Only to discover that she has found my patreon page.

FFFFFFF-

Luckily she's pretty cool about it, but do you know how awkward it is having my mother ask me about MaxCooldown's excessively oversized breastplate?

"Those are huge tits right?"
"Uh.. ah.. no.. uh.. HEY so you wanted us to do painful manual labor while we were here yeah? What happened to that?"

Supposedly my grandmother has seen it as well, but she's about as computer literate as a doormouse, so I'm not too concerned there.

BECAUSE I'M A DUMMY AND DELETED THE LAST JOURNAL INSTEAD OF EDITING IT, Just a reminder that it's the 15'th! So those patrons who are eligible throw requests at me for this month and I'll get to 'em :o

Ok so let's start with the life stuff. I'm at moms until the 15'th, which is kind of a bummer - since i'm litterally two patreon stills from being done - but that's fine. That DOES mean I can get started on next month's stuff when I get home, so no biggie.

I still have no idea if I want to submit them as individual images or one lump-sum image again. Probably just do the latter when I have it all situated, unless I'm told ya'll would prefer it otherwise.

There was a period of time where I basically had no idea what my mom was doing or had planned, and the past few days have been 'I MUST BE READY AT THE DROP OF A HAT TO GO', but we never left? It's weird. I spent that time dicking around in flash, and I think I've come up with a neat way to do things. I just need to remind myself it's there.

I'm going to hold off on changing my patreon rewards for a month or two because I need to make a purchase in the near future, and I could use the extra support. BUT, I will still entail how things will change, so everyone has a heads up and can throw any issues they may have at me.

A: I wont be discontinuing all the stills, there's a few recent backers that I don't want to leave out of the loop -- because I think it'd be unfair, since they just recently started supporting me and changing things on them seems r00d

B: In lieu of stills, animations! I'll select one patron a month and work with them to get an animation out of the way. There will be some caveats and restrictions on these, unfortunately, and I'll come up with a full list of them when I actually do change things around. The main thing is to try and keep from spending more than half a month on one animation, and keep it something that I'll actually be up for working on.

C: Whenever I stream, I'm going to try and make it a point to do two -- or at least, one -- requested still. I was hoping to have dedicated request streams, but I'm not streaming often enough to do that, sadly. So trying to squeeze in a request here or there to keep cranking out stills seems like a better option. I'll probably end up making a new streaming overlay with a display for weather or not the requests have been handled yet or not.

Naturally patron's come first when it comes to requests, but if none in the stream are up for doing something with that, I might grab a few casual non-patron viewers and screech at them.

D: I need to be better about announcing when I stream. Throwing an announcement on Patreon, ontop of maybe making an advance journal or something seems to be how I should do things. Or maybe make a schedule and try to stick with it? More just a personal note for myself there.

THIS MIGHT ALL CHANGE LATER, BUT THIS IS BASICALLY A PLAN. Oh god I have a plan. The horror.

If you're wondering, the purchase in question is a computer upgrade. My roomate's laptop is kind of kaputz, so he wants us to pool some funds together -- some stuff from him donating plasma, and some excess funds I have thanks to the power company being pretty cool and giving me another month of leniency -- to nab an upgrade to my current laptop, so I can be better equipped to -DO THINGS-, and in turn, give him this older laptop to work with so he has something to communicate and do stuff online with.

I hope everyone has a great weekend! I should be back on monday to try streaming again, knock out those last two patreon requests, and start on the ones for this month.

Going to moms for a couple of days, which is kind of a bummer! Means more delays, which sucks. But that's not what this journal is really about, so we'll put it aside for now.

I've talked about this in stream, but I wanted to make a journal basically asking ya'll your thoughts on the matter! That matter being, that I am thinking about discontinuing patreon stills.

Keyword here is thinking, I don't like committing to an idea until I know it's not going to upset anyone. And if it does, than I'll try and hold off on it.

Reasons for this train of thought consist of two primary things: I feel like I'm putting a bit too much time into Stills, and it feels like people would rather Get/See more animations. The idea is that, I'd stop doing stills, so that I can try and do one animated -thing- for a single patron at a time, per month. There would probably be some caveats and restrictions on it, but yeah.

Bear in mind this is just an idea, I wanted to see if anyone had any major issues with the idea before I committed to doing it. Even if I did, I'd still probably do a couple of stills for the more recent backers, to try and keep things relatively fair. But yeah, what's your thoughts on the matter?

WHILE WE'RE ON THE SUBJECT OF OPINIONS, when I submit the Stills the month I'm working on, and this month, would you all prefer they be done as one big grouped up file like I've been doing? Or separated into individual submissions?

I'm hoping to try and stream tomorrow if I'm up for it! We donated plasma today, and apparently ONLY MY DRAWING ARM HAS VEINS. Like I wanted to do my left arm because it is useless and doesn't pay it's rent or anything, but no they cant find a proper vein in it so WHOOPTH

but 50$ a head for spending six hours in the clinic was nice. Even if it was a bit of an awkward back and forth.

LET'S MOVE ONTO SOME LIGHTER, COOLER SUBJECTS. Still going to be behind on patreon things, but I'm actually feeling loads better, thanks in part to the guff below.

To help feel better I've been doing something I promised myself I'd never do and forced myself to enjoy things. LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT THEM.

FILMS AND TELEVISION SHITS
Ok so I did not know Kung Fury was a thing until recently, but oh my yes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72RqpItxd8M
Apparently it's the most over the top love letter to 80's action flicks in history and it is amazing. The movie's free on youtube and steam as far as I know? but after viewing it myself, I highly suggest watching it. 30 minutes of... The best thing ever. Basically.

I've also been watching the old Redwall TV series. It's probably my favorite line of books ever, and was/is a huge inspiration. Sadly Brian Jacques passed away, BUT IT'S STILL A COOL SERIES.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?li.....26FCA2D69EC726
^ no idea if that link will work, but it's basically the show on youtub.
I personally only own two of the Novels, but I've read most, if not all of them -- memory's not as good as I was hoping it would be. STILL, I'm exceedingly surprised at how close the animated show is to the books. And exceedingly surprised I did not realize how dark this shit was when I was a kid. LIKE NOW THAT I'M AN ADULT, I'M NOTICING THINGS AND BEING LIKE "...WHOA WAIT THAT'S ACTUALLY REALLY DARK", BUT BACK THEN I DIDN'T GIVE A SHIT.

Childhoods are weird.

GAMESHITS
OK SO I normally don't ever get to play games. The computer can't run anything modern or interesting, or so I thought. My roomate shared his steam library with me, so I got to enjoy a buncha stuff he got off of some Humble Bundles.

MOST NOTABLY is Dust, an Elysian Tail. When I first heard about this I was kind of hype, but the drama of realizing I'd never get to play anything ever kind of set in and I resolved that I'd never play it. Realized my Roomate had it and said 'FUCK IT, I'LL INSTALL IT AND SEE IF IT RUNS' -- since Skullgirls performs smooth as butter on my old toaster, I figured why not. SURPRISE, IT WORKS PRETTY WELL. And it's everything I hoped it'd be.

I'm a huge fan of Odin Sphere, and kind of wish I could play Vanilla ware's other games, buuut I cant. Dust kind of reminds me of that, though, with it's controls, food n'stuff. AND, weirdly enough, of Kingdom Hearts? if that makes sense? The Parrying mechanic, RPG elements, and wooshy aerial combat reminded me of it. BUT I'M WEIRD. Kind of a short game, but I enjoyed the story way more than I thought I would, and I'm actually contemplating replaying the game for shits and giggles and trying to 100% it. Which I never do. Like ever.

MY ROOMATE ALSO HAD Shovel Knight! SO I PLAYED THAT, with him watching me and mocking my failures. I'm kind of sad I didn't think to stream it or anything, but I don't think it'd have ran anywhere near as well if I did. Cleared it in one go, some hiccups in the Tower of Fate stages aside (seriously ONE SINGLE, SPECIFIC ENEMY IN ONE, SPECIFIC SPOT, can eat copious amounts of dick.) Otherwise everything went better than expected. I might play it again, but only for Butt mode.
Butt Butt and Shield Butt.


THOSE ARE ALL THE THINGS I ENJOYED. which, are like.. the first things I've thought of doing that wasn't sprites or physical labor in.. three months? maybe? EITHER WAY, Once I get back home on the 1'st I'm hoping to finish the patreon things I owe and get to work on my own stuff in what brief time I have allotted before the 15'th rolls around again.

I wanna thank everyone for supporting me through my dumb depression, and I'm hoping I'll actually get something done sooner, rather than later.

Always hate making journals like this. It just feels like i'm throwing excuses into the wind.

I'm just dealing with a lot of personal guff right now, and find it more and more difficult to bring myself to wake up in the morning, let alone do pixels. I've spoken with my family, friends, and doctor about it, and I'm hoping some steps I'm taking will help. But I can't promise there wont be a delay.

Some good news at least, the family side of things are looking better. Mom's medical issues are slowly getting sorted, her husband Dave lost his job -- but he'd been meaning to quit anyway, and was hired for another position elsewhere as soon as that happened, so it's no big deal.

Mom's getting her short term disability too, so things are looking up. Just have to sort out some of my own issues.

OK SO, Apologies for the inactivity. I AM DOING THINGS, I'm just.. dealing with a bit of dumb emotional guff lately. Which is bad. SO LET'S TALK ABOUT THE GOOD STUFF.

Mom's getting more or less situated. She had the first of two pain-shots for her spine related issues that should hopefully have her up and about until the Surgery, and we should be going home in a few days, give or take! So things are looking up.

The COOL thing, which I'm.. making this journal for, is that the Power Company is actually giving me a break this month. Supposedly they're using the Interest from our Deposit to pay for our bill in it's entirety, which I did not realize was a thing that happened.

While I would love to say I could use the patreon funds from this month on cool stuff, like a tablet that ACTUALLY RIGHT CLICKS WHEN I BLOODY WELL WANT IT TOO -- what will probably happen is it'll end up going towards the House Rent, which my parents are a little behind on due to their own financial issues. (even if my Aunt doubles as the landlord and, probably understands given the situation and family ties and all that.)

SPEAKING OF PATREON, IT'S THE 15'TH!, so throw your requests at me, 20$ d00ds and d00dettes. I'll admit I'm a smidge behind -- there's still a few I want to do from last month ARGH, but I should be able to get to them all now that I'm not mopey. Preferably as a note here, or on Patreon, but skype works too. Just remind me to put it on Trello or I might evaporate from space and time.

Brought my whole setup this time, so I'm hoping to DO STUFF while I'm here. We should be here until Saturday'ish, so there's that. I still have twooooooo patreon things to knock out for last month, if I'm not insane, and then on the 15'th I'll start on the patreon things for this month.

...or is it, the month before last, and then last month? I never know how this works, but either way!

I wanted to work on some puff-related animation stuff, but family obligations kept me preoccupied elsewhere. So I'll try and crank out a few stills before the 15'th rolls along and see what happens. Also trying to work more with backgrounds, so an opportunity to poke that, maybe.

Apologies for the delay! Hopefully I'll get something done.

Hope everyones having a good day n'doing stuff with the folks.

still exists though!

So moms legs are feeling numb, and since she's going BACK down by my place tomorrow to sell the puppies -- we just gave them their vaccinations n'stuff -- opted out of having her drive us home. I don't like the idea of her driving back to her house with her legs being numb.

Also had a talk with her about the whole going-home thing. At this rate, I would only be home for two days -- and when I come back on the 13'th, she'll want me to stay for at least a week, since her husband will be out of town. So we decided it'd just be.. kind of a waste.

What the new plan is, is that tomorrow when we go to sell the pups, I'll grab all my shit and just come set up here. Dave will be out of the house, so I'll remodel the 'man cave' room into something I can use. Might have to stack parts of the sofa in there ontop of oneanother for a bit to make it work though.

I'm sure it'll be fine. He's got like four sofa's. WHO EVEN USES THESE!?

So it's #confirmed that I'll be going home late'ish tomorrow. Up until the 12'th. Which only gives me the 9'th, 10'th, and 11'th, to try and work on stuff.

no offense to my gram, but I'ma try and be selfish and devote as much of that time as I can, to doing pixels. Keyword here is try, one's muse can be a fickle beast, and I'm still a bit sore from working here -- but seeing as anything beyond that is up in the air, I would like to get as much done as I can.

Have a few patreon things I missed from last month I gotta chip away at, ontop of some other stuff.

Wanted to just kind of give a huge thankyou to everyone following me on Patreon. If I were in the situation I'm in currently - with my mom and all - and still living off of commissions alone, that would not go anywhere near as well as it has so far -- with your support!

I need to make a greater effort to do cool things for you guys/gals. I'll try and use this as a personal note-to-self to make more of an effort, once this family drama dies down.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59U2BLpanrc

(I know there's an 'i can breathe!' bit too, but I haven't been able to find it.)

OK SO full story. WE FINALLY KNOW WHAT'S WRONG WITH MOM, so that's always a plus! There's a disc in her neck that's pressing into the nerves in her spine and causing her all these problems. Including double-vision, as of late. On top of that her Scoliosis has her neck curving at a weird angle, putting too much pressure on the Disc and making things worse. Her Neurologist wants her to visit a Neurosurgeon and see about getting things fixed that way -- putting in an emergency request for it, so hopefully they'll get handled sooner rather than later.

My roomate is here with me too, and we're supposed to help do some work around the house in the meanwhile, since they're still trying to get it fixed up proper to move.

I like how AS SOON AS I START UPLOADING THINGS SAYING TO MYSELF "I'MA DO STUFF NOW!", I get to spend another week cramped up in mom's house taking care of her, and being totally unable to do anything.

Ffffnngh. Oh well.

OK SO IF YOU'RE FAMILAR WITH SOME KINDA OLD ANIMATED FLICKS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Cw7aAFS5oc
THIS WAS A THING

WHICH I LOVE TO DEATH

AND I FOUND OUT THEY DID ANOTHER ONE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUlg8Y_mLfA

ONTOP OF THAT THOUGH THEY'RE DOING A KICKSTARTER TO MAKE IT A SERIES AND I'M LIKE YEEE

ok that's out of my system, on a site note I'M HOME. FINALLY. Still dealing with grandparent stuff, but once that's settled I'll hopefully be streaming and getting shit done.

I HAVE A -DESK-

HOLY CRAP THIS IS SO MUCH BETTER. even if I'm sitting on a couch.

I'll still have to be careful about doing risque material. IT'S REALLY AWKWARD HAVING THEM WALK IN WITH MY COMPUTER FACING THE DOOR AND I'M DOING DUMB CHARACTER SHIT, LET ALONE IF TITS ARE INVOLVED, but I digress.

WE'RE GETTING THE MRI TOMORROW, which will be great. She had a talk with her Neurologist, but he just thinks it's a muscle that's acting up, and wants her to look into going to physical therapy. He still wants her to get the MRI just in case she's mistaken, but yeah, good news is better than no news.

Still no ETA on how long I'll be here, but now that I have a -DESK-, i can try and get some pixels done.

AND THAT'S ALL WE'LL SAY ABOUT THAT.

OK so I did intend to stream again, but some stuff came up.

My mother has a small history with Seizures, mainly when I was very young. She hasn't had any in quite some time. WELL long story short, she's having issues with her shoulders and arms, that's very similar to the issues she was having during her seizure suffering. She hasn't been diagnosed with anything yet -- they're checking that on Monday -- But I'ma be chilling at her house for a bit to drive her around to some doctors appointments and see what I can do to help.

Supposedly it's not going to be for that long, but I did say they could keep me as long as they need me. Here's hoping it's not the seizures spiking up again, and is just a ruptured spinal disc or something else they've theorized.

EDIT:

Ok so uh, HAVEN'T BEEN ABLE TO GET THE M.R.I. DONE YET. lD XD But mom seems to be doing a lot better. She's so much better than the day we picked her up, she's actually up and moving and everything.

Still over here though. She wont be able to get the M.R.I. until wednesday, so we'll see what happens there.

STREM IS OVER! Went really well. 5 hours to do one pic, but I had fun, so. <3 yaaaay

SO TOMORROW I MIGHT TRY STREAMING

I hate to say it, but I'd really like to stream without Max.

...Not Maxcooldown, the Max I know. Well, technically I know - YOU KNOW WHO I MEAN. I love the guy but skype calls have been giving me a massive headache lately. Especially with that kind of whitenoise. So I'ma try that.

Kind of feel like I wasted all the time I had for this month.

Patreon's been going excessively well. So well in fact that I started toying around with the idea of actually doing an animated thing, even entertaining flights of fancy for doing a series, so I spent all of my free time this month BASICALLY spriting characters and stuff for it.

And it was a huge colossal waste of time, because everything looks like ass and I want to redo it all. Maybe I need to try storyboarding instead of doing a full sheet for a character, i don't know.

Maybe I'm just a depressed wreck and looking at this the wrong way, but blurf. Fuck it. I'll upload what I have here and just try to not touch any of it until I have my patreon stuff sorted.

SO NO ONE REALLY KNOWS THIS, But I've been trying to set aside the first half of the month to work on personal junk, and the latter half to work on patreon/commission stuff.

WHICH THE 15'TH IS TOMORROW SO TO MY PATRONS, SEND ME THINGS IF YOU WANT ME TO DO THEM.

That being said, I feel I should apologize for the lack of Streaming on my end. Truth be told I've actually been wanting to stream again, if only to work on commission things and say hello to everyone. SADLY My internet has been in a shoddy state for the past few days, and the family had my attention until that point. Currently we're experiencing some stormy weather, so I doubt it'll be fixed proper until that settles.

CHARACTER POLL STUFF

So I did a poll to see which characters people would wanna see me do animations of, since Patreon has given me enough free time to entertain the idea of doing flash stuff again, and the results were Anf, Modit, and Virva.

Unfortunately I decided to be a dumbass, so Modit takes priority after today. Hoping to do more animations with her and see how that goes.

Also entertained the idea of doing goofy things involving Assists from some of the cooler watchers I have, but that's a long ways off and I still need to test the waters with an actual flash animation thing.

CURRENT EVENTERU SAN DES

I've actually played a vidyagam! Someone went and bought me Skullgirls, and it actually runs on my laptop. Unlike every other game in my steam library. Unfortunately I can't get my gamepad to work with my laptop now for some reason, and my roomates has a really shitty D-pad that cuts into your thumb after a few hours.

STILL IT'S REALLY FUN. Unfortunately I don't Gel well with a lot of characters, so I've been sticking to Valentine/Miss Fortune. Bloody Marie bugs me though. LIKE OF ALL THE HARD AS SHIT FIGHTING GAME BOSSES, that seems like the worst type to run into. Yeah, I-no and Shao Khan can piss off, but they at least moved when they destroyed me utterly.

YOU DO NOT NEED TO GIVE EVERY ANIMATION AN ABSURD AMOUNT OF FRAMES

3 FRAMES IS FINE FOR AN ATTACK ANIMATION

NOT 15

STOP THAT.