Saturday Update! (Patreon)

Hello friends! It's that time of the week again, and I'm proud to say I think I accomplished a lot!

I also have some more solid plans for the immediate future so I'll get into that too.

But for now, check out my progress on sprites!

This game completion bar is actually pretty indicative of my work progress with the sprites since I've been playing the game and filling in edits, sprites, and image transforms as I play.

Most of my time this week has been spent working on a couple fullbody specialty sprites for Mason [ although I did a couple regular expressions as well ]. Here's some pics!

This one's just a side-sprite but I consider it to be special! I had to ref my own face again and change more than I usually do. For an expression like this, I think a lot of the extra oomph comes from changing the nose.  If you raise the nose a little, flare the nostrils, and scrunch the top skin, you'll get a way better angry face than just changing the mouth and eye areas. I also took care to change the face shading to give the impression of cheeks and skin around the eyes moving.

I also did this specialty fullbody sprite with Mason the lovely small knife named Sandy. This one wasn't really an artistic struggle I just think it looks cool x'D

On Friday, I began work on a much more intensive specialty sprite, which I hope I can finish on Monday [ haha.... I hope... ]

I'm fairly happy with it so far, but we'll see how I can tighten it up next week!

Including the sprite above, I have 3 specialty fullbody sprites left to draw. I'm budgeting 2 days each for them, so in theory I should have time to do them, plus 3 more days this month to do any other easy expression sprites or ending edits.

I'd really like to finish up with sprites by the end of the month- because I've decided that I think I should take some time off again.

---------------

I know I just took a week off a little while ago, but I filled that week with backlogged chores and honestly I've just been struggling recently. I've been healthy enough to work, but I haven't felt Genuinely Healthy since early June. 

I've been dealing with a lot of extra stress [ honestly who hasn't? I feel like we're kinda all on the same page here ] and that stress has been making some of my mental health conditions a lot worse than normal. My ADHD is kinda out of control lately and even my usually mild OCD ticks are starting to get really intense [ I have one where I re-read my own posts more than 5 times and it is sucking up my time and energy so bad ].

So, here's the plan. I'm thinking that it may be time for a month off. A whole month to disconnect from news, ask basically nothing of myself, and hopefully genuinely recover some. 

The timing works with my work progress as well. If I can finish up my sprite work by the end of the month, I could take the long break and then come back fresh to begin the last massive task of attacking the CGs [ which I think will be a year of solid labour \ ~180 images at 2 work days each ].

So, what does that mean for the Patreon?

I'm gonna make super sure that this is what I want to do, and then I'll make a new post about my break to make sure everyone gets the news.

If I go through with it, October won't be a 'Flesh Month' and everyone will be encouraged to drop their pledge [ don't forget! You can drop your pledge entirely any time, or change it to $1 to still be able to see all my posts! ]

I've gotten a couple of comments from you guys saying that you really look forward to my weekly updates, and they help with a sense of normalcy. In light of this, I will still continue to make Saturday updates even if I'm not working during October. I'll just update about my life or tell a story or think of something, so people who still want to stick around for the month will have something.

But like I said, I'm still kinda mulling over it. I'll make a decision soon!

I hope you guys are doing okay. Things are so tough right now and I expect they'll be getting tougher in a bit. Even if you're just hanging in there, I'm proud of you.

Thank you so much for being part of my life. Your guys' support has given me so much opportunity. I'll always be grateful! 

Stay safe out there friends!