24/12/2022 Patreon devlog (Patreon)

Hi everyone! Time for the penultimate update for this year!

This Week's Summary:

• Finished revising Ch 13 and 14
• Started second revision (up to Ch 3)
• Reorganised my stock library...IN PREPARATION
• Sprite sketch

The Ramble:

So I finished the first revision of Reuben's route including re-writing chapter 13.

Even though I had to re-do Ch 13 due to having removed and earlier plot element without realising the later implication of doing so...

I do think the current version is much funnier. It's kind of an anti-story climax where, instead of a drawn out conflict, Morgan just hilariously beats people up and ends it in 30 seconds and everyone around her is sort of:    (⊙x⊙;)

It's always fun to show what she is capable of when she's not over-thinking things.

I went through Ch 14 pretty quickly which is unsurprising as it is a short chapter.

I took a breath...

And started my second revision. I think I mentioned last time (maybe) that one of my goals is to trim down the main story while not touching (or even fleshing out) the branching through some chapters to increase the branching percentage as it's a bit low.

But when I get to the second half of the route, it will probably become much more focused on cleaning up again since that's where I did so much re-writing.

The other major thing I did - which is partially in preparation for working on CGs and new sprites - was clean up my photo reference "library".

I source references from a lot of different places. Sometimes free sources (like Deviant Art stock galleries that allow for commercial use), sometimes single-purchase stock photo sites where you can buy things as-needed rather than get a subscription.

And sometimes I get very large photo packs from independent photographers on places like gumroad.

Anything that isn't single-use gets dumped into a folder with thousands of other images. And basically I've had these images sitting around unorganised for a while. Recently I grabbed a few packs from a group I've been following for a while and I just really needed to go through and clean them up.

If you have a photo pack of 1000 images, a lot of those will be very similar because the photographer is just rapidly snapping shots as the model (or models) move around. There may only be 300 images I like the poses of or think are actually usable as references for me.

So when I say 'clean up' I mean that I went through all the images to get out very similar poses or awkward ones where someone's hand is in front of their face. And then I moved them all to the google drive reference folder I have.

I was, of course, making note of any I might find useful for scenes in Reubens' route where I don't already have a clear mental image. So...

Yeah! Did that too. Not exciting, really but organising assets and references is also part of the process!

I also sketched out one of the side characters in Reuben's route (a young girl named Riley who appears a few times)

Sneak Peeks:

😩😩 Not yet!

Upcoming Week:

I don't know what the next week will look like as it's holidays up until the end of the year. I don't know how much work I'll really get done.

I will be continuing the second revision and maybe doing a few more sprite sketches!

My next update will probably be a wrap-up post to pause and look back over everything we accomplished this year! OwO That should be fun.

In the mean time, I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas or Hanukkah. Or that you had a lovely Solstice. Or whatever holidays you celebrate this time of year and if you really don't...then I hope you still have a great time for the next week or so. <3 And hopefully you get at least one 3-day weekend in there somewhere!

☆*: .｡. o(≧▽≦)o .｡.:*☆