of actual food, I was also seduced by someone else drawing horny Pinkie Pie fuel to make my own horny Pinkie Pie fuel. That one is a personal project for me personally, and not a priority, but it's a fun little thing where I'm trying to build a different kind of motion than I usually end up doing for this smut nonsense, so we'll see how it improves as I build up on it. Her actual chest should probably move, like, at all, huh? That's probably next.

And, finally, I've finished the ref sheet commission and moved on to Rowlet's Rarity paizuri piece. The pony fans will be eating well.

Now imagine how happy they'd be if I bit the bullet and followed through on any of this gumption to try and get Lonely Hooves moving again...

COMMISSIONS

Completed:

• PWYW x 5
  (I feel like the number should be higher but evidence dictates otherwise. Four of these were just last Tuesday. Had a good day. Need more good days!!)

• Emote commission guinea pig slot for YuriBacon

• Phlogs' ref sheet for Kelly & Brie

In Progress:

• Haunted House YCH

• Rarity Paizuri for Rowlet

Upcoming:

• Vale Trading Card

Commission Me Here | Check the Queue

AND THAT ABOUT DOES IT

Back's doing a bit better. Trying to get up and move a little more, stretch a bit, but also I'm back on my meds and I cannot deny that that's been helping me pretty quickly. I've also been trying to socialize better, because that's supposed to be good for me, but honestly it's kind of exhausting and makes me wanna just sleep for like two days straight afterwards. That's probably not great.

Regardless, I am trying to get back on track, and when that fails I try to at least have something to show for myself. It's scattershot and weird, but there at least seems to be a bit less sitting on the couch and wrestling with depression or burnout or whatever the hell is going on.

Hopefully that progress holds. Mama's got bills to pay, and they don't get done via nose-picking.

Peace!

• Sera