September Update! (Who is this guy?)

Hello, thought I’d post an update on how the work is going for y’all, as well as just some thoughts about art, adult comics/hentai and the reproduction of fan work. Don’t worry I’ll bullet-point a tl;dr at the end for you impatient types. Anyway, here we go!

So I guess most of you…or any of you for that matter, aren’t really aware of who ‘TDL’ is, so I figure I’ll use these updates to get into that too. Afterall if you’re supporting me or thinking about doing so, I gotta assume you’re wanting to know what kind of person it is you’re wanting to support. No-one wants to throw money into a fire except an arsonist.

I’m not too crazy about telling you my height and blood-type and all that, it seems a bit stiff, but for the skinny; I’m a 30 y.o. British guy, and I’ve been kicking around the adult smut scene for a little over ten years now by my estimate, mostly lurking, but doing spurts (hah) here and there, always as a hobby and not strictly pursued- I’ve never taken art classes (and boy does it show) and have progressed, as the Japanese say, by ‘dokugaku’ alone- self taught. This is because, well, art is not what I grew up doing and wasn’t what I was interested in. Writing was my passion growing up, and I wrote a lot of stories and scripts and skits and sketches. 

These days, maybe not so much of that. But I thought I’d sit down and take Volition, and Thrallworks, a bit more seriously. Afterall, considering my age, if I don’t take the plunge and complete at least one project, then that’ll be me for life, it feels. There is no spare time like there was ten, five, or even two years ago. Peeps don’t lie when they say things narrow out when you get older.

So why this and not something else? Why smut? Why art? Why FANart? Well, I suppose it’s because I have a certain…passion, I suppose, for making this kind of stuff more widely accepted. I think people should be allowed to do as they please and enjoy what they enjoy, and me doing this is a part of that. Now I’m not going to preach or campaign or the like, I don’t think that’s a good thing, I don’t think that works or can even be healthy. What I do believe is that if you make it, they will come (hah), and I’d like to think that, looking around at how the western erotic games industry, the adult comic sites and all of that are progressing, that we are getting there. The architects are the ones that decide how the place looks, so I figure it would be good to create something for my own niche.

And my niche? Well, for me, to paraphrase an Olgaf strip, I need a convoluted narrative to really get me off. And by doing a fanwork, I get to dive right into an already existing narrative that the audience can be familiar with and mix it up to create that right from the launch-point. Which is why I decided to continue on Volition rather than start something from scratch. It will be interesting to say the least to see what the reaction is going to be to it as it continues to progress, I’m rather excited!

Thrallworks is my thing from scratch, and as I’m planning out what it should look like and the shape of it (see the other Patron-only post for some idea of how that’s going) it seems to be taking more love from the game-designing part of my life. I think in general I do prefer making original content over fanwork, but it is also rather time-consuming, and Volition is very much the priority work right now, to get it down and get it out.

And speaking of, my own lack of skill is making Volition alone take a hell of a lot of time, it’s all I can do to release the one page a week that I promised. How things are going to change when I start posting Thrallworks is a matter that is going to take some thought.

Anyway, there’s a lot of topics I’d love to get into, about ‘what makes good fanart smut’ and discussions about the hypno-community and all the rest, but if I get started on that this post is going to take all day to read. So anyway, the track for this month ahead is thus: Get a backlog of Volition comic pages (because that would be useful), start-up Thrallworks, and try not to drown.

Thanks for reading, and here’s your points:

• TDL is a Britbong
• TDL wants to CHANGE THE WORLD through smut
• TDL is doing Volition because it’s a good intro to that and an experiment
• TDL is doing Thrallworks because…he never actually said…….he likes game-design?
• TDL did not appreciate the challenges of a schedule until he was on one.
• TDL must take some art lessons

And that’ll do ya! Laters!