A Short Delay On 0.8.4... but With a Great Reason (Patreon)

0.8.4 is going to take an extra day to come out because something very unexpected happened that demanded immediate priority over all the other work for this release: Myumi, Britney's sprite artist, came back from the dead after being gone for over 7 months.

Sorry for long disappearance. Because of covid related and family problem, takes me under heavy pressure so I take hiatus from drawings.. but now I’m back!!

As you might guess, this is fantastic news! I believe I mentioned it before, but finding artists who have a similar style to TiltSHIFT (Zoey's sprite artist and CG artist) has been very difficult. MMrailgun was a prospect I've been keeping my eye on, though he's not posted new art in a while and never responded to my inquiry about a commercial commission. The only other artist who I have found who was taking commissions while being close to TiltSHIFT's style was Myumi; in fact, Myumi's DeviantArt page lists Azalanz (TiltSHIFT's old artist pseudonym and his current Twitter @) as his lone favorite visual artist. My interpretation of this is that Myumi deliberately styled some of his art style after TiltSHIFT's, which is why their work looks so good next to each other while not being copies (I'll show an example in a moment).

What's good is that despite the long hiatus and what sounds like some very heavy real-life issues (I try not to pry into this stuff), Myumi is still taking commissions and seems very eager to draw; furthermore, he's finished Britney's second pose, and I have already put it in-game.

Yes, I know the nose is a bit offset. It's fixed in-game though.

I'd have preferred to links something with the new 0.8.4 content, but given that Patreon Trust & Safety is a bit mad at me for skirting NSFW content being visible in public posts and that Zach is topless for the entirety of the new content...

After nearly 7 months, Britney is going to be able to put both of her feet down on the ground again.

Furthermore, Myumi seems committed to finishing Britney's last pose:

And adding 4 new expressions like we discussed more than half a year ago.

This is all extremely promising news. Having only a single artist is a severe bottleneck, and while it's a bit too early to fully state that Myumi is going to stick around and consistently produce art, having two artists significantly widens the scope of what this game can do.

Unfortunately for the 0.8.4 release, this unexpected windfall took an entire day to deal with (communicating with Myumi, getting the sprites, making them for in-game use), which means that I need an extra day for the release to be ready.