My Creative Evolution Story (Patreon)

When I was let go from my job of 10 years at AE as an Artist/ Game Dev 4 years ago, I knew one thing, I didn't want to go back to working as an animator in the entertainment industry again. Been there, done that... I was ready to work on my own projects.  So for me, the lay off was blessing in disguise, I wanted to prove I was self sufficient with my own ideas and now I had my chance. At the time, Patreon showed me this was possible with their platform.  I slowly built enough support from fans like you that I could produce my art full-time.  You all helped me to keep the lights on and to keep creating my art. For that, I'm forever thankful.

Game Time!

Me and Adam remained friends during this time and talked at least once a month about what we we're up to. In one of our talks, he said we should make a game together and I was like hellz yeah we should! We would own the game equally, just two friends creating something cool. We settled on a tower defense type game because it was the simplest to make. Later, we decided to make that game Akumi themed. Adam said lets call it Akumi Wars and we we're off. He would build the engine, I would create the visuals and animation.

Focused Direction

So here we are around 2 years later with no completed game. Why? I'll tell you why, a lack of focused direction on my part. Balancing my Patreon duties, trying to create an animated series and trying to build a quality game all at once is a full plate... you can see where my energy might of been spread too thin.  I remember hearing Will Smith say something in an interview once that rung true for me. He said he tried not to spread himself too thin across a lot of projects because he only had so much energy to give. And when he worked on something, he wanted to make it the best he could so he had to give it his full attention.  This is also the way I function. Just to make ONE of these things I mentioned half decent requires my FULL attention and energy.

My Patreon suspension the past two weeks gave me a new perspective. Another blessing in disguise my friends. In the end, I got the suspension lifted but I got so much more in return, I got my focus back.

Building the Akumi Brand!

In conclusion, if we want the Akumi brand to grow in terms; animations, art, merchandise etc, in my heart of hearts, I know it will begin with this game. Here's why... a game provides me a hub to constantly add my art and animations to that fans like you can interact with directly and indefinitely.  Where as I can make an animation, a piece of art and you might look at it once, twice maybe even 5 times but there's a diminishing returns. Even I only look at my work a handful of times! On the other hand, I've spent years with some games playing them over and over.

Oh and by the way, Akumi Wars will no longer be a tower defense game but will instead be an RPG game that I can update with new content similar to the way I did with AQW and OS! It's time to complete the Akumi rpg game my friends.  I'll continue to update here when I can but my focus is now completing the Akumi Wars RPG Game.

Have a great Sunday all. I'll have another Update tomorrow.

 Onwards and Upwards!

-Miltonius