Progress Report, 23/08 - 24

Hello everyone and welcome to another brief progress report!

More model work done this week, including some refurbishing of some older models that the newest Blender update broke, though it's good to see that the vast majority of the gallery remains intact. A few more models have thus been committed to the gallery:

Matsumoto Rangiku (Bleach)
Juno (Overwatch)

Rangiku is a refurbished version of the R2 Studio model, which is where the previous model I utilized was actually taken from. In that sense I'm now, in a grand redemption arc, using the original model for her, and had to apply my own custom sculpt to it as the body base does not seem to retain any old DAZ keys. It was a laborious process where I also made sure to fit a few of the outifts to her while I was at it, and she seems to perform very nicely under various lighting conditions. For those curious how the gallery looks like right now, I can vouch that at least most of them works, so here's a link:
LINK

My cold has also subsided, leaving a small, annoying cough that seems less than keen to go away, but I'm no longer feeling under the ice so to speak, so production is in full swing. I've come to realize that I actually need to schedule myself one day off per week, so as to have a day where I can actually recharge my batteries, and will be putting this in effect immediately so as to put it to the test. This won't impact the schedule in any form, but will hopefully allow me to stem off both illness and burnout, as I've felt a bit of both biting at my heels lately. I'll be reserving these resting days for Fridays, meaning I'll have a shot at recovering from the week's work before the weekend work begins, which I hope will make the matter more sustainable in the long run - consequently, this here is a scheduled post, written Thursday evening after I was done with model work. I've come to realize that every time I get sick and allow myself some time away from working on animations etc I get surprised at how motivated I become to get back to it as soon as I start feeling better, so here's hoping that this is a learning opportunity that is being put into practice. Again, this will not affect my content otherwise, but will simply formally codify the point where I rest instead of me catching it wherever I think it is possible, eliminating some stressors of the creative process.

Upcoming dates of interest are:
August 22: Yesterday, the Alley Crew ($10 tier) poll just landed. Make sure to get your vote in!
August 24: LPL nominations period opening over on the Discord for those tiers.
August 26-29: Lulu Scenario release. I'm giving this some release leeway given how I lost some of last weekend to my cold, so I might have to work a bit beyond this coming weekend.

And that, I believe, is that for this week. Thank you, as always, for your continued support, for your well-wishes, and for all of your kind words. It's been a bit trying lately, but things are looking good on the horizon, particularly with the Lulu Scenario is shaping up pretty nicely, if I may say so myself. Hopefully you're doing well out there - while the weather might be cool, you'd be surprised at how much water you need on a daily basis.

Take care of yourselves, as well as each other!
/DH