LMaO Assets and Things Moving Forward (Patreon)

THE TRIAL

Moving forward, as I mentioned somewhat in my last post, I plan on trying to do some short form projects. These projects will change from month to month and involve me challenging myself to produce different content. This is largely to help me improve my work flow, learn more about different creative processes and hopefully inspire others to try different forms of media for creative expression.

I'll be doing a trial period of three months. September, October and November. At the end of which I'll do an assessment of this format. This will be based on your feedback as well as my own feelings on the success and failures of each project. If this trial goes well and it seems worth pursuing I'll continue this format properly in January, with a mini project in December due make sure I don't over commit with during the inevitable holiday chaos.

The important question here is what are these projects going to be and what do you all get as a result. You will first and foremost get early access and work in progess updates of whatever project I'll be doing. You'll also get to suggest and vote on what projects I work on each month. I'll set up a poll during the last week of each month which will have a list of topics or suggested projects. The most votes at the start of the month will be what I work on that month.

These polls will start for the month of November instead of the entire trial for a couple of reasons. Firstly, because this is entirely experimental at this point I want to make sure that the first month I'm doing something that I can post regular updates on. Secondly I'd like it to be something I can create deadlines for and use as a way to assess my time management. Third, I think this first idea will be fairly engaging for me and all of you. Finally October is halloween month and I don't produce enough holiday content, so I'll be doing something spooky for that.

PLANS FOR SEPTEMBER

For September I'll be doing a manga-ka challenge. Over the month of september I'll be creating characters, writing a manuscript and producing a 15-20 page comic. Or at least attempting to. Weekly manga artists produce 15-20 page comics each week. They have several advantages over me in that they generally have assistants, and editor and apparently don't need to sleep. I am unfortunately burdened by human function and am alone so I'll be stretching this process out slightly.

The plan is to take the first week to create and design characters. Week two will be plan, write, draw and edit a rough draft. The final two weeks will be producing the comic itself, at a rate of about two pages a day. I don't suspect character designing phase and rough draft phase will each take a full week, so I'll likely be able to get some extra time at the end of the month to polish things a bit more. But I want to give myself a few low bar goals to feel good about early on to get my morale up.

For you guys, this means early access to the rough draft and access to pages as I complete them.

I'll also be releasing a poll later today that will have a bunch of different words to choose from. (I'll be releasing this one publically just to get as many vote and variety in as possible). Then on September first I'll take the top 3 to 5 words and those will be the themes of the comic.

PLANS FOR OCTOBER

For Halloween month I'll be doing a spooky game. A couple years ago when I was visiting my boyfriend at the time I had my shitty laptop and threw together a little horror game while he was at work. (   https://www.furaffinity.net/view/25290080/   ) The entire thing was my first real experience with Gamemaker Studio 2 and 3D game development in general. Overall it was really rushed and done and released in haste. So for October I'd like to try my hand at it again but take the time to learn a bit more about properly importanting 3D models and shaders. 

This month will end up being a little more abstract. After September I'm sure I'll be pretty tired of drawing so I'll spend the first week building a rough prototype and figure out how the game is going to play. This will include the rough flow of the game from beginning to end. Week two will be me developing all the assets I'll need. This will include making models, textures and aquiring any sound effects and background music I need. The final two weeks will be refining everything and putting it together. The whole game will likely be fairly linear and short. No more then a 5-20 minute experience.

In the last week of October I'll be releasing a poll with several options for potential themes, media or projects that I could attempt for November. My goal is to make them all very different in scope and range. Some will be extremely in my comfort zone and some will be way outside of it. Whatever gets voted highest will be the theme of November.

PLANS FOR NOVEMBER

This month is going to be the first month that will completely follow the format I'm aiming for with this trial. As a result I can't set up a plan, because I have no control over the theme or project. All I can say is the first day will be assessing the project, deciding what I'll be doing and setting myself a timeline for it.

PLANS FOR DECEMBER

This is the end of the trial. I'll be making my final assessment and asking for input on the recent months. If this format for projects works and feels good I'll continue it. If not I'll try to pick up LMaO again if that's what people would prefer I work on.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Your opinions during this trial period are extremely important to me. Positive or negative I want to know what I can be doing to improve this patreon thing for all of you, as well as improve myself as a person and artist.