art update - making progress (Patreon)

-almost finished the secret stuff(lot of work)

-did some early book 3 sketches

-redid two scenes(an Azula and Mai scene).

-improved the Mai and Tylee idles.

-working on a new scene for the winner of the latest scene raffle.

Okay, so let's first talk a bit about the delay of the build we were supposed to get out in January to our patrons. 

Losing what was about two weeks of work due to failing hardware is pretty devastating on a mental level. Losing the work itself is bad enough, but it also zaps your energy level just thinking about having to do it all over again. 

It was pretty impressive of the coder to try and "gungho" it for a few days, attempting to catch up in the little time we still had. However, coffee has no magical properties no matter how much of it you poor into you so that turned out to be .... unrealistic.

The good news is we have some new (non decade old) hardware and  refound our work rhythm. Things are finally back on track. We can't say when the next build will be ready, but just keep those two weeks of lost time in the back of your head and that should be a pretty good indicator.

While the coder is busy getting us back where we were, I've been taking care of the secret stuff and just jump on whatever I have time to improve upon. I'm really happy with the way some of it is turning out.

Of course I could just "run ahead" and start doing all sorts of drawings we'll need in the future, but that'd be a bad idea. We rely a lot on each others' feedback to make this game. It's a synergy which would disappear if we're both just doing our own thing.

That means whatever I'm doing right now needs to be useful(naturally) but also not too far away from what the coder is working on or what we've already talked about. 

As useful as it may be, working on art you've already put a lot of time into isn't especially motivating or inspiring. So to break the monotony of that I also did some quick rough sketches for book 3. 

I've also been working on improving the Ty lee idles. I was planning to do that from the start because I hadn't been able to get her body and face exactly how I wanted them to be and this was as good a time as any to try and fix that. 

I reworked Mai a bit too. Since I was already pretty happy with how she looked the changes are a lot more subtle. Well until you take her clothes off that is(which isn't in the the game yet). I have a personal preference for Mai, but the general opinion seems to favor Ty Lee so I really want to do the best I can drawing her.