Happy Halloween! (Patreon)

My month of carefree frittering about has come to an end, but I have to admit I'm quite happy. I'm ready to get back to work and excited to restore my usual schedule.

I should announce officially that next month will be a normal Flesh month! When I do the credits update around the 10th it'll be for the September patrons, as if October never happened basically.

Last week I spent a lot of time just gaming and enjoying all the halloween TV x'D I really enjoy 'Lets Plays' of horror games and now is the best time of year to catch them!

I've also been watching 'The Haunting of Bly Manor' [ no spoilers plz! ] and it's just as good as the last Haunting series! [ The Haunting of Hill House ]. If you like deep, complicated ghost stories and well written characters, I highly recommend both miniseries! There's just so much good media to enjoy right now ;0;

I also cracked open my photoshop, blew the dust off of Mason's backgrounds, and did a bit of 'off-the-clock' work to update them. I felt like his backgrounds were the weakest since I did them first, plus I was annoyed that they didn't get across the 'cold, dead' feeling I was originally going for.

I still have 3 left to update but the ones I've fixed have been the biggest 'offenders' so I'm already very happy about the improvements.

Here's the old Meadow / Daytime background. The foreground plants in the middle were a mistake, clashing with sprites, and the bright fresh green grass tells the player 'don't worry, it's warm and nice actually!' which really didn't work for me LMAO

Here's the new and improved version. I feel a lot better about the atmosphere! I've also updated the morning/evening/night versions of every background, but I don't want to spam all 16 updated images at you LMAO I'll just show the ones with the biggest changes.

^ old version of Cabin Interior / Evening. This one was the biggest problem. The main issue is that the foreground bed ruined the picture if I tried to use a sprite. LEARN FROM MY MISTAKES! Test background sketches with a sprite or at least a sketch of a sprite! 

^ In the new version, I completely erased the bed and drew in the missing details behind it. Luckily for me, this mostly just meant reconstructing the floor- which was pretty simple. I also changed the lighting to be a little less pleasant and dreamy. Many of my old backgrounds were suffering from too much contrast and saturation to give off a 'cold' vibe.

^ old version of Swamp / Daytime. This one was bothering me a lot because I had a clear idea of what I wanted and I just.... didn't quite get it. It wasn't dead enough and I hadn't really gasped how to draw the kind of pond I wanted.

^ New version. I went ham on sucking the life out of this background! I removed a ton of the colour, and I took time to hand paint more details at the edges of the water. I think that really did the trick to give it the look I originally wanted. I used to hate this background, but now I think it's my favourite!

Thicket, Tall Tree, and River all still need updates, but those are mostly just gonna need some colour correction and re-exporting. Thicket could maybe use some better painting but we'll see. I'm 100% certain I can get that work done on Sunday.

I'm just glad I squeezed this in because I feel MUCH better about Mason's backgrounds. I know I'm being super picky here but the atmosphere is SO IMPORTANT in his path. The story is less focused on Mason and more just... the player in this environment. I want that to feel immersive.

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Next week, if everything goes according to plan, I'll be showing you guys the first cg or two! 

And don't worry, I've had a think about how I'll show CGs to y'all Patreon folks. I think the best option for finding balance between keeping you guys in the loop and not being spoilery is for me to simply crop images at my discretion.

If the CG is completely mundane or spoiler free, I'll show the whole thing. [ I literally have CGs planned that are just... sandy ground. Or clouds. Or a log. ]

If the CG is spicy and exciting, I'll find some interesting way to crop/censor it that'll give you guys an impression of the quality without giving away any major plot stuff.

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And that's about it! Thank you guys so much for allowing me this time to rest and get ready for the next big chunk of game work! I'm so excited to get back to the grind and to show you guys what I'm capable of! I will do you proud!

Also, I hope y'all are having a safe and fun Halloween <3 See you next month! ^o^