October Report (Patreon)

November is here and I take that to mean I’m allowed to indulge my vice of listening to the Vince Guaraldi Trio Charlie Brown Christmas soundtrack. For the next two months the smut engine will be running on mid century Christmas music. Yes, I’m one of those sentimental freaks, I’m sorry.😅 Let us begin the report!📊

🎃October Agenda🎃

⏹️✔️ Libby & Holly Ch3 Pages 5-11
✅Fanart + Theme Poll Art
✅ CYOA Pt. 9

The category I fell short on this month was Libby & Holly pages. I only made it to page 8/11 :( But I’m glad I was able to get to the CYOA update.

I wonder how many of you can relate to this idea:

My brain has two different work modes, the hyper-focused problem solving planning mode and the idle, free-flowing doodling mode. This month is a good example of what happens when I get to use one more than another.

My freelance work has been really stressful and demanding in October, and that means I use up my daily allotment of analytical brain time each day and that’s all that is leftover  is the freeflow mode. The result is that I’ve ended up with a lot more sketchbook content this month.

The difference between this month’s sketchbook and last months is that most of it moves. Ever since collaborating with Havoc on the Bombchu thing I’ve been craving more animation, even if I don’t really have time for polishing and finessing, so the result is a lot of sketchy ones.

When I wasn’t animating Libby & Holly I was doodling Karlach for the…

✅Fanart + Theme Poll Art

I did almost two pages of Karlach sketches before I had some ideas that I thought I’d take to the final version of the character spread.

I’ll be putting up another theme/character suggestion box soon so I can sort out what to do next!

⏹️✔️ Libby & Holly Ch3 Pages 5-11

I actually didn’t count very well when I set this goal- I was going to give myself 6 page to do but 5-11 is 7 pages. 🙄 Time to go back to counting school, Wint.

That said these pages are some of my favorite so far. They are also very difficult to crop around for the sake of making this post” SFW” 😛 See below, Holly talking on a weird cell phone I think.

I’ve been leaving everything in black and white for the most part so far, I still plan to go back and add color but I might be a little more minimal with this chapter and work more with flats.

I think this might come out better overall in the end because I am putting more effort and detail into the lines and screentones on these pages and flat color underneath allows the lines to just do their job.

I had pages 5-8 roughed out so lining them was easy to do in my freeflow work time but when I had a limited amount of analytical brain time to spend I chose to put it toward the CYOA since I’d missed that update last month instead of translating my thumbnails for 8-12 into roughs/lined pages.

✅ CYOA Pt. 9 was harder than usual! I did not expect for y’all to pick sitting by the fire 😆

but since the last couple of updates were more about tense action, maybe it’s not surprising we all just want some cozy Autumn vibes.

I know cute and wholesome is kinda my M.O. but it's also kinda fun that it even found its way into this sword and sorcery story. Ultimately it's like all my projects. I want it to feel wholesome and sweet because it has heart, not because it has no teeth. :)
The more I work with the CYOA format the more I feel it evolving and that's really  satisfying.

I’ve started leaving out some of the frames I used in the earlier illustrations and have snow a few more floating spot illustrations instead of full frame ones to tell the story.

I hope you like size difference content because that’s definitely where we’re heading in...

🍁NOVEMBER🍁

Part of writing these reports is trying to experiment and change my plans each month to make them more attainable. I’ll be honest–November is always a really busy month for me on the  freelance side and I’m kinda setting my sights low as a result. 😔That's partly why this update is so late.

That said, I think the smart approach may be to try to make more of my work fit into the freeflow category for the month since I know that’s where my time will end up.

🍂November Agenda!🍂

⏹️✔️ Fanart + Theme Poll

⏹️✔️ Libby & Holly Ch3 Pages 8-12

⏹️ CYOA Pt. 10

Thank you all for supporting and being involved with my work! 🩷The CYOA has really developed from a goofy experiment to what feels more like a truly collaborative project and I like all the challenges it brings to my work, especially in helping me practice writing. 😀

I’m looking forward to seeing what we get up to next! 💕 Happy Saturday!

🩷Winton