Updates n' Such (Patreon)

Hi everyone, been a while since I updated here, so this may run long. Those of you who follow me on Twitter and/or keep up with the happenings among the other members of the Pro Crastinators Podcast will know that we're just now nearing the end of RadCon, which is basically the 6 of us just hanging around at Digibro's house (which I've recently moved into permanently, but that's another story). I've sat in on a bunch of podcasts and letsplays, so I'll be popping up in videos on the other guys' Youtube channels, but I also took the opportunity to do a little project of my own which will be going up on my channel in the next few days. I won't say what it was, but I'll give you a hint: it's about one of my favorite comics.

You might also be aware that I've been holding a little fundraising campaign for the purpose of upgrading my woefully inadequate computer. The plan for this was to raise $806 over the entirety of September.... imagine my surprise when the full amount was raised in only 4 days. (Thanks especially to Jason K, who knocked out over half the amount in one fell swoop!) So, the runaway success of the campaign opened up new possibilities for me. Like, since a new computer was now paid for, recording, editing and rendering Nuzlockes would now be MUCH easier. And with Pokemon Sun and Moon coming out soon... well, I had to wonder if I could somehow make it happen.

As it happens, the only way to record gameplay footage from a 3DS game is with a thing called a Capture Card which needs to be custom installed on a 3DS. It costs a few hundred dollars, and since I don't own a 3DS to begin with, that'll be a few hundred dollars as well. My friend and fellow PKMN MSTR Mumkey Jones had successfully crowdfunded a 3DS and Capture Card recently in order to be able to make a Nuzlocke series of Pokemon Moon, so I decided to take a page out of his book and make a new campaign goal that would allow me to do the same. After talking with Mumkey a bit, we both thought it'd be neat to do our Nuzlockes at around the same time and battle our teams against each other, first for Sun/Moon and then for OmegaRuby/Alpha Sapphire. We're still working out the details but, for OR/AS in particular, we're planning on battling one a others' teams after each gym leader.

(I know I should link the campaign somewhere in this post, so I guess this is as good a place as any: https://www.gofundme.com/BenSaint )

The campaign is currently about 65% funded with just under two weeks left before the planned end on September 30th. If you're already a patron, then you're already doing plenty for me, so please don't feel that you need to give me any more than you already do. But, perhaps you have friends who like my work but aren't patrons yet...?  (˵¯͒  w  ¯͒˵)✧

So, as you can probably tell, I'm pretty invested in the Nuzlocke thing at this point. I'd planned initially that the White 2 Nuzlocke would be a one-time thing, but it's been pretty fun and rewarding thus far. The only thing that I haven't enjoyed about doing the Nuzlocke videos is fighting my mediocre computer every step of the way. So, once I have a machine that's up to the task of actually making the videos, I'm interested in keeping it going as a continuing side-project to my comics. I think that splitting my efforts between comics and videos will prevent me from burning out on either and result in more work getting done overall. Also, having a better computer will make working on both a lot easier going forward. I think the future of my content is looking pretty good!

Speaking of the comics, it's been a while since I released any, huh? Well, there's good news on that front. Since The Champion was turning out to be longer than originally intended, I decided to make an early release of the first part of the story the Reward for hitting the initial goal of the fundraising campaign. And since that goal was hit, it's happening! I'll be releasing the first 25 pages of The Champion on saintcomix.com on October 1st. I'm pretty happy that I decided to split it, I feel like it's been too long since I put out any main content and I'm starting to almost forget what it feels like, which is really bad and must be remedied immediately. In fact, I'm so eager to actually get some stuff out that I'm gonna post the first few pages of The Champion here, early, for Patrons, right after I post this. Writing this long post out has kind of been a way of pumping myself up to do it.

Welp, time to go make that post! Thanks for reading, see ya around.

-Ben