Bi-Weekly Report #32

One strong week, one depressive spiral. What will the result be?? No fuckin' clue. Let's find out together.

ANNOUNCEMENTS

The next Backer Drawpile will be on Monday, Julu 7th! It looks like folks want me to aim for doing them a bit earlier in the day, overall. No promises, but I'll try? It'd help if I were conscious and moving before 5 PM anymore.

On which note, I've started looking for a job again. The situation here has proven thoroughly untenable and we're rather desperate. As a sort of Hail Mary, I launched the recent Sketch-A-Thon and backer goal campaign, and put Lonely Hooves' revival up as an option. It's my juiciest carrot, like it or not. So far nobody really wants to nibble on it, though, so barring a huge rebound in the coming days I'm sort of just trying to process and accept my failure here.

It's depressing. It could still turn around, but my confidence is minuscule. Every artist is struggling right now. Hard to justify doodles and throwing money at a wall when you can barely make your bills, and the quietly-dwindling income on here over the last couple years really demonstrates that.

I really did get the chance to follow my dreams at the worst possible time, huh?

I need to move on.

GAMEDEV

No exciting screenshots at the moment, but a bit of crucial work has been done for Slime Forest. I know it seems like all I do with it lately is backend work, but that's sort of where it's at; the core gameplay was finished months ago, and everything else is polish, iteration, and slowly getting all the planned features that aren't glamorous to a working state.

Building off of my recent work getting scoreboards to load properly on the end results screen, I've hopped into SilentWolf's setup steps to get boards going for all the different modes and score types, set up a function on the game's end to generate and pass the appropriate index to the object handling all this junk on the UX side, and... sorta ran out of time there, for now, so I have no idea if it even works yet. Fun! I also isolated all the leaderboard stuff into its own manager and display node that I should be able to reuse and adapt outside of the game over screen, because sometimes you want to see your records without killing yourself first. Wild concept!

I also reacted to current events by making some dumb sprites for a silly Survivors-style game concept where you fight off ICE agents, who I made look like complete and total goons. Look at this loser:

Anyway the concept's extremely gay, because pride month and anger mostly, but it's also deeply unserious. A playground for me personally, I guess, where I can just dick around doing things for funsies without worrying too much about polish or things like "color-ramp-compatible spritework" and "professional artistry."

There's a buzzsaw blade made of the bi flag colors.

WRITING

Thralls' 13th is finally out for all backers! I could make 14 happen pretty quick too, but so far I'm not sure anyone's even found the time to read the one they've just gotten, so some part of me is worried about overloading everyone. This is probably a bit silly, but whatever.

ANIMATION

Mostly just been chipping at Rowlet's Rarity thing at the moment. It's so very close to done... but my brilliant ass has taken to animating several seconds of cum flying all over the place, because I'm nothing if not a crowd-pleaser.

Should be done soon. I've been neglecting the manor again. I guess I just get kind of tired of looking at it sometimes. Same with the Slime Forest situation, I guess? Actively working to solve this obstacle my dumb little brain takes so fondly to.

COMMISSIONS

Completed:

• Surprise Box x 5 + a significant correction (sorry)

• Sketch-A-Thon piece x 1

• William for wife

In Progress:

• Rabbit With A Hammer (overdue)

• Haunted House YCH

• Rarity Paizuri for Rowlet (so close!!)

Upcoming:

• Thing for Aist (overdue)

• Vale Trading Card

• Surprise Box x 4

• Sketch-A-Thon x 1 (gimme more please)

Commission Me Here | Check the Queue

AND THAT ABOUT DOES IT

I've been playing wtih a lot of things. I've started streaming with the mic on more and thrown up a donation incentive where I will read whatever comes in in a silly voice chosen via spinner wheel. At least a couple people seem to enjoy it, so that's something. It's fun for me I don't mind. I got to read "the missle is eepy" while panting and moaning like an edging anime girl.

Watch my streams.

I also found and poked around learning a free Live2D alternative. It's interesting! It gives me ideas! No promises. Not a huge priority, all things considered.

As is, I'm staring down the barrel of rent being due on the 5th and having like... not much?? More than I did, but still over a grand short.

I really don't want to be stuck admitting I'm a grand short on rent a second month in a row to my father. Hopelessness really won for a few days there while I just froze up. I'm trying to move past it and make something happen. It never feels like enough. So stressful.

Uh, right. Games. Soda Dungeon and Pacific Drive, mostly. I don't have much to say about the former and the latter is enjoyable for me in a cathartic "I am looting all the buildings in a Bethesda game" sort of way. Then the explosions happen and your car's back door goes flying off and some fucker starts dragging you through a minefield of supernatural nonsense and you just gotta roll with that. Good practice for rolling with everything else, I guess.

Sorry. I'm sort of a bummer when I'm left with myself atm. Still getting things done, and trying to keep the backers fed with little treats now and then. Did we enjoy the Catra doodle? I need to do more things like that. iunno.

I'm doing what I can. I think everyone is, anymore.

• Sera