Coming Up (Patreon)

So hey! With the fall of Slick Sam Sells You, the logical question to ask is, "What's next?" So here we go:
1. Mold

Yes, still! I hope I'm getting to the end of it, though. There was water damage under the kitchen sink, and eventually I couldn't help but notice the board under the sink was the only part of the inside cabinet that was painted. Yes, that's right, there was a ton of mold in the board and the previous owners had painted over it. In my ongoing mold saga, I've been finding a lot of evidence that mold was more or less allowed to fester all over the house, and was basically just hidden whenever it was found.

I've torn out the board, vacuumed, sanded, vacuumed again, and now I'm currently dying from my asthma symptoms and find it a tad difficult to focus on work. But! I am rapidly running out of damp locations in the house to destroy, so in theory it can't be living in much abundance many more places!

2. Talon of Wisdom

Sadly has been neglected these past few weeks. The new characters didn't have rigs, and as I tried drawing them I realized that I didn't know what I was doing enough to be consistent. It's because I lack the fundamentals to draw those shapes, and the revelation drove me to spend some time really trying to practice and improve my artwork. I still need some intense training there, but the improvement from the focus has been notable, and I'm going to start releasing the comics again. I planned for this week to be that time, and I need to finish some backgrounds, but due to the mold my hours wound up getting reduced and in my misery I've decided we'll launch into the proper schedule next week. 

That said, I may cut down to two comics per week from here on because...

3. Animation

I recently saw Zee's "Animated Spellbook" and really liked the format. Roleplaying is also something I'm passionate about, so I thought I'd try something similar by doing an animated story about a character, and then teach you how to build that character in the "Hero System, 6th Edition". The first episode will be about taking the essential barbarian concept and making it a character for Hero, and I've got the script already recorded.

Animation is expensive and the script is about seven minutes long. I'll use plenty of shortcuts so that the short story will be the core of the work, and with any luck I can get them out as fast as the obligations of parenthood will allow. I hope it will be fun for everyone! Though I fear it may be a tad esoteric.

4. It's A Living

And it's still alive! It's currently at the stage where I need to do a cutscene, which is like animating all on its own, and actually requires a few custom animations for expressions and so on. I also need to build a rig for the manager at the factory. Enemies have all received animations now. Progress is slower than it could be, given that I have been splitting my time and working on this project in bursts. It's a super neat project, but as I've mentioned, not one I'm sure how to deliver to people given the broad scale of the work, so I'm chipping away but expecting an audience of maybe a hundred or so when all is said and done.

5. Gaming

I think I may drop the Slick Sam thing and bring back the Peyton, Rae, and Taylor bit by themselves once a week. I'll reduce the format back down to twelve to fifteen minutes or so and try to control the ad breaks so that you're only dealing with pre-rolls. Slick Sam Sells you made me realize that you guys were being subjected to a lot of the things these days, and honestly guys it's worth all of like $10-$20 per month to me. It's not nothing but it's not worth annoying hundreds of people with a half dozen ads per video.

Like I mentioned with Slick Sam, viewership decreases with every video, so I expect it to continue to decline as normal, but I know it is liked by those who watch it, and at least it should be regular. As for Radio Skyline? I'll do more when I'm struck by inspiration for it, but headlines continue to be fraught with controversy and it's hard to figure out a good way to do comedic talk radio with flying further and further off the handle.

So that's the plan! I'd like to also promise some streams like I used to do while working on animation, but I'm not sure I can. Mainly because my son can open doors and get out of bed at will now and has a habit of running right into the room while I'm working to drag me away and show me stuff he found. Like cardboard boxes - cool stuff if you know what you're dealing with. I'll think about streams. I imagine they'll be light on viewership if they aren't regular, but if I do them, life asks them to be like that for now, at least.