May Update - Monthly Round Up

Hey everyone, I hope you're all doing well and staying safe. Not much to add on a personal side to this one so let's get into May's update.

April Content - Now Expired

I loved having marathon listening sessions of 80s glam rock and hair metal while sculpting Claudia but now it's time to put her up on Gumroad with the customary 30% discount available to Patrons of all pledge levels. Links to the April Content will now be invalid.

Poll Winner: Felicia

Who would have thought that cat girls would be popular on the internet? Especially steampunk gunslinging cat girls? Unsurprisingly, our winner of the poll for April is Felicia so I'll be sculpting her throughout May and releasing her in June.

Model of the Month: Katsumi, Cunning Shadow

This month's release is a bit bigger than usual, largely thanks to working from home and hating my day job. This month you will be getting your hands on "Cunning Shadow", featuring Katsumi the demon huntress. I enjoyed pushing the envelope on the surface detail of the Kimono to the level where I didn't even know if it was printable. But that was a risk I was willing to take (For science!). Fortunately, it worked out (phew!) and the kimono came out beautifully on the print. She will come with 4 head options (default with the head dress, plain, mask, mask and head dress) and as always in SFW and NSFW options.

You will also be getting a bust version with 2 different stands (special and simple) this month. I'm hoping to make bust versions part of my standard release and this is going to be the start of at trial of doing so without officially committing to it yet. Why not commit? Well a lot of the extra work I've gotten done has been thanks to working from home and the lockdown, so I've had far more time than I normally would around my full time job so I don't want to over promise and under deliver, I'd rather do the opposite. Again the bust version will have the 4 head options and SFW and NSFW variations.

I've added in a few bonuses in the form of the charms featured throughout the sculpt, little amulets of protection and fighting strength a long with some decorative beads at a 1:1 scale. Because painting that kimono is going to be daunting, and there's a level of texture to Katsumi that I haven't added before I've also created a texture swatch plate so you can practice painting the textured areas before committing to the model proper. This was an idea of a patron and it was a great idea so I included it.

As usual pre-supported files are provided having been fully tested on my own printer and from a few early testers. Build plate layouts are included for both the main figure and the bust versions that also contain some useful info such as layer count and resin usage (resin usage is an estimation from the slicer so shouldn't be fully trusted!).

You can grab her from May 3rd (or as soon as the billing cycle finishes)

Trove Update: Engineered Curves Bust 

There's no special occasion for this Trove release, you guys are just awesome so I'm throwing it in anyway. Featuring Saskia, my elvish mech engineer, with two base options (special and simple) as combined, multi-part and pre-supported print ready STLs. 

Usual Content - Content Distribution Options

Usual content will also be available on May 3rd (or earlier depending on the billing completion). Renders, poll sketches and Work In Progress Shots will be available on the file shares.

Last month I start using Sync and pCloud as backup distribution options in addition to the usual Google Drive option. I'm going to continue using these services but have also been looking into more secure distribution methods that allow for updating files later down the line. Unfortunately, I've not really come up with a solution yet. Itch.io looked promising but it's file size limits were a problem. Gumroad was another option but having private listings is impossible. What I've ended up doing is going down a semi-automatic route of  manually exporting active patrons at the start of each month and updating a Zapier script to automatically add any new Patrons to the spreadsheet so I've got a record of who was active for each month going forward.  That way if any updates are required I can just send a message to all active members for that month with a link to the updated files. Not ideal, but thanks to my new workflow and some beta testers I don't think these updates will be necessary going forward.

Merchants

I have merchants! I never really expected that to happen so it's super cool that I now have 4 merchants. As a result I've put together merchant resources for them to use that consist of layered PSD files for renders, poll artwork that is scaled for standard paper sizes and detailed model dimensions. I'm currently adding a merchants page to my website where you can find them all and once I've organised it I'll be posting a link so if you know anyone without a printer you could pass along links to the awesome folks selling prints of my work.

As Always, A Massive Thank You

You guys are helping me realise a dream I've had for a while but never thought I'd ever get a shot at being able to make a living from my art but that is getting closer and closer. Hitting 225 Patrons will allow me to switch to part time work and put more time into working on this. I've seen a lot of growth this month, largely thanks to the Twitch community of painters discovering my work and being so kind as to promote me. So a big thanks to them and the Twitch community for being super welcoming and, of course, a massive thanks for the continuous support of all of my Patrons, new and long term, you're all amazing!

Stay safe and watch this space for more updates on Felicia as I progress on her.