Hello and welcome back to Subscriber-specific content again! Where this is only exclusive to those Akapom and higher tiers! Apologies for the long wait, it's been a stressful start of winter being in a plane for the very first time! New eventful things in my life a-happenin'.
TOPICS
UPDATES
Art Trade art wips and complete, any commissions, and personal projects.
I have also noticed a trend of people joining and leaving within the first hour of doing so. Not sure if that's just how people on Discord act, like first glance and if nothing's happening they leave. It's understandable since I haven't posted a lot of anything on the common area channels, but it's also a thing where this group has not been THAT specific kind of active so I may need to take a different approach.
There was also a meme that was posted regarding the situation mentioned, that while I might as well make the intentions as vague, it clearly shows the misunderstanding. I don't know them, they have hardly talked to me even, and yet the need to comment in this way like it's some satiric comment is negligent and likely out ignorance of the obvious. This group is mostly managed by one person, and unless there are people willing to talk, it's gonna be empty and while things are simply not ready yet people joining can still talk, however they seem to not read anything I have placed to understand why they can't see channels and leave.
An update on the comic/manga I wanted to work on. I have been considering posting old stories I had floating around for years, but never really placed on paper. One of them, mainly centering around my teenage years but with the other half of what Sky Warriors was initially based on. As I have mentioned in the previous monthly blog, it was dubbed 7CA since its conception but some of the story is based on a venting comic from my angsty teen days. That venting story was turned into two separate unrelated stories (with a few cross-over ideas of cooourse) - One being Sky Warriors, where all the action-y shonen stuff would be separated from the second aspect of the venting story into the dubbed 7CA. Where for Sky Warriors I wanted to eliminate the naive angsty teen aspect of the story to focus on a cast of characters with possibly bigger than life type fantasy, 7CA was to adopt all of that was taken out and adapt it into a slice-of-life with fantasy - a kind of Cardcaptor type where there is action but it is not the main focus.
Following 'The Split', I had another idea to make a cross-over fan manga usually dubbed KH x SW. I'm thinking of working on this one first, jsut to get it out of my brain.... At the time, I was REALLY getting into playing Kingdom Hearts II, as the Playstation 2/3 were really one of the few consoles we had. The fan manga would take place during that game, however I might need to replay it, as I have forgotten most of what has happened. I have yet to decide what art style to use, my first one being Bleedman's art style with a mix of the Kingdom Hearts manga, but I definitely want to make it simpler so I don't struggle too much with keeping consistency throughout the work.
Addiotionally, the initial Sky Warriors manga has it's own space on my website now! Things may still be moved around as I try to get used to Dynamic Pages an embedding ads, but it's set up to the best of my ability for mobile without Wix's stinky mobile friendly settings.
I have chosen to do this as my husband is still just having ideas floating around and not deciding to create, well, anything. A month ago, he was talking about doing animatics, however since then haven't heard a wink about it. So any stories where he is involved in the creation will be simply placed on hold until he manages to decide what to do. As for platform, I have yet to decide, but I think I will end up posting it on my website first. I haven't had the time to sit down and read reviews on comic publishing websites, so I will be doing that to make it easier on me and create an initial backlog of pages.
There is SO much I want to fix for the Monthly Art Trade server it's not even funny at this point.... I should have probably worked a little more on the verification process before trying to promote.... but we are here now and I'm going to have to push through it. The verification process still works but I'm still experimenting around the best way to do it,
Website Progress
While the few of you who check on the website have seen how much it has changed, there is still a lot that still need to built and tested, and retest. I have also changed the layout of the home page, as I realized that the ads on tablets were not showing fully and only peaking like 50px.... I'm still considering re-releasing the mobile version option, but it's so restricted that I don't know if to just keep it on desktop or what. I have yet to figure out how to edit html level anything, so that I can edit the mobile version as I need it.
THINGS TO ADD:
Add missing recent artwork to main public gallery.
Tidying normal account & Sub account page layouts, info and exclusive access pages.
Pages for posts & galleries for Sub's content w/o ads. Attempt for entire website w/o ads?
Test Sub Galleries to work as intended (URLs, masking, etc).
Add channels to Discord for 'ease of access' updates from website.
Maybe rearrange Sub perks for next year? To make it easier for me and more for all members!
WORKING ON:
Sub related pages, testing.
Sub account login information and access.
Uploading artwork to gallery (continued)
CNC and possible career
So, for the past year and half or so I have been trying to go through a CNC path. One main reason is to earn more, so I have been delving with the programming side of things and learning as much as I can about the industry. There's so much to learn about the types of metals, tools, techniques for each, contracts - such an amalgamation of departments. The crazier part is that the industry is much bigger and closer to home than I initially realized, even a seemingly abandoned building could be a CNC shop for all I know!
The unfortunate part that I realize about this industry is that it seems they are mainly family owned and favored in between only themselves, and not known to stay impartial whenever they get emotional and retaliate against workers when they oppose. That doesn't always spell bad news, but from my own bad luck, past and current experience of people in management solely being family members of the owner, it just never turns out for the better interest of the unrelated employees. My current place of employment is not doing so hot currently. Work has been so badly managed. They are in the middle of transferring ownership and it's been months since the announcement. It seems like the current owner is afraid of letting it go. It's so bad that the only potential I see now is that the skills I have learned could be used for the new business my friends and I have conjured up, if not just create my own store to sell in order to create a steady pool of income.
POWERS SQUARED Vagueness
I feel troubled with the condition this team is managing work. I don't know if it's just me being paranoid again with having just joined, but it's the gut feeling again that something isn't right that usually a faint negative thought turns out to be true.
I'm not really complaining about my own position, if anything my work made easier by the new simpler style of the new main artist compared to the former main artist. The thing that's bothering me is the amount of work given to the main artist, and my old high school peer, compared to the near stripped-of-descriptives scripts that is given for them to figure out how to layout. Almost feels as if they are wringing the main artist for every penny they pay by doing the least amount of work IN THEIR OWN PROJECT! The 'benefit of the doubt' part of me doubts that's the intention but it certainly doesn't look good. If the unfortunate chance comes that I turn into the successor but the pay would not reflect the amount of work, I will definitely not accept it. It's already bad enough what I'm seeing now with unpolished work, it's definitely not justifiable to do the amount of work of the former artist, and still request changes, if the pay rates are this low.
It seems like they got better in recent, communicating more with the dissatisfaction of the sketches and inking. Still gonna have to see how this goes since it seems like the main artist is pumping out line work but feedback is coming in incredibly slow still even when the main artist is ahead... I'm going to have to see.
A VERY BIG THANK YOU TO
Well, my most loyal subscriber Tiramzu on Twitch. Even before I started streaming, they've been supporting any dumb idea I throw out there. Since I started streaming again they have subscribed and not missed a month since even when I was away a few months not streaming. I would like to also give thanks to Zim8a on Twitch too! Also thanks to the other people in the Founders list (those that were once subscribed), who are Ares5gamer, TonySyndrom, Kamigin, Dasplat, NoThisIsDan, and Draziel375, and also giving thanks to all the new followers coming from my Youtube channel. Every little bit counts and I thank you all for your support!