So hey, it's been a little quiet. I was hoping to get things resolved sooner and maybe not have to write a specific post towards this end, but it's been dragging on for so long, I feel I owe you guys an explanation.

The reason why artwork on my side has been so slow is that my health has been on the decline again - no, it's nothing life threatening, just to clear that up.
The new tablet I acquired some two years ago now has caused me to sit differently at my desk and it's called to attention some problems with my posture, which I'm accrediting to that same desk I'm sitting at not really being meant for this sort of thing. Basically I've had to float my shoulders and arms without support while drawing, which is causing me immense pain after only a few days of work, so doing art for anything other than what's absolutely necessary has been exhausting.

We've been shopping around for new desks, but nothing we've found so far fulfils my requirements, or fits into the space we have available in the living room, so I've had to start planning a custom desk. Having one made costs an arm and a leg, so I'll be making my desk myself with the help of a friend who has a carpentry workshop and hoping this'll fix my issues, but it costs both time and money to assemble all the different things needed for it. Given that sitting at my computer has been causing me pain, I've subconsciously also been dragging my feet, even though I cognitively knew actually sitting down to DO the planning would be beneficial.

The second reason, which is a lot more positive, is that we are now cat parents of two adorable ~6 month old kittens that have required us to rework and turn upside down most of our living conditions over the last month and a bit.

I'm hoping to return to enjoying artwork soon, but until I've gotten that desk built and the resulting issues straightened out, it'll continue to be a slow pace.

So I talked about having been hired for illustrating a children's book and it's finally gone into print :3

Now, most of you know this is not the first time I've been published. I've been attached to most of the HSD releases up until now and likely will in the future too. This however is the first time I'm the sole contributor of artwork for a given project, so yay me!

The book called "Korvatunturin katastrofi" (ENG: Disaster in Korvatunturi) is, as mentioned before, a children's christmas story based on mostly finnish versions of christmas and santa clause lore, with a few touches to bring it into the modern age. It's currently only available in finnish, but will be translated into english and several other languages for next year's christmas season.

For anyone interested in taking a peak, here's the official facebook page to keep you up to date on current and future developments:

https://www.facebook.com/DisasterinKorvatunturi/

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Concerning my personal experience with the project: It was an interesting deviation from everything I've done so far. Those of you who know me from my early days are aware I have a far more adult focus in my usual work, tech, gore, violence or raunchiness all running rampant through my various galleries, so this was a an interesting thematic 'vacation' to take.

It was also my first taste of a truly professional work pipeline, keeping up to date with the author and developing a style alongside them that would match the story best, actually rendering the images and all the various touchups and alterations that had to be made to best suit them to the various publication channels ... interesting stuff.

So yeah, that's what's been eating my time since October, but I feel the result was well worth the invested time and so does everyone else who's seen the work, so I'm not 'that' badly miffed about missing out an opportunity to work for myself ;3

Thanks for hanging around and stay tuned for future updates!

LYA!

Hey folks.

There will be no upload to Forest Tails this week, as I currently do not have backlog and I'm in the middle of upgrading my hardware. I promise to get back to business as quickly as I can. This is especially critical as I have finally decided to quit at the store. The pressure and situation there has become too much to deal with on y continuous basis, so I'm going to look for better chances elsewhere/focus on arting properly.

This also means that the patreon I've been working on will get a little more priority than I had originally intended for it to have. Thank you very much for all your input on that matter, btw. I will be uploading a preliminary setup for tiers and rewards soon for you guys to give me some more feedback on :3

All the best for now!

SO ...

Back from Eurofurence and grinding down on work, I am currently at my dad's house, working out a sort of 'road map' for the future and patreon is beginning to look like a bit of a cornerstone in this process.

I made an account a long time ago and am currently in the process of retooling it to suit the needs of Forest Tails.
The Forest Tails patreon will be submission based, so if I don't put out, neither do you :b and that takes the edge off the whole process a little bit for me, which is a good thing. However what I'm having trouble with mostly is the tier-ing system and that's where you guys come in.

What sort of things would you want to see as tier rewards?

I know a lot of folks have done this pre-release thing where patrons get access to material a month or even a year in advance and I'd kind of want to avoid that, because I would still like Forest Tails to remain easily accessible to all of you guys, but if you feel there's a need for it, I may take it into consideration.

But, is there anything you guys would like to have aside from, or supplementary to the main story?

Should I mayhaps bring the 'Ask the cast' things back, or is there something else cast specific you can think of that you'd like to have?

Whatever you guys can think of that you would want to see, let me know, because I would like to build a patreon that provides both the ability for me to produce Forest Tails, as well as neat stuff you guys want to have :3

As I mentioned in the latest submission there will be some changes to how Forest Tails updates for the foreseeable future and I'd like to take this opportunity to say why, answer some questions and ask at least one of my own;

1) There will only be one page a week in the foreseeable future. Two pages a week is too stressful with a dayjob and a private life and I hadn't been enjoying the uploads as much as I used to with the stress it was creating. Two pages also means I don't get to build up any sort of backlog for times where other things need to take priority - dropping down to one page a week (at least for a while) will allow me to do some other artwork aswell, which will be needed once HSD2.0 starts production and I also just want to get to draw something else for a change, as much as I love all my forest dwellers in Morning Light.

2) With a once a week update schedule, we now have the chance to pick a day in the week where you'd like to have the page. For those of you who have been paying attention, I've tried to keep a monday/thursday upload regimen. With only one page per week coming at you, when would be the ideal time for you folks to give it a gawp?

I still have to take care of the cat's eye drops, which means I get up an hour earlier than before, commute to mom's, handle one drop, wait an hour, handle the second drop (two different medications) - and get to do the same thing in the evening, which means I get home about an hour and a half later than before aswell, so time is rather short when I do get home.

Forest Tails will likely continue in the new year, when I've had the time to produce a page or two and some backlog. I have Tobur's character portraits and relevant info ready to upload next week, but aside from that there wont be new pages this year.

Looking forward to hearing from you guys, all thoughts and comments and whatnot :3

Actually, no. My cat had a recursion of her eye problems and ever since I had MY eye problems a few months back, I have no backlog to keep you guys entertained with. She's 17 now and it looks pretty bad, though we're going to try therapy, see if it helps.

We're hopeful, but I'm sure you understand it's a rather stressing matter for all of us and the chance is very real that, unless she recovers with her medication (asuming she even lets us drip it into her eyes), we may have to pay for an operation ... given her age though - I dont know ...

I'm hoping to get back to art soon, but family emergencies like this take priority, so until further notice, Forest Tails will continue whenever I dont have a little fuzzball to worry about.