Blue Fang: New Project, New Rewards (Patreon)

Derived from the science fiction and fantasy that has mirrored our reality, comes new and old sparks of creativity and imagination. For many years, I have craved to indulge into these sparks of a fantasy world of bounty hunting, cyber punking, and crime noire conflicts that cast a mirror on ourselves. Since before 2010, actually (10+ years: woah). I would present this world through a graphic novel format, spread across 13 "cases" (chapters) that spanned topics including artificial intelligence, systematic crime, corrupted politicians puppeted by overruling corporations, genetic splicing, religious fever of the masses, and the battle to not lose control of your own actions and mind when faced with the choice.

I believe now is the time to start bringing that dream into fruition: the story of Blue Fang.

Our story follows the protagonist, Viktor Talon, a genetically spliced bounty hunter and his partner JAX, a decommissioned android, as they hunt to stop the corruption that runs rampart through the cyberpunk metropolitan of HAVEN. With uncertain allies at their side like June Blaydes as the vice-chief of Haven's police force, each case only becomes more deadly than the last where their mettle, mind, and trust with each other will be put to the test of survival. Not everyone earns a happy ending.

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The reason I preface this adventure is due to the fact I, unfortunately, only have so many hours in a day, and not all my projects and tasks can be sustained. In this case, animation would most likely be taking a back seat to the graphic novel. I am not stopping animation, but slowing it down. The still render images are still manageable (usually).

The cause behind this is that, simply, I am being burned out.

Animation is a very intricate lengthy process, that takes a long time to make something to the standards I hold for myself to and take pride in. From modeling, scene setting, keyframing and tweening, post production and more, it's a tolling process. Switching from SFM to Blender has allowed me to create much higher quality content and have more control over my visions, but with it comes more work and time sunk to not make something generic. I don't want to produce content that I can't be proud of, even if it is much faster or easier to not do the detail work. In addition, I want to create content outside of the niche I have dug myself into. I will still of course be producing that niche'd content because I still really enjoy it, but I need to avoid burning myself out of those as well. If it gets to the point I can no longer produce quality or enjoyable content, no one wins.

If I go this route, my Patreon will need to be shuffled around. My thought is that I would add Blue Fang page updates to my Silver+ Tier rewards. Not only does this mean you're getting more content for your subscription, but your support helps motivate me to continue to do my best and keep updates consistent. I plan for each page to be b&w inked, and updated weekly with sketches, concepts, and the pages. Each page would then be published publicly a couple weeks later. 

To start, I want to share all the content I have curated over 10+ years of brainstorming, writing, and conceptualizing. Some things are a bit out dated, irrelevant, changed, or just...bad (I am sorry in advance for my high school art quality >~<), but I enjoy sharing how far it has come over those years. This includes character designs, environmental design, concept pieces, and more. (I want to leave most of the story secret for now, since I do have it almost completely written, but not in a presentable format that would avoid spoilers.) You can access this content here! 

I also want to hear your thoughts on this endeavour. Ideas, thoughts on the Patreon formatting, feedback on the concepts, whatever comes to mind. This may be a project that I have been working on for ages, but I want to make it my best to share it with you.

Thank you for your support!