February 2022

Status Report

Hello. Here's a bit of a report on my current status. It's looking like February isn't going to be much different than January regarding content. I'm very sorry. There is a good reason behind the lack of content these past 2 months, and I'm going to talk about it in a moment. But first I'd like to confirm that I'm still not going to charge you for this month and the next one as a result. Things are different for anyone who subscribes for the first time during January or February though (automatic first time charge), and if that's your case, I will provide a refund for the month you were unjustly charged for (January or February) if that's not done already. With once again, my sincere apologies for it. Now,

Why no content in the past two months ?
AKA wtf have you been doing, Renzuki Harai ?

This is going to be a bit of a read, so strap yourself in. I think you might enjoy this if you're interested in the behind the scenes of my work.

In January, while I was working on the next batch of content (mostly requests from Gold Shots and Small Shots), I ended up looking at my previous works. I don't often do it, but with a new year beginning, I felt it was probably a good time to take a step back and look at what I've accomplished so far, and see if there's anything I could improve. And there was. Lots of it. Although I believe my previous works were decent, I couldn't help but see a lot that I could improve/fix. So I started to look into that, and it proved to be much more time consuming that I anticipated. You have to understand, I create most of the assets I use in my work. I'd say about 90%, usually. There are other artists out there who rely solely on assets made by other people (and there's nothing wrong with that), but I'm not one of them. I think it helps make my work more unique, and I have to admit, I'm also a bit of a control freak, so I enjoy knowing the ins and outs of the assets I work with, so I can make better use of them.

This is part of what's causing the slow down in content output currently. I'm at a place where I have to update a lot of my assets (things like the character models, etc), but I also find myself having to outright create new assets so I can meet the demands in some of my upcoming works, which includes both personal pieces and commissions.  For instance, someone asked for extra jiggling in their Small Shot piece (you know who you are! lol).
So I had to review my current jiggling engine, and upgrade it to "Xtra Jiggle ++"

Another example is one of the environments for one of my upcoming pieces didn't exist online, so I had to do the extracting and editing into usable myself, as these things don't usually come out ready to use (or else you'd see more people do it).

(That's the LOA HQ in NG3)

It's interesting to think that some people out there have their whole shtick being asset ripping, and that's all they do (which is very cool), but in my case, it's just a small part of a larger process that all comes back to my endgame, which is creating animated content.
I'm doing everything by myself : Asset ripping, asset creating, editing, texturing, rigging, writing, directing, animating ... that's a lot for a single person, but I'm not complaining. I live for this stuff. But it does come at the price of having to slow down content creation to allocate time for this kind of 'background' work. It might not be apparent at first glance, so that's why I wanted to talk about it.  

Another upcoming piece is taking place on the beach. Which is going to be a nice change from that damn pool I suppose, but it also comes with a bunch of new technical requirements.
Here's a nice beach piece from a fellow artist.
Gorgeous work, but I believe the fact the background is static is a bit jarring (to me at least), so when the time comes for me to do a beach piece, I would like it to look as good as possible, which is why ontop of everything I was already working on, I now also have to figure out a way to create and animate a shoreline, and make it look as close as possible to how it looks like in the DOA games, since my fanboy autism won't allow me to have it any different.

"♪ Fithos ... Lusec .... ♪"

Still a bit rough, but I'm getting there. In fact I was still working on it today, as I'm writing this.
Another technical issue I have to 'cure'. ... I often joke about this in my head, about how I'm the one to 'cure' everything that gets thrown my way in the process of creating this content.

I also call it 'The Solutionner'. Gotta find a solution, no matter what. That's basically my daily routine eversince I started doing this.

It gets a bit complicated when I have to do all of this while still running this Patreon. Ideally, of course I want it to be a close as a live service as possible, providing finished content on a monthly basis, but if I don't take one or two months off like right now, I'm never going to be able to improve my content, and it will be stuck in the same place forever. That's just a required part of the process, and I know it sucks to hear, because that means you might feel you aren't getting the content you are due. It sucks for me as well, as I'm constantly being reminded I'm losing patrons fast during slow time, while still trying to focus on solving the technicalities I mentioned above.

The stress levels are super high, because I need the support from this page to be able to continue, but to continue, I also need to be able to have a month or two off sometimes, so I can work on the requirements for the content down the line.
I actually get literal headaches just thinking about and dealing with the whole thing. Like, physically hurting in my head.

I'd like to reiterate that I want to do this for a long, long time. I'm looking at the big picture here, which is why I believe one month or two without content isn't that big of a loss compared to the whole of my work on the long run. Sure, it does hurt on the moment (both you and me), but since I'm also not charging my supporters during that time, I'm hoping it's still acceptable enough. Your support is precious to me, so please, do not give up on me just yet. I'm working wholeheartedly on this, it's always been the case since I started.
But part of the creative process sometimes involves things that might make it look like I'm not doing anything, because some of the work done in the background just isn't visible.

So there, you have it. I could go on longer, but I think that paints a good enough picture of my current status, and should provide a good answer to the question posed above.
Now, I'm going to try and get back to content creation this month (March), eventhough I still have tons of background work on the table. That's the plan anyway, but in the event I can't make it happen, I'm asking for your patience.
Please have a look at my past work. Eventhough there's lots to improve, I believe you can probably see the potential in there. I know I do, in fact I'm convinced my work is still in its infancy, and that the best is yet to come.

So, I'm going to get back to it, and I promise you'll be hearing from me, soon. Until then, I'm thankful for your support, whether it's past, ongoing or upcoming.

Thank you so much / vielen Dank / Merci beaucoup / Muchas gracias / Grazie mille / どうもありがとう /  대단히 감사합니다 / 谢谢 for your support.