Merry Christmas! Let's talk about next year.

I'll be re-opening the page on the 1st of January, so be aware of that.

I was thinking earlier this week on how I could make my workload easier in January, because making 3 animations a month is incredibly tiring, and I'm just not securing the funds required to justify making them the way I am (bills are more than $400 a month, believe it or not).
I'm going to try to rectify this is a few ways:

• 1) Stick to my deadlines more. I feel like sticking to my deadlines and making them the absolute end is all in all better and makes people less confused.
• 2) Make the animation the bare-bone functioning interactive, then add the elements when and if get the time.
  To explain this a little better, what I mean by this is just making the animation function at its basic level first, then add the mini-game elements, chat, text, ect ect as I go to avoid putting too much work on in one go. I do it backwards currently because it's the way I always do things. This will also stop me from planning too big and going over my set deadline.
• 3) Future-proof the flash so I can potentially go back and create it in HTML5.
  Of course this is a fairly new thing for me, but I've got to look at my avenues. I want to deliver the best content I can while also allowing it to be played on any platform. To do that I'll need to research JS much more. I know you can do amazing things with HTML5, I've just gotta figure out how.

In addition, I'm going to try out a NEW method of animating and suggestions.

Sure having 3 polls a month is handy and organized, but what if we could do it all in one poll instead?
Fairly simple premise. You suggest the characters, I add in my wild-card(s), you vote on the ones you want to see animated the most. Top 3 winners become the 3 animations for this month.

Okay so hear me out on this.

Why would I choose all three at the beginning of the month when the three poll method I, and everyone else, uses works just fine?
Well the answer is, actually, to help avoid burnout.
One of my biggest problems is that I get incredibly bored working on the same project for 7 days straight and I like to do other things and swap from project to project. This is usually how my other animations - like my Merri birth animation or Tic-Tac-Toe game - gets made; I get bored and switch to another project and then when I'm bored with that one I'm usually in the mood to work on the other project again. This usually also means that the other project ends up being delivered late, too.

This is the reason I chose to do 2 animations at the start of November. It worked really well actually, though one definitely ended up better than the other.
So I'll be taking all the animation ideas at the start of the month and working with them from day 1. This also means that all you need to do is vote on the 1st - 3rd and then visit again on the 9th, 18th, and 27th. You need not do more than that. It keeps things easy to manage and stress-free for the both of us.

Of course this method is going to need some testing to see if it works, but I think it's a good place to start.

If you guys have any questions, or if you want to drop any criticisms on me, now is the time to ask them.

Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays everyone!