August 2022 General Update (Patreon)

Sorry, I know I meant to start doing these monthly but as is often the case, it didn't really turn out that way.

The last two months have been kind of tough for me. I lost a family member, my front tooth has been knocked out (don't ask) and getting an implant is going to be a long road ahead; plus I've generally been dealing with a lot of piled up stuff. Both exciting opportunities and problems I've been dreading.

I have an impossibly long list of Swords-related chores to take care of too. I think pulling a few all-nighters would get me on track pretty quickly but you would be surprised how difficult that is to organize!

I've made some attempts to outsource minor projects like updating Swords (Chronological) | Tapas Web Comics and wrapping up the RPG Maker game Merciless Dungeon to free me up some more, but it's hard to find people who understand the assignment right away without a bunch of guidance - and that ultimately defeats the purpose.
In the case of Merciless Dungeon someone just sent me a giant list of suggestions that involved tripling the amount of existing artwork, which wasn't what I asked for at all...

I've been doing some easy win stuff with big brands! I would love if you all entered the Huion collab to draw Quest Sprout - you can learn more here : Swords x Huion | Swords (swordscomic.com)

Some other upcoming stuff:
- I'll be attending the New Zealand Game Developers Conference in a few weeks. Everyone's favourite swordscomic.com admin Pennomi will be coming over for it too, so we're finally going to meet after working together for four years!
- We're continuing work on Swords : Edge of Chaos - we also have a social media manager now so there should be a more regular flow of updates soon
- I'm still working hard to upkeep my 3 comics per week schedule, including Patreon polls to help guide the series forward
- There are also two new Makeship plushies coming soon. One has been greenlit for October and the other is awaiting some design changes.
- I'm also working on another non-plushie product I can't talk about just yet.

It's important that I get ready for NZGDC, so I don't have plans to work on Swords : Pens & Papercuts or DnD content until after the con. Who knows? If I'm lucky I might find a good collaborator there to help me design it better.

I think I'll also be retiring Stabatars - I've seen very few people using them and manually emailing them out to every new member is quite time consuming stuff. Also the NFT bubble has kind of popped so it's not even fun to make fun of anymore. It was a good experiment but I think we can come up with something more valuable. Let me know if you'd like something else as a substitute.

All the best,

Matthew