Hi everybody! First off, I present to you a brand new chapter progress meter:
The new chapter clocks in at 29 pages + a cover, so lots of work ahead of me. And speaking of work, I got a lot done over the past few days, most of which is available on patreon. Normally I would just paste in the tweets I used to announce them, but there’s just waaaay too much to post. Instead, have a list:
- An animated progress pic of one of November’s upcoming patron wallpapers, featuring my more cartooney pinup-style Ethma.
- Naughty November sketch batch #4.
- The thumbnails for all of the upcoming Chapter 18!
- An inked preview of the Chapter 18 Cover.
- A bonus wallpaper with the complete art I used for the new progress meter.
- Naughty November sketch batch #5.
So, now that that’s out of the way, I have a bit of a conundrum about this next chapter that I wanted to pick your brains on. Even if I finish up this cover tomorrow, which I will, I’m going to have to jump straight into new pages with pretty much no buffer and have completed pages for it ready to go starting on October 27th. Working with no buffer is difficult but doable, but it doesn’t leave a lot of room for getting things done that I NEED to get done–case in point, I believe I announced that I was going to be redesigning the website ‘soon’ in October of last year, and I still haven’t had a spare second for it in between pages and Patreon stuff.
I’ve also had almost no time to rebuild the 2 month buffer I used to have that kept us sane and on time, which is a lot harder now that our kidbeast is 3 and requires constant interaction and supervision. This means that most of my work gets done at night time and on weekends which our parents graciously watch her so we can get things done. I’m losing a lot of sleep, which I can deal with, but all these little things that I have to get done just keep piling up.
The plan was previously that I’d take December off, post some bonus content in the interim and use the time to rebuild my buffer and redesign the website, but where this chapter ended didn’t lineup very well with the end of the year. If I start this new chapter next Friday, you’re basically going to get 10 pages into Chapter 18 before I disappear for the whole month of December. This is super not ideal. I’m open to suggestions, but after wracking our brains for a solution, we’ve come up with the following options:
- Drop down to ONE update every week until the new year and return to our normal schedule on Friday January 1st. We’d still update all throughout November and December with no break, but I’d be far enough ahead that I’d actually have time to get some of this outstanding work on the site and rebuilding the buffer done.
- Take the last week of this month off and then, instead of posting updates this November, I’d post each finished, coloured Naughty November pic with some bonus world building and design notes in place of a page. There are 20 pics, which means we’d be adding a new one every single week day of November up until the 27th, at which point we’d resume our regular schedule on December 1st with twice-a-week updates straight through into next year. The naughty November arts could all be done by the end of this weekend if I prioritize them, which means I’d have all of November and a week to work on the new chapter’s buffer and the new website.
Both of those sound pretty good to me, but before I decide on either, I’d like to make sure that they sound good to you. Tell me which one you like more, or suggest alternatives in the comments!