Since some people had been asking we wanted to sit down and just clarify our views on what Fan Art is/isn't allowed.
So here you can read about it:

https://www.patreon.com/posts/138744372

Some peeps asked me if i'd put the EF panel files up for download. And yeah, why not? Here you go.

https://drive.google.com/drive/fold.....usp=drive_link

Huh, I guess I forgot about this last year...

Anyway, before that it was a bit of a tradition to make a journal like this in August and i figured i might as well get to it! The rest I'll just copy from last time since it still applies

Hey, it's warm here, i'm melting, and a bit bored ngl. So if you ever had some burning questions then now is your chance. Of course doesn't have to be art related and can be pretty much anything! That's the fun of it after all!

Not one who celebrates a whole lot myself, but I hope you all will get to have a cozy end of the year, no matter what the plans are.

p.s. leave some of the food for me, please.

We're trucking along and the next Update isn't too far out.

I figured I should probably leave a link to these pre-update devlogs here as well to keep people in the loop. So you can find a little sneak peek at what's cooking over here:

https://nomaxart.itch.io/conway/dev.....nway-update-15

Well that's not the most pleasant news to wake up to.

Never really talked to Dragoneer to be entirely honest, but nonetheless, few can stake the claim to have had such an influence on my life as he did through FA.
So, nothing but respect for what he did for me in that sense, and the furry community as a whole.

Genuinely doubt I would be doing what I am doing right now without this website, and I couldn't be more grateful for that.

Happy 1st Birthday to Conway!

Yep! It is the 1 year anniversary of the release of version 0.01 (or whatever the versions were called back then)

Let's have a talk, shall we?

February 8th is when I uploaded and released it on itch.
Why February 8th you may ask?
Well, I had only planned January as an experimental month for myself, with the oil painting and the VN test. So I'd release it on february 1st... And then it, naturally, took longer.
But I guess it works out so that we don't have the anniversary right on update release days.

The past

And yeah, what a year it's been! Thank you to all of you first of all for making this possible.
Quite simply it wouldn't be possible without the support of all you generous peeps here. As it turns out, developing a game is a fuckton of work, and if I would need to pay the bills through commission work or what have you there would be no way I'd find the time and energy to work on Conway on the side.

And I've mentioned it before in a few places, but for a while around May, June-ish it did look really dicey. The first half of the year I was bleeding about 500-700 bucks a month of my savings. The game didn't really pick up and a good amount of my walks were spent contemplating just when I'd have to see a sign before pulling the plug. End of June? Maybe it's worth to stretch it to July?
At the lowest point, we were about a month away from pulling the plug on Conway. But right around that time, the trend in people subbing here started to pick up. While it's only in the past month or two that I've reached the point where I'm not actively bleeding money each month, the trend was the bit I needed to see that maybe people are interested after all!

The present

I've attached the itch stats of the past year. So those of you who would like to have a peek can do so. As you can see, Update 10 was a massive success at least in terms of numbers for the game. Update 9 was already the first one to break the record for downloads that the release day set, but Update 10 got picked up by the algorithms and sat in the most popular furry games for a while. Soooo, yeah, quite chuffed with that spike! We'll see what the long-term effects are, but for now I just enjoy the aesthetic of -BIG SPIKE-.

And yeah, the game as a whole is just sitting in a good spot. We've had about 12k downloads in total, around 80k page visits, and a rating of 4.8/5 with 127 ratings (which btw, easy way to help, is to leave a juicy 5* rating on itch. Does wonders for the placement of the game in the different categories on the site, plus it gives me a fuzzy feeling in my tum tum.)

It's also been such a joy to see that all characters end up having their share of fans judging by comments and that nobody is left in the dry. Of course, some of them have a bit of an easier time, like Samuel and Julian being the more sociable lot they are, and just the screen time they've had so far. While others like Raj or Arthur are slower burns and even they get some mentions as the favorites of some people, and that just makes me chuffed.
Naturally, they're designed to cover different interests and preferences, but I'm always nervous if the characters are good, resonate with people and hope that they can be fun to be around. So any time someone mentions a character it just makes me so goddamn giddy.
Some of them will be difficult to handle with grace, and I'm not perfect, so I'm sure for at least one of the main cast what I've planned will fall flat, or I mess it up in some fashion. But fuck it, I'll try.

Not everything has been peaches and roses recently though, so I have to admit Updates 10 and 11 have been/are a bit of a struggle. I just messed up planning for my support writers, and it's been more or less just me handling everything for both updates 10 and 11. That's why art has been a bit sparse... Because most of my time is just taken up doing writing duty, and I'm not the fastest writer, unfortunately.
Like, at this point, with the game having all the branches and 125k in total word count, the story for the characters and how they've interacted on the two initial days. It makes it a bit more difficult to actually get people on board in a timely manner. I can't just go and say, "Hey, write me a scene where this character and that character are involved, and they do that." Since a new writer knows absolutely zero about all the stuff that's been there before, all the stuff that's planned for the characters and all that jazz.
So if one support writer is busy or just has writing block or whatever, it may be, my solution so far has just been going, "Well, shit." :')

Not the fault of my writing buddies, of course. They've been absolutely invaluable and I can't offer nearly enough to expect to be the highest priority for them. I'm just happy they want to help out AT ALL for what I can pay them in return. I should have planned contingencies but didn't. Simple as that.

So, I've made the decision to bring on another writer in Televassi, and also want to hopefully integrate Robert Baird more again going forward. With more of them willing to help out I will be able to assign things to people as they're available. Which hopefully will avoid me having to do whole updates on my own and take the pressure off of wonderful peeps like Rubric. So yeah, I learned my lesson there, but since it just takes time for people to get familiar with the Conway world and characters, it ended up with me being a bit swamped with EVERYTHING for Updates 10 and 11.

The future

Speaking of what's planned, then?
Update 10 closes out day 2, and Update 11 starts after our first time skip. I don't know if you've ever looked at how slow these ships were, but if we ever want to make it to Cape Town, then we'll need those time skips.
Not only that, but it also allows for characters to just develop in the meantime, and also their relationship towards the player character. While Characters like Nomax and Julian ended up having some raunchy scenes right away, it wouldn't exactly fit to have others throw themselves at you on day 2. So skipping ahead just keeps things moving, keeps things interesting because we can focus on specific parts more, and just show the development of characters at a more natural pace.

So the next sections are this first post-time skip section that subbed patrons already get a taste of in the WIP update, and then next up on the itinerary will be Morocco.
Both sections I'm really stoked about! And I hope you are too. :)

Stretch goals?
Patreon did away with them a while back, but we'll just make our own stretch goals, with blackjack and hookers.
Just instead of blackjack and hookers, how about we talk Animations?!
Hell yeah! I'm no animator, and it's not really a discipline I particularly enjoy either from the times I tried. So, since Patreon is currently about break-even, we can start thinking ahead a little, and I think the first point I want to tackle is some simple animations.
Stuff like moving tails, ears, and eyes. Stuff like that.

So how about that, we're currently floating at around 1250 USD a month, and if we're crossing the 1500 USD mark, I'll be holding out my feelers to get these small animations into the game.

If you like to contribute to making animations possible, consider supporting the Patreon over here: https://www.patreon.com/Nomax

Possibly animations, an exciting new section of the story, some more v2 character art, some more maritime menagerie characters. Sounds good for a year 2 plan?

I certainly hope so and hope that you all will be along for the ride, as it's been an absolute blast, and I can't thank you enough for making it possible. I just want this thing to be the best it can be for all of you. :)

It is that time of the month again, how about it? Keeping your ears perked for what to expect from the next update?

And a good time for it too as Update 8 will be the biggest one we have yet. Mind you some of that is down to just some happenstance that ended with us carrying over some writing that was done for Update 7 but wasn't actually released with it. But whatever, it still counts. I don't remember the exact number, but I think it'll scratch something like the 23k word mark. So, there is plenty of new stuff (at least for a part of you, some routes haven't really been touched and get only a few additions.)

One of the scenes fully implemented with it is the dice scene with Julian & Wolf, and it'll be a fun little instance of some actual random dice roll. Now, this might not sound like much, but I'm not a coder, so I'll take any wins I can get, which in this case is the win of figuring out how to do some dice rolls and have them lead to different scenes. Is it much of an achievement for anyone else? Perhaps not. But I'm just a dumb dog.
Initially, it actually was more elaborate, but I had to cut down on the complexity of the dice rolls, so now it'll just be one of them, rather than multiple. That's one me for being a dummy and not quite grasping the rules of Hazard at first... again, I'm just a dumb dog.

Of course, there's some art as well and all that good stuff, but mainly it's a writing-heavy update. I mean really, at this point most updates will just be more writing and more art. We've got the basic stuff for the game laid out, stuff like the UI, some sound effects etc. and that means for the most part we can just focus on the writing and the art at this point.

I hope you're looking forward to it, and if you're impatient then perhaps consider signing up to Patreon! You'll not only get to play Update 8 immediately, but of course can look forward to update #9 at the beginning of the month.
Not to mention that Patreon is ultimately what makes this game go round. So you'd help tremedously even with a small contribution. :)
I'd certainly appreciate it if you consider signing up if you have the means to do so.

 patreon https://www.patreon.com/Nomax  patreon

Or you can play the current public version here: https://nomaxart.itch.io/conway

Almost forgot it but it's august again and we've had this tradition forever by now. So hey, it's warm here, i'm melting, and a bit bored ngl. So if you ever had some burning questions then now is your chance. Of course doesn't have to be art related and can be pretty much anything! That's the fun of it after all!

Hey everyone!

With August being my birthday month i figured that's excuse enough to do some sales. I'm always so bad as a marketing person that I never want to bother people with sales and thus never really find the time to do any. But a birthday month is an excuse, right?

For the next 7 days you can get 25% off of any prints in my shop here: https://www.inprnt.com/gallery/nomax/

And i think inprnt is doing some time limited cheap worldwide shipping too, so what the flop, why not take advantage of that as well?

Just wanting to take a moment to wish you all a good holiday time. Don't really have much to say beyond that but yeah, hope you all will get to spend the end of the year in the way you want to. :)

Hey everyone. August rolled around and so it's time for the tradition of opening a little question and answers journal.
So, any questions in here will be even more answered than i usually tend to answer questions already! Can of course be about anything, whether art related or not, serious or dumb, sfw or nsfw, furry or not, whatever.

And a question to anyone else. If you could change the months of a year all to one single month repeating over and over again, 12 times a year for forever. Which month would it be?
It would always be exactly that month. So for example december would have 12x christmas each year (if you are in a country that celebrates it) with possibly year round driving in the snow. July would have the peak of summer all year round etc.(Exception being everyone's birthday would still only be once a year)

Since over here we're doing this christmas thing earlier than most of the rest of you i figured i'd get in ahead of time and wish you all some wonderful holidays.
Hopefully some good food awaits and hopefully you'll still fit into the car/train/plane/bus or simply through the door afterwards.

Hey everyone!

As always, the tradition is to do one of these in august, and would you look at the calendar!

So yeah, as always this is your chance to just ask all the questions you always wanted to ask!

We always do the AMA in august, so i thought what the flop, why not turn it around. Sure, february would probably be the more fitting month with it being the exact opposite of august, but unfortunately i dont have a time machine yet.

So, should be pretty simple, instead of me answering questions, it'll be your turn to shed some light onto some things i wondered about you and the others who follow my stuff.
Of course many of these can just be answered either yes or no or simple a picture title, but do feel free to elaborate a bit if you like.

1. How long have you been following or been aware of my artwork?

2. What was the first picture you saw of mine? (and if it isn't the same one, which picture made you decide to follow me?)

3. What is your favourite picture of mine?

4. Was Nomax (the character) ever part of any of your sexual fantasies? *insert eyes emoji*

5. Has any of my art ever caused action beyond just looking at- and faving it? What i mean by that is like perhaps you got the artists of the amazon book because of that ant picture, perhaps you decided to support a painted dog conservation, or some painting simply made you hop onto wikipedia to dig a little deeper into something.

6. Has my art ever been helpful to your own artistic journey? (As a study, or my patreon etc.)

7. Was it perhaps even the cause of you starting to paint?!

8. Painted Dogs or hyenas?

9. What do you -dislike- the most about my art? ( No need to be shy. I'm very skilled at crying myself to sleep.)

10. Make one suggestion to the character design of Nomax.

Hey, work day closing down for me here and i won't be around tomorrow and the day after. So i figured it'd be a good time to wish you all some lovely holidays, or if you aren't celebrating something then some lovely days either way.

And also a thank you to everyone who ended up doing the extra step of commissioning, joining my patreon, or buying some prints. I really really want to speak out my appreciation for that. Just yeah, it's always super weird to think about people just being interested in my art in the first place. Just... i don't know, like i'm not in a position of self depreciating my art, but i guess it's pretty normal to just never quite understand why anyone would take an interest beyond just hitting like or fave or whatever the equivalent is on your site of choice.
Thank you for contributing to my year in that way and i hope that you enjoyed it too and that in some way this actually is a two way road here. :)

So yes, thank you and i hope that you'll get to enjoy whatever small holiday celebrations there are planned.

Let's do a Q&A/AMA thing!

It's August, and i've been doing this for too many years in a row now, so it would be weird to break the tradition at this point. Sooooo, August Q&A/AMA thing!

If you've got any questions you wanted to ask me then here ya go, this is your chance! Whether SFW or NSFW (but of course as always i do retain my right to not answer things if i feel they cross a line, but i try my best to draw that line as seldomly as possible. So as long as you're not asking for my credit card information or something then you'll most likely be fine.)

Also i've posted so few journals that the last journal on here was simply this same AMA from last year... Oh well at least it made it easy to just copy & paste it again!

It's August, and i've been doing this for too many years in a row now, so it would be weird to break the tradition at this point. Sooooo, August Q&A/AMA thing!

If you've got any questions you wanted to ask me then here ya go, this is your chance! ( Of course as always i do retain my right to not answer things if i feel they cross a line, but i try to not do that if i can help it.)

Alright, little less dramatic than that perhaps...

But yes, i've had twitter for almost a year now and just felt like talking about it a little bit. Basically, i didn't exactly write many journals to begin with, as i always felt i actually needed something to say to justify one, which i rarely really have.
But if you are someone who would like to at least go somewhat beyond just me uploading a picture every week and want to read about what little random thoughts i have, then twitter is the place for you and i simply wanted to highlight that again, as the first announcement was back when i first opened it almost a year ago.
Of course should there be something actually important then i'll still let you know via a journal or something but, yeah, gonna be rather quiet aside from that.

 twitter >>> https://twitter.com/NomaxArt

Thank you very much for your interest everyone!

It's august again! That means?

First, my birthday *blows little party paper trumpet thing* and secondly, August also is the month where i usually do an ask me anything sort of thing, which is this very journal.
So if you ever had a question you wanted to ask, whether they be stupid, intriguing, enlightening, naughty or whatever else they may be then now is your chance!

Hey everyone! How's it all going?

There are a couple of points i wanted to mention today, so let's get to it.

1. Move successful for me. Means now i should finally be able to focus a bit better on my work again. Not much more to say about it really since i don't think i even mentioned it here before...soooo....anyway. Technically i've got a short little vacation right now to sort of enjoy the first few days of the new town, but commissions are opened so that i can at least start right away once i get back and don't have to wait for all the communication to happen first.

2. Ko-Fi, yep! Over here >>>> https://ko-fi.com/nomaxfa <<<<
Some of you might have already seen it as i added it silenty to my profile a few weeks ago. I stayed away from services that offer a way to support me monetarily without getting anything in return. I felt like i'm not a charity so i shouldn't really act like one. But i recently was in exactly the position where all i could do was support something i enjoyed through a t-shirt or some stuff like that, and that just wasn't something i wanted to do due to added shipping costs, the hassle of having a t-shirt i don't enjoy the design of and the environmental impact it had for nothing. So, being in that position i think my thinking was the wrong one, and the option to just toss a few bucks as a "hey i like what you are doing" without any of the commitment and heightened cost of merch or commissions is an option worth having.

3. Patreon?
Nothing set in stone yet but i've played around with some ideas of patreon. First off of course none of these ideas include anything of my usual pictures being paywalled off, i'm not an idiot. So there wouldn't be anything changing , still roughly one picture per week uploaded.
But yes, this one is just a bit more nebulous as of right now, if i can manage to figure out some more concrete information i'll of course let you all know.

4. Ice cream?
I had ice cream today! 3 scoops, melon, pistachios and tiramisu! It's bloody hot, so i hope ya'll are enjoying the summer with something similar to manage the heat :D

Hey folks,

unsurprisingly probably I (along with every furry artist in existence) have pondered about doing YCH pieces for a good while, and being fashionably late to the party i figured now is a good time to ask around what sort of YCH you all prefer, which ones you dislike etc. After all they've been around for a while, so chances are everyone's has had some good and bad experiences by now, or heard about them from friends etc.

So as said above the main question would be what sort of YCH you prefer?
1. Single character YCH. Basically one character, a bid to get that character's spot and done. Of course that would mean the price for the buyer will likely be on the high end of things, since they'd have to carry the whole cost for the picture

2. Group YCH. Usually around 2-4 Characters with each slot being auctioned off separately. Here of course the spots likely will end up cheaper for the buyers, since the cost of the picture will be split between several people.

3. Multiple characters for a single character YCH. Basically the idea here is that it'll be one picture with a single character (or main character with some secondary characters if the scene revolves around that) yet the spot will be sold at a fixed price several times. The advantage of course being that A. The hassle of an auction isn't attached to it and the price would be kept relatively low again, since the cost can be spread across multiple people. With the obvious disadvantage being that there will be some people that have the same picture, just with their character instead.

4. Something different entirely?

Would love to hear how you all view it, so if you have some time please leave a comment :) Thank you very much!

Thank you everyone who got into contact!

Thanks to anyone who contacted me!