Art update 36 (Patreon)

I was planning on doing this earlier but I sometimes have these short bouts of absolute loathing concerning anything I draw and those aren't the best moments for me to talk about what I've been up to. They can take anywhere from an hour up to a couple of days. It's a mood which basically strips away any sort of objectivity I have towards my own work and puts all of it behind a black veil of uglyness. I can still enjoy other people's work, but anything I've had a hand in... not so much.

Those aren't the best moods to have when trying to draw but I've sort of gotten used to them and learned to just take it easy when they happen.  Anyway, I had one of those moods for a couple of days but thank god it's starting to quickly subside again.

Don't worry about the amount of work that allowed me to do. If anything I've been doing so much it might actually have been the cause of my shitty mood. 

I've been really busy cranking out a bunch of new scenes for the next build. Probably around seven so far? And that's without the extra necessary snippets. I try to go as fast as I can to make sure the coder has as much time as possible to work his magic. At the start I still had this idea of trying to aim for a midmonth release but that has turned out to be nothing more than a fever dream. I probably was the only one who really entertained the thought of it perhaps being possible. My estimation skills remain horrible to this day. 

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I'm really happy with the way one of the scenes has turned out, but I gave myself less time than necessary for a couple of others so I'll have to go back and do some touching up on those. I very much prefer to get them 100% done before I send them off, but like I said it's more important now for the coder/writer to have as much time with them as possible. I can keep improving on stuff I already sent him right up untill the day he creates the new build and that's exactly what I plan on doing.

Especially one scene with an unusual perspective needs more time and I'd like to mess a lot more with it. I could've made things a lot easier on myself by using a reference photo but unlike many artist I rarely use reference material when drawing more difficult positions.

I'm not even entirely sure why myself, but there's something about it which irks me. It's almost like I feel I'm cheating which is ridiculous because close observation is basically one of the two "legs" of drawing. I dunno, I'm just weird I guess! Of course when I finally DO try and search for reference material out of pure frustration I usually can't find the position I need anyway, heh... 

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I've been adding parts to some scenes which would be considered a full fledged scene by itself when we where still knee deep into creating book1. That's mostly my fault. To give you an example, the coder asked for an extra pic so we could use an older scene in a different way. I did repurpose some older art, but in the end I made an entirely new scene with about 95% new drawings. 

Another example is me seeing a comment from you guys and me thinking "maybe I could change the scene I'm working on to include that option...?" Turns out I could! 

I'm prone to sending the coder entire new scenes, taking his small suggestions as a spark of inspiration which quickly turn into a wildfire. Will it make the game better in the end? I think so, but I made sure to tell him he can rip out whatever he feels is too much. We're a bad match when it comes to setting ourselves limits. Usually when he comes up with something interesting it inspires me to come up with something new which inspires him etc etc. 

Being inspired by each other is awesome, but with the amount of characters we have to take care of  I hope we can keep those a bit more contained when we reach book 4. Maybe to the same amount or less...? Either that or really limit the things which can be done with most of them. They're fun to have and to me they really flesh out the world, but they come at a price.

Talking about that might be a little premature though. We still have this route to close up and start/finish the love route of book3. I consider nearing the end of this route a major milestone all the same. We're well over half of the game and with all the new ideas we've put into this route I was genuinely concerned whether we would be able to keep it all from crashing down. The maze, entirely the coder's idea, initially scared the bejesus out of me. Perhaps that's why the first time he mentioned it is etched into my memory and feels like it happened yesterday. That's an odd sensation when you're busy getting the final elements of the maze ready (for this  route). Talk about a twisted sense of time! 

My own personal proof it really didn't just happen yesterday is the fact my arm cushion has at long last pretty much flattened to the thickness of a pancake under the weight of my drawing arm so I made myself a new one. Let's see how long this one will survive. 

The coder has given me a list with optional scenes which I can try to add and secretly I want to do them all(and more). That may sound nice from a more is better kind of perspective, but I have to keep in mind it's not me who has to stitch all of it together into coherent story. And that's not even mentioning the inevitable amount of bugs which will have to be kept in check.  I have a lot of trust in his skills to pull through, but he's only human so I should really try to reign myself in some more I guess.

I think I'll try and do a few more scenes before I'll revisit the ones I've already done and start improving them. I usually go through a lot of ups and downs before I can finally say I'm happy and done with a scene...  Heh, honestly I'm never truly done with a scene. If reality would let me I'd be working on each scene forever and ever.

Despite the short hiccup(shitty mood), I'm feeling pretty good again about the things I'm working on and ready to lay the foundation for another crash in about a  week or two ;)

Oh, almost forgot. I've also been experimenting with some drawing software which allows me to draw using vectors. That basically means your drawing is saved as a bunch of mathematical functions. The big advantage is you can basically zoom in forever without things looking blurry...ever! 

It's also great for getting that "perfect curve" for a boob. Instead of drawing a line over and over again hoping you'll eventually get it right(which sometimes happens). With vectors you can just pull some strategic points on a line and have complete controle over what happens. 

We could never use vectors for the actual game itself, since the software for the game simply doesn't support it, but as an intermediary means during creation it can be pretty awesome! It's also corrupting me..... corrupting as in, you want to get it perfect and now you have the means to do so which naturally gobbles up time. 

I did a quick experiment trying to figure out whether it was useful for us to use and drew a sketch the normal way and traced it using vectors afterwards. Oh man.... I could really feel the lure of playing indefinitely with the linewidth, flow of the lines etc. etc. 

Sketch done the normal old way below.

A quick trace with vector lines below.

In the end I think the advantages don't outweight the disadvantages. I'm simply a lot faster using the old way and I don't think it's a simple matter of getting used to the new way. I'll keep testing it out to see if I can find some happy middleground though.

For consistencies' sake and time concerns I'll probably stick to my old ways. If you'd like to see some bigger exmples of my experiment, you can find them in the attachment to this post.

Well, that's it for now, I'll go and start work on a new June scene! Till next time!