Weekly Update 7/25/24 - Smush and a Personal Update (Patreon)

Trying to get back to posting on Thursdays regularly, which means I don't have much more to share than I did during my last weekly update.

First, I scrapped a page and replaced it with some paizuri. I also did a complete render on it because I was in the zone. I just need to add dialogue.

 I also finished blending on the last two pages of this chapter.

I am very unsatisfied with the hands on this one. They feel too... formless. Probably a problem with the light source. The problem is that if you get too specific with rendering detail in hands, the detail tends to draw the eyes, and the hands aren't what I want you to pay attention to in this page.

I think I'm going to reapproach the squish on this one, and instead replace it with some dangle. So look forward to that.

Finally, I started the next part of the rendering process on earlier pages. This still needs a lot of work to get it where I want it, but I think its the only page I'll have done next week, and I'll explain why in the life update.

Life Update

The past couple of weeks have not been great. Wind unexpectedly caused a tree on our property to fall onto our neighbor's property. It damaged a fence, some chairs, and (I think) an outdoor stove. Our home insurance didn't cover it because it didn't damage our home, and the liability insurance may not cover it because it wasn't due to our negligence. Removing the tree will cost nearly 3,000 USD, and on top of that, our neighbors are sending itemized lists of what was damaged probably with the expectation that we can replace those easily. We live in a fairly expensive neighborhood that we moved into before it became expensive, so everyone expects everyone else to have hundreds of thousands of dollars lying around. I've done some light googling that suggests that the damaged property is their problem, not ours. But man, I don't want to get confrontational. Believe it or not, I see a lot of rude comments online about me and I ignore (and sometimes block) without addressing them because of how uninterested I am in conflict.

Our neighbors should be talking to their insurance, but we want to keep things amicable and avoid costly litigation. But like... I'm poor... we're poor. We can't remove the trees, pay thousands for fence repair and item replacement. That just isn't in the cards right now. For context, when you put all of my income sources together, I make around 590 a month. Good enough to keep going. Not good enough to thrive, and certainly it makes situations like this terrifying.

This means that I am taking a slight break from Toph Heavy to finish the Lois Lane Paizuri commission, and then I will have to take on extra commissions to deal with the cost of this whole thing. Expect the updates to trickle to one finished page a week.

This is all very stressful.