Bi-Weekly Report #11

Lord. Okay.

This one sucks. Let's get the rough part out of the way first.

ANNOUNCEMENTS

Unemployment Insurance / Self-Employment Assistance has (rather unceremoniously and without any real warning) run out. I thought I had until February, and was literally the night before learning this thinking "man I'm over halfway through my time. I need to figure out what I'm doing wrong."

Needless to say, getting kicked while I was down hasn't done much for morale, and neither did needing nearly a grand of help to wrap up rent and bills for the month.

Cue the solemn JPEG.

I tossed the raw text file without thinking already, so sorry if anyone here has a vision impairment but follows the visual artist anyway. I like you. You're weird.

To the handful of new people who've hopped on to help us out, Kaz and I extend our sincerest thanks. Even if I can't make things work out with the art, this at least helps me keep us housed alongside any sort of job I can manage to pin down.

Until then, expect more focus on commission work, when I have it. I've also been testing out the audience for certain other things for a few weeks now anyway, low-key gathering up data in my head about trends and hoping I can figure shit out. So far, the results are... underwhelming, but more than nothing, which right now I guess is what really matters. Every little bit.

To the end of getting more people in here, I've also started uploading Thralls chapters on Wattapad. My goal was to finish the first book and sell the story as a series of novels, but it's not exactly growing a massive audience on here behind the paywall, so I'm trying a different approach. The first couple chapters are up presently, including some pretty minor wording revisions where I felt things needed it (am I nitpicky? is this the result of improving over time? I don't fucking know) which will be reflected in the PDF uploads on here going forward. It's nothing really new to my backers, but if you're on the site, liking my work apparently boosts my visibility tremendously, so I'd appreciate that if Thralls tickles your fancy at all.

And yeah, this scramble is part of why there was no Contest page this week. Sorry. Very focused on doing what I can in the immediate present, I guess.

Anyway, on to my progress on other things.

GAMEDEV

Most of the progress on Slime Forest the last couple weeks has been art-centered. A refreshing change of pace??

For starters, that options menu has seen a fair bit of a facelift as I prepped some simple UI elements to start honing in on the game's overall visual style. The buttons and such basically follow the same visual motif as the game board during play.

The audio and window options both work as expected. Palettes are not yet implemented, but once I get them set up it should be pretty easy to reflect that within the game itself. Window scaling even checks the resolution of the main monitor to determine the maximum reasonable width for the game to run in during windowed mode, which could be improved somewhat to account for changing screens, but for now is still a detail I'm pretty proud of that's basically invisible to the player.

Also, I finally got this bitch done.

So there's one big fat hurdle towards completion knocked out. I am now working on reworking an asset that I drew WAY TOO FUCKING BIG that should pop up when you finish a full slime set.

I basically need to shrink this down to about a third it's starting size and then clean the hell out of it. Good job, past me! You math great! So that's a big art step too. Art steps!!

COMMISSIONS

Now even more mandatory! AAaaaaaa!!!

Completed:

• Apparently nothing! Uh oh! This week is gonna be fun!!!

In Progress:

• Goddess of Everything Else piece for Spritz (roughed and plotted and such)

Upcoming:

• Ottercat Autofellatio for Aist (you got it, boss! *glomf*)

• YCH Result for Rowlet

• Deathclaw Den for Sterling

• Sketch-A-Thon pieces (3??)

• Ottercat definitely not drowning Crysis.

• rabbit ass

WRITING

Barring the Watta releases and revisions, not a ton. Again, quite focused on the panicked flailing. Look at all the animation I'm doing and that weird monsterfucker piece nobody liked but I adore.

Oh, but I did finally start chapter 13 last night. Auna is sleepy as hell. Really writing what I know with her. It's delightful, you'll love it.

ANIMATION

Behold, a bitch who accomplishes much but is not on task!

The KTC voted that I should do something on the shorter side before continuing with my Rouge ambitions, thus Applejack. Then I was inspired and wanted to try catering to Twitter's incredible love lately for just straight-up cooter shots, and now I'm working on Vin. I have a second WIP to share of the Vin one in a bit. One-Sitting goal did not pan out with that one, but in my defense it has about twice the frames AJ's did. Hrm.

AND THAT ABOUT DOES IT

Humble Choice - AKA the only games thing I can justify paying for these days thanks to being grandfathered into the cheap-ass legacy tier still - gave me something called Blacktail. I'd never heard of Blacktail. I am now obsessed with Blacktail. It is very good! A little jank but nothing unforgiveable. I've been calling it Amercian McGee's Metroid Prime. It's pretty cool.

Not much time for it the last few days, though. Threw a few job apps out there. Chasing comms and pushing public releases to try and get more eyes on here. A lot of busy work. It's not so fun to report on, which is probably part of why I'm so bad about actually doing it. Utterly thankless effort, uploads and postings.

Also, all the platform researching and account creation and experimenting. I snuck a peek at the experimenting over on the Discord's patron channel, but it didn't warrant much response on its own yet so I think I'll wait until I've something more concrete to show before I do anything wild on here.

All I can do is carry on, though. Wish me luck, and thanks for being here.

• Sera