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My long term plans for art, writing and other projects
11 months ago
Okay, I don’t have a website or blog to put stuff like this onto so I don’t really know how to write this up without sounding like a lunatic. But I’ve just kinda been reflecting on my current creative projects and how I currently want to proceed. Normally when I post something up about how I’ve got a crapload of stuff to work through, I just lay down a list of all the projects I’m working on and that’s it. So, this time, I’m going to do something different. I’m not just going to lay down what is going on with my writing and art projects, but also detail where they are at and what I’m considering doing going forward with each of these projects.
This is over 2000 words long, so if you don’t want to read the full context and details here, here is a shorter summary detailing the current plans.
SUMMARY
• Artwork is being done one at a time, with a maximum of two art projects active at any one time – not counting short, quick doodles. The current focus is completing companion pieces to Spitfire and Marcus, one of which is nearly complete and at least three more are to follow. After that, at least one non-Arcbot related drawing will come up, plus the next complex Arcbot piece.
• The Nýúlfur Novel will be serialised and later self-published. Chapters are currently being written and edited to become part of a backlog to allow for consistent weekly posts after initial publishing.
• The Ship of Aurora’s first draft is at most 80%, and after the second draft/edits and proof-reading, I hope to traditionally publish.
• Pokémon Mystery Dungeon fan-fics Guardians of Balance and Mercenaries of Dawn will continue under a 2:1 – 3:1 chapter post system, prioritising the former fic unless it’s on break, at which point the focus will be directed towards the latter.
• GT3050 has at least four remaining chapters for the first part that will be completed. The second part will be completed and uploaded all at once over a daily period later.
• Arcbot content will coalesce into the ARCSverse project, including art, stories, and a tabletop wargame. Plans are still currently being laid out.
With that… time for the big post.
CONTEXT
Before I start detailing all that though, I’ll put a bit of context into why I’m writing this now. Earlier this year, I wasn’t in the best of positions. I couldn’t live independently, at least comfortably without needing a huge amount of support. I was also getting increasingly invested in working on my creative work to the point where I could start using it as a means of helping myself get a bit of income and making myself more independent. That would have been in the form of art commissions, publishing stories and even frequenting markets to sell some stuff, and I was beginning to lay out the preparation for this kind of stuff.
That changed three months ago, where a massive opportunity came flying in that allowed me to start working in a field related to my degree and learn more about it. This has put me financially and independently in a much better position, though it’s still early days and my focus has been making sure I can hit the ground running there. This had the side-effect of knocking some of my creative project plans back in doing something more extensive, hence why I haven’t chased up plans for commissions and that.
Furthermore, despite trying to take steps to give myself less work so I can churn out art and writing at a quicker pace – namely by opting for shorter chapter lengths, committing to one or two drawings, or putting some creative projects on hiatus – I’ve ended up falling back into mission creep and ended up back to square one there.
With that in mind, I’ve decided I really need to put my foot down to get some of my creative content done on a more regular basis and lay out more detailed plans for the future of all them, and what I intend to do with them.
Let’s start with artwork, since this is getting originally posted on places like DeviantArt, this makes sense.
ARTWORK
My current art plans include working on a series of follow ups to my Spitfire and Marcus artwork that I did back in October, featuring other Shadow Knight characters (both human and Arcbot) from the ARCSverse. One of these is almost complete, and I’m looking forward to sharing the Hellcat and Valerie art before the end of the year! I’m just debating on adding one final addition to it or not which will add some extra time on before I can finish the project off. After that, I can confirm I’ll follow up with at least three more partner drawings, the first of which will feature Hurricane and his partner Kyle. I can confirm one of the other two to follow will include an Arcbot called Tempest, and the other is something I’m going to decide on in the coming days.
After that, I’m not sure where I’m going next. Folks have been happy to see Arcbot artwork, as well as spaceships like the Space Carrier Audacity and the Darts. My furry art has kinda started falling on the wayside though, and whilst I do like the smaller art pieces like swords, fan art like Pokémon, flags, and more experimental, quick drawings like the Japanese MadWolf, it’s clear that this doesn’t get much attention. The most recent non-Arcbot related stuff doesn’t seem to get a huge amount of interest, so that is kinda influencing my thinking, as I do want to do art not just related to the Arcbots even though I’m thinking about that kind of stuff! I do intend to try and focus on one drawing at a time for the foreseeable future, maybe two plus a quick project at most. I do have a few sketches left over which are unlikely to be finished, but I might put throw them together in a college so they can see the light of day, or just use them as references.
Coupled with my current work and all my other creative projects, I am going to have to hold fire on my plans for commissions for the time being, until things become steadier.
TLDR for here, once the current Arcbot projects are complete, there will be another Arcbot drawing – with an event happening or a more complex background – and something non-Arcbot related, either furry or ship related.
WRITING
As for the writing front, I have exactly five different writing projects ongoing now in varying states. Specifically, there are three fanfics, my Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Guardians of Balance fan-fic as well as it’s prequel Mercenaries of Dawn, and finally, The Grand Tour 3050, which is essentially a Grand Tour/Top Gear – BattleTech crossover and a sequel to Top Gear 3025 – give that one a read!
Alongside those three fan-fics, I have two original fictional projects, namely my long-term novel Nýúlfur – featuring werewolves in a post-apocalyptic setting with heavy themes of racism and significant character development – and the Ship of Aurora – of which the Dart class ships would feature in!
Recently I reached a point where I was starting fresh on entirely new chapters or starting a new round of editing/proofreading, which I will admit left me stumbling around to restart. But it also helped regain some perspective by the simple fact I’m only one person who hasn’t got any creative project to a point where I can live off it, so I need to seriously and definitively mark off the future of these respective stories and determine how they are going to progress in the future. So, to bullet point them off:
• Nýúlfur – I’ve spent a long time on this writing project, and looked at all sorts of different ways to get it published, either without success or deciding not to proceed when I realised the many, many caveats that added on top of those options. Therefore, I’ve decided to release Nýúlfur as a serial, and I’m currently in the process of building up a backlog of chapters to help start publishing the story. There are currently two volumes of chapters for Nýúlfur I have on hand, and once I reached a suitable point, I’ll release the first load of chapters onto websites like Royal Road, with early chapters coming through on the likes of Patreon once I worked those details out, with new updates coming through weekly. Once Volume 1 is fully uploaded, it’ll remain online for some time, before it is taken down and self-published directly to Amazon, save for an additional prologue to help folks learn more about the setting. Volume 2 would continue as normal, and hopefully by the time Volume 1 is self-published, then Volume 3 and maybe even 4 should start making up the backlog. Now? I’m currently writing new chapters whilst simultaneously editing older ones to suit the new format and getting that backlog ready to allow for consistent posts, hopefully I can do edits within a single night, and get the backlog up to a comfortable point to start releasing it.
• The Ship of Aurora on the other hand, I hope to traditionally publish, mainly due to its much smaller size and clear-cut focus. In the first draft alone, I think I might have completed eight out of ten chapters, not counting an extra one that might be required in the future. Hopefully additional drafts and/or edits should be a relatively quick affair. This is standalone, so there shouldn’t be anything immediately following this story up.
• PMD: Guardians of Balance and Mercenaries of Dawn – I never imagined I’d be putting so much time into working on these fan-fics, but despite making the chapters shorter, I’m still not great on the consistency front. Therefore, I am making a clear-cut decision about how to proceed in the future, as despite wanting to initially put MoD on hiatus, I ended up returning to it later. Therefore, I will allow both to continue with specific rules. Guardians of Balance will be more regularly updated, with two to three chapters being released for every Mercenaries of Dawn chapter. If GoB happens to be on break due to an episode being finished, then MoD will take up the slack until GoB restarts or MoD hits a critical stop point. Both will continue to be updated on Spacebattles, Sufficient Velocity, Fanfiction.net, AO3, Bulbagarden and Thousand Road. I might also experiment with building up a backlog, but I’ll discuss that with…
• GT3050 – Okay, despite chapters here being quite short, GT3050 is also weirdly a lot harder to write, as you must try and get into the heads of real people on top of writing it in an unusual method. Part 1 of GT3050 should be concluded within around four, maybe five chapters. Yes, I said Part 1, there is a second part to GT3050 that I do have a solid idea on in terms of plot. But after Part 1 is completed, I’m going to take a different approach. Instead of releasing each of Part 2’s chapter’s ad hoc, I’m going to write all the chapters first to build up a backlog, then release the Chapters daily to complete GT3050. This should conclude the episodes that were started in TG3025 and wrap it all up, especially with the end of the Clarkson/Hammond/May era, allowing me to return my focus to the other stories.
This is all subject to change, especially as things continue to develop. The backlog approach is something I’m looking into trying a lot more, but it will require a slow down as I get some of this stuff done. I want to try and avoid any other big writing projects for now, because again, I’m only one person.
But I do want to reveal one big thing in particular, going back to the Arcbots themselves.
ARCBOTS – THE ARCSVERSE
Long story short, Arcbots has become a much bigger thing that I ever expected since drawing Spitfire for the first time, even more so than the years long Nýúlfur project.
So with that, I’ve made a decision. This is now being encompassed as part of a larger project that I’m calling the ARCSverse. Not only is there the Arcbot artwork I’ve been working on, but I have also been developing an Arcbots roleplaying game in a similar fashion to tabletop wargames. Here, you control one Arcbot that you have a huge degree of customisation and control over and battle other players in short, brutal battles. I’m currently going through some playtesting and revisions on the game itself, and so far, things have been promising. I hope to further refine it over the next few months. Extra play testers will be welcome here! In addition, when it’s done, I don’t just want to sell it like some corporate product like other tabletops, and want to give players more of an ability to direct how the Arcbots game takes shape and develops. I don’t know how I’m going to do that just yet, but it’s something I’m thinking over.
Furthermore, I’m also considering writing a story set within the increasingly expansive world of Arkaris – the setting for Arcbots – with some of the characters you have already seen in the Arcbots art. I already have some solid ideas in place, but I don’t have any current chapters at the ready. There is a lot of stuff I need to work out, but it will likely release as a serial as well unless I genuinely think it can be traditionally published, but that is something I will ultimately decide on in the future. Shorter snippets and stories could also be released as well, and I do have a short story snippet based on one such playtest, so that might come up at some point!
CONCLUSION
So yeah, that is the long version of some of my plans. Again, I’m only one person and I’m not in a position at this very moment to live off this, after all, my current job takes precedence as without it, I’m left in a difficult position, but I hope to be able to share more of this stuff down the line. I’m also going to start doing update posts as new developments come up so I can try and keep people informed, and hopefully reactivate my Twitter (I’m not calling it X) and Bluesky accounts accordingly.
Welp, that’s my big update on plans. If more questions are wanted, feel free to ask me. Now, I’m going to get back to working my evenings away as best I can. Ciao. And have a Great Christmas and New Year!
StolenMadWolf
This is over 2000 words long, so if you don’t want to read the full context and details here, here is a shorter summary detailing the current plans.
SUMMARY
• Artwork is being done one at a time, with a maximum of two art projects active at any one time – not counting short, quick doodles. The current focus is completing companion pieces to Spitfire and Marcus, one of which is nearly complete and at least three more are to follow. After that, at least one non-Arcbot related drawing will come up, plus the next complex Arcbot piece.
• The Nýúlfur Novel will be serialised and later self-published. Chapters are currently being written and edited to become part of a backlog to allow for consistent weekly posts after initial publishing.
• The Ship of Aurora’s first draft is at most 80%, and after the second draft/edits and proof-reading, I hope to traditionally publish.
• Pokémon Mystery Dungeon fan-fics Guardians of Balance and Mercenaries of Dawn will continue under a 2:1 – 3:1 chapter post system, prioritising the former fic unless it’s on break, at which point the focus will be directed towards the latter.
• GT3050 has at least four remaining chapters for the first part that will be completed. The second part will be completed and uploaded all at once over a daily period later.
• Arcbot content will coalesce into the ARCSverse project, including art, stories, and a tabletop wargame. Plans are still currently being laid out.
With that… time for the big post.
CONTEXT
Before I start detailing all that though, I’ll put a bit of context into why I’m writing this now. Earlier this year, I wasn’t in the best of positions. I couldn’t live independently, at least comfortably without needing a huge amount of support. I was also getting increasingly invested in working on my creative work to the point where I could start using it as a means of helping myself get a bit of income and making myself more independent. That would have been in the form of art commissions, publishing stories and even frequenting markets to sell some stuff, and I was beginning to lay out the preparation for this kind of stuff.
That changed three months ago, where a massive opportunity came flying in that allowed me to start working in a field related to my degree and learn more about it. This has put me financially and independently in a much better position, though it’s still early days and my focus has been making sure I can hit the ground running there. This had the side-effect of knocking some of my creative project plans back in doing something more extensive, hence why I haven’t chased up plans for commissions and that.
Furthermore, despite trying to take steps to give myself less work so I can churn out art and writing at a quicker pace – namely by opting for shorter chapter lengths, committing to one or two drawings, or putting some creative projects on hiatus – I’ve ended up falling back into mission creep and ended up back to square one there.
With that in mind, I’ve decided I really need to put my foot down to get some of my creative content done on a more regular basis and lay out more detailed plans for the future of all them, and what I intend to do with them.
Let’s start with artwork, since this is getting originally posted on places like DeviantArt, this makes sense.
ARTWORK
My current art plans include working on a series of follow ups to my Spitfire and Marcus artwork that I did back in October, featuring other Shadow Knight characters (both human and Arcbot) from the ARCSverse. One of these is almost complete, and I’m looking forward to sharing the Hellcat and Valerie art before the end of the year! I’m just debating on adding one final addition to it or not which will add some extra time on before I can finish the project off. After that, I can confirm I’ll follow up with at least three more partner drawings, the first of which will feature Hurricane and his partner Kyle. I can confirm one of the other two to follow will include an Arcbot called Tempest, and the other is something I’m going to decide on in the coming days.
After that, I’m not sure where I’m going next. Folks have been happy to see Arcbot artwork, as well as spaceships like the Space Carrier Audacity and the Darts. My furry art has kinda started falling on the wayside though, and whilst I do like the smaller art pieces like swords, fan art like Pokémon, flags, and more experimental, quick drawings like the Japanese MadWolf, it’s clear that this doesn’t get much attention. The most recent non-Arcbot related stuff doesn’t seem to get a huge amount of interest, so that is kinda influencing my thinking, as I do want to do art not just related to the Arcbots even though I’m thinking about that kind of stuff! I do intend to try and focus on one drawing at a time for the foreseeable future, maybe two plus a quick project at most. I do have a few sketches left over which are unlikely to be finished, but I might put throw them together in a college so they can see the light of day, or just use them as references.
Coupled with my current work and all my other creative projects, I am going to have to hold fire on my plans for commissions for the time being, until things become steadier.
TLDR for here, once the current Arcbot projects are complete, there will be another Arcbot drawing – with an event happening or a more complex background – and something non-Arcbot related, either furry or ship related.
WRITING
As for the writing front, I have exactly five different writing projects ongoing now in varying states. Specifically, there are three fanfics, my Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Guardians of Balance fan-fic as well as it’s prequel Mercenaries of Dawn, and finally, The Grand Tour 3050, which is essentially a Grand Tour/Top Gear – BattleTech crossover and a sequel to Top Gear 3025 – give that one a read!
Alongside those three fan-fics, I have two original fictional projects, namely my long-term novel Nýúlfur – featuring werewolves in a post-apocalyptic setting with heavy themes of racism and significant character development – and the Ship of Aurora – of which the Dart class ships would feature in!
Recently I reached a point where I was starting fresh on entirely new chapters or starting a new round of editing/proofreading, which I will admit left me stumbling around to restart. But it also helped regain some perspective by the simple fact I’m only one person who hasn’t got any creative project to a point where I can live off it, so I need to seriously and definitively mark off the future of these respective stories and determine how they are going to progress in the future. So, to bullet point them off:
• Nýúlfur – I’ve spent a long time on this writing project, and looked at all sorts of different ways to get it published, either without success or deciding not to proceed when I realised the many, many caveats that added on top of those options. Therefore, I’ve decided to release Nýúlfur as a serial, and I’m currently in the process of building up a backlog of chapters to help start publishing the story. There are currently two volumes of chapters for Nýúlfur I have on hand, and once I reached a suitable point, I’ll release the first load of chapters onto websites like Royal Road, with early chapters coming through on the likes of Patreon once I worked those details out, with new updates coming through weekly. Once Volume 1 is fully uploaded, it’ll remain online for some time, before it is taken down and self-published directly to Amazon, save for an additional prologue to help folks learn more about the setting. Volume 2 would continue as normal, and hopefully by the time Volume 1 is self-published, then Volume 3 and maybe even 4 should start making up the backlog. Now? I’m currently writing new chapters whilst simultaneously editing older ones to suit the new format and getting that backlog ready to allow for consistent posts, hopefully I can do edits within a single night, and get the backlog up to a comfortable point to start releasing it.
• The Ship of Aurora on the other hand, I hope to traditionally publish, mainly due to its much smaller size and clear-cut focus. In the first draft alone, I think I might have completed eight out of ten chapters, not counting an extra one that might be required in the future. Hopefully additional drafts and/or edits should be a relatively quick affair. This is standalone, so there shouldn’t be anything immediately following this story up.
• PMD: Guardians of Balance and Mercenaries of Dawn – I never imagined I’d be putting so much time into working on these fan-fics, but despite making the chapters shorter, I’m still not great on the consistency front. Therefore, I am making a clear-cut decision about how to proceed in the future, as despite wanting to initially put MoD on hiatus, I ended up returning to it later. Therefore, I will allow both to continue with specific rules. Guardians of Balance will be more regularly updated, with two to three chapters being released for every Mercenaries of Dawn chapter. If GoB happens to be on break due to an episode being finished, then MoD will take up the slack until GoB restarts or MoD hits a critical stop point. Both will continue to be updated on Spacebattles, Sufficient Velocity, Fanfiction.net, AO3, Bulbagarden and Thousand Road. I might also experiment with building up a backlog, but I’ll discuss that with…
• GT3050 – Okay, despite chapters here being quite short, GT3050 is also weirdly a lot harder to write, as you must try and get into the heads of real people on top of writing it in an unusual method. Part 1 of GT3050 should be concluded within around four, maybe five chapters. Yes, I said Part 1, there is a second part to GT3050 that I do have a solid idea on in terms of plot. But after Part 1 is completed, I’m going to take a different approach. Instead of releasing each of Part 2’s chapter’s ad hoc, I’m going to write all the chapters first to build up a backlog, then release the Chapters daily to complete GT3050. This should conclude the episodes that were started in TG3025 and wrap it all up, especially with the end of the Clarkson/Hammond/May era, allowing me to return my focus to the other stories.
This is all subject to change, especially as things continue to develop. The backlog approach is something I’m looking into trying a lot more, but it will require a slow down as I get some of this stuff done. I want to try and avoid any other big writing projects for now, because again, I’m only one person.
But I do want to reveal one big thing in particular, going back to the Arcbots themselves.
ARCBOTS – THE ARCSVERSE
Long story short, Arcbots has become a much bigger thing that I ever expected since drawing Spitfire for the first time, even more so than the years long Nýúlfur project.
So with that, I’ve made a decision. This is now being encompassed as part of a larger project that I’m calling the ARCSverse. Not only is there the Arcbot artwork I’ve been working on, but I have also been developing an Arcbots roleplaying game in a similar fashion to tabletop wargames. Here, you control one Arcbot that you have a huge degree of customisation and control over and battle other players in short, brutal battles. I’m currently going through some playtesting and revisions on the game itself, and so far, things have been promising. I hope to further refine it over the next few months. Extra play testers will be welcome here! In addition, when it’s done, I don’t just want to sell it like some corporate product like other tabletops, and want to give players more of an ability to direct how the Arcbots game takes shape and develops. I don’t know how I’m going to do that just yet, but it’s something I’m thinking over.
Furthermore, I’m also considering writing a story set within the increasingly expansive world of Arkaris – the setting for Arcbots – with some of the characters you have already seen in the Arcbots art. I already have some solid ideas in place, but I don’t have any current chapters at the ready. There is a lot of stuff I need to work out, but it will likely release as a serial as well unless I genuinely think it can be traditionally published, but that is something I will ultimately decide on in the future. Shorter snippets and stories could also be released as well, and I do have a short story snippet based on one such playtest, so that might come up at some point!
CONCLUSION
So yeah, that is the long version of some of my plans. Again, I’m only one person and I’m not in a position at this very moment to live off this, after all, my current job takes precedence as without it, I’m left in a difficult position, but I hope to be able to share more of this stuff down the line. I’m also going to start doing update posts as new developments come up so I can try and keep people informed, and hopefully reactivate my Twitter (I’m not calling it X) and Bluesky accounts accordingly.
Welp, that’s my big update on plans. If more questions are wanted, feel free to ask me. Now, I’m going to get back to working my evenings away as best I can. Ciao. And have a Great Christmas and New Year!
StolenMadWolf
