TL;DR:
i'm going to switch to a different 3d program. expect free art while i'm working, consider donating to support me.
link for donations can be found below. there's also a poll at the end.

Small list of what this journal contains:

1: recap of the last project
2: consequences for me and the software i'm using
3: what i've done so far and what my plans are
4: i'll provide free art, but can also use your help
5: poll for characters to carry over

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1: So here we are. The latest project, the pirate themed 3-parter, finally done after suffering from
an HDD crash, including a data loss of roughly 2 TB... and 6 months of work down the drain (including
the meat processing facility, the new cooking studio and my hell's kitchen).
As if that wasn't enough, working on part 3 of the pirate set, my 3d program Poser 11 Pro started messing up
a lot of scenes, not saving my files properly, working with low FPS and sometimes just deleting bodyparts
whilst rendering. It was such a mess, that it postponed the release from the first week of October to the
beginning of the third. It resulted in a storywise nice ending, but from a technological standpoint it wasn't as nice.

2: This made me think and consequently, I came to the conclusion that I can't continue like this.
My characters and my backgrounds are getting more and more complex and if poser can't manage my setup, there's
no point in continuing to work with Poser. I also got Poser 12, but this program
is even more buggy and the materials I created in Poser 11 are not compatible with Poser 12.

I was planning to move to a different 3D software for a long time, maybe two years by now. But what held me
back was the fact that my characters wouldn't be easily transferrable and this would mean I'd have to start over
with my characters. And since I was still able to kinda work with Poser and get acceptable results, even if I had
to go through a lot of pain (loading a single character takes about 5 minutes, loading a scene
can take between 7 and 15 minutes. Posing a character takes half an hour to an hour and rendering a single 1400x900
picture can take up to 8 hours. my longest render took 20 hours)
and a lot of waiting for Poser to catch up with whatever I was doing (not counting countless crashes and the bluescreen
that killed my HDD).
But the amount of messups in the last project made me realize I had to switch now.

3: About two weeks ago, I started working on my first character template in Blender 2.9
The mesh is done and I'm currently working on the weight map.
Finishing this Template will probably take the whole month, since I have no prior experience with this form of
character creation. I need to learn how to properly paint the weight map, create dependencies between morphs
(or in blender terms: create drivers for different shape keys) and how to create a proper UV map.
My goal is to create one or two characters with that Template and offer it for free download, so people who are
using Blender can test the character and, if they feel like it, give me some feedback.
The first free character model will be my own interpretation of a 2D sprite from a little game called "Undertale"
which is available on Steam. If you haven't played it, go check it out.

4: This means there will be no more picture sets this year (maybe something in december, but I'm not going to promise
anything) BUT I have something else I can offer.
I have a lot of different, more complex test renders and smaller private projects done. I rendered these
to test environments, lighting and characters and also experiment with ideas and technologies. My intention is
to periodically release these for free, as they're not fully rendered or corrected. These pictures will be released
so you guys see I'm still around and kicking :P

But this also means I won't have any stable income during my move from Poser to Blender, so I humbly ask
for some financial support. If you liked my past work and think I deserve a helping hand, please consider
donating. You can donate either 1€ or as much as you'd like to by changing the purchase amount in the shop's cart.

https://necromuncher.e-junkie.com/p.....r-Necromuncher

I greatly appreciate any help in this regard :)

5: Since I've created so many characters over the time, I'm not sure if it makes much sense to recreate ALL the
characters from my current character pool. This is your opportunity to tell me if there's a particular character
you really liked. If there are even just a few people who'd like to see a specific character to be preserved, there's a
high chance of me redoing this character in Blender.

If you don't remember a particular character, try to describe that character. It will count as a vote and can vote for
as many characters as you like, but only 1 vote per character ;)
I will list the characters below. Characters marked with a * will go through a minor redesign

The characters I'm definitely going to carry over to Blender are:

Beverly, the clouded leopard milf.
Ellenore, the pigtailed feisty kitty (and relatives)
*Malasi, the African huntress.
Lucy and Cora-Sheila, the two New Zealand huntaway girls.
Stephany, the white Bunny.
*Rebecca, the pirate cook with the thick accent.
Heather, the readheaded collie.
Lorraine and Fabien, the poodle milf and her douchebag of a son.
Cindy, the chubby cat waitress.

Suggested characters are:

*Doberman Girl from the octoberfest episode: 3
Orca Girl form the medieval two-parter: 1
Annica, the Wolf girl who lives with the poodles: 1
Gillian, the 70s-style young fox mom: 1
Cassandra, the orange feline demon: 1
*Christine, the Fox-Bunny girl from Episode 14: 2
Robert the fox, Gillian's son: 1
Panda, character creation request: 1
Horse Girl from episode 23: 3
*Sumatra, the cunning cougar: 2
*Shepherd Girl: 3
Esthera, Sumatra's Sunbear Friend: 1
Brenda, the otter girl: 1

thank you for taking the time to read this wall of text