Reflection - So What Now? (Patreon)

The other month I wrote up a post about how I came to arrive where I am, and people seemed to like that, so I think today I'm going to write about where I'm planning to go in the future. This is the last weekend before Kitsune Tails releases, it's only five days until a non-Dead Winter project I worked on actually makes it over the finish line and while I'm a bit relieved by that fact, I've also been hammering out a lot more last-last-last minute art assets for our cut-off deadline on Monday so that "relief" isn't quite a moment of rest yet. In less than a week a huge task is going to be off my plate, I think? I don't know how post-release stuff goes yet. I'll find out soon. But either way, I'm not planning to rest on my laurels, I have a lot of work loaded up so I'll share what my intentions are moving forward to the rest of the year.

-- Dead Winter --

Number one, the thing people are here for. Dead Winter the comic has been my ongoing baseline for seventeen long years, but I don't plan to do it forever. The comic is in its third act and I intend to see it through to its conclusion, regardless of what else I work on. After Kitsune Tails ships I'm gonna try to spend some of the now-free time I'll have to get a succession of pages out in relatively quick order, the scene coming up that I have planned would benefit from a faster release pace- I've done this sort of thing once or twice before in the comic, so I figure one more for the road would tie things off neatly. That's going to take a lot of effort and I'm just coming off a lot-of-effort streak, I have a page or so before I ramp up into my big plan, so when the time comes I'm expecting to be able to just lock in and get it done. I think this one will be fun.

Also with the two-month sprint to getting Kitsune Tails wrapped I'll be able to work on Dead Winter the game more. There are limiting factors beyond my control that temper how fast this one can get done, but I have a shortlist of art tasks I need to work on before the build we have is entirely professional-looking and colorized. I left off working on coloring a few large backgrounds so I'll be finding time to finish those up, and after that I'll be colorizing the rest of Monday and Lou's main weapon animations. The four playable characters have a lot of animation frames, but half of them- their alternate weapons- are built from their main weapon variants, so all the walk, run, jump, knockdown, getup, hitstun frames I already colored will double over into the second half of the characters' animations. It feels like a -lot- of work, and having just put the final touches on an entire game of low-fidelity pixel art, I have a better perception of the scale of the work I'd set up for myself, but I think I can get a lot of it done this year. I've also been working with S'ret, my art assistant, in teaching her the methods to convert 2D pencils into color sprites, and the work she's been doing is great. She's taken over handling one of the enemy types as a learning process and I have been giving art guidance, so "the last current enemy type" is most of the way towards being finished. The big looming art task to handle is Frank, and I think S'ret and I can tackle working on him together. We've been ramping up our work meetings again, so when I'm off Kitsune Tails we have plenty on the docket to work on.

-- Titan Garden --

My fun side-project. We built a proper website for it (https://titan.garden) but we have some features we want to get working to really flesh it out, including a gacha pull system and a sort-by-trait interface. This was my "work that wasn't work" art project and I've been so pressed for work that I haven't been doing my non-work work lately, so I intend to get these going again. Building up a bigger buffer of illustrations for Titan Garden will probably be the thing I do in the first week after Kistune Tails launches, since it's fun and relaxing and I'll probably be telling myself I deserve to relax and have a little fun. We have the structure to build out a TTRPG setting book for this project, but both Juno and myself have had other engagements that prevented us from acting on this just yet. We'll try to make it happen, but otherwise the plan is to build out the rest of the website's features.

-- Workspace Upgrades --

I've built a couple computers over the past decade or so, but I've been drawing on the same tablet since the Bush II administration. I bought a gen 1 Wacom Cintiq 21UX with my stimulus check and it's been my workhorse for sixteen? seventeen? years. It's starting to fall apart. My monitor will lose connection with my computer sometimes and blink out, and I'll need to unplug it and plug it back in again. It's also a 1600x1200 display and I think other monitors have outscaled it somewhat, it's really tiny compared to my second monitor. My plan is if Kitsune Tails does well I'm gonna replace this thing, and I think working on a modern-res tablet monitor will let me play around with higher pixel-density workspaces and let me try to make sharper art. It's really expensive, though, which is why I've been putting it off for so long. I tend to use what I have until it can't be repaired anymore and I'm glad this tablet has made it this far, although I do need to re-install its drivers to kick it out of 800x600 mode now and then, I don't know why it keeps blinking into that state. Either way, it's a big expense but I think it'll be good for my art. Here's hoping our game sells!

-- Personal Enrichment --

For the past few years I've been struggling a bit to try to learn a second language. I have so much work-work to do that I have a hard time committing time to daily lessons and when my kanji reviews build up then digging out feels daunting and I end up just working on work instead. Probably also after Kitsune Tails launches, in that "I'm just gonna relax and have fun" Titan Garden work week I'm going to try to dig myself out of my Japanese kanji review backlog and get momentum going on that front again. It's something I really want to learn but I can't afford the time to commit to it and that's frustrating. Maybe things will be easier now.

-- Kitsune Games --

It's been a real pleasure working with Eniko and the team at Kitsune Games. I kinda came into things as a contractor looking for side work but with Kitsune Tails ready to ship I would really like to keep making videogames with this team. I feel like our skillsets complement each other well and I think what we've put together is something special. Long-term I'd like to keep building this team. It's been nice working on solo things for so long, but we can do so much more working together.

Sorry to not have a piece of art to share with you today but I hope a look forward is a welcome update for you. This is the last one of these updates I'll be typing up around "gonna release Kitsune Tails", the next one will be firmly "we released Kitsune Tails". There's five days left to go. I've put a lot of work into this project, but I have a lot more I'd like to do, so I hope you'll look forward to seeing it in the months to come. Thanks, as always, for checking in. Until next week: check us out on Steam or Itch!