Rewards & Rhea VN Update!

Hello frens, long time no talk, hope you all are well!

Before anything else, I sent the February Rewards yesterday. As usual, if you paid for that period (ie you were charged in March) but have not received a message with the rewards link, let me know!

I've been really slow on getting the rewards out because I've been spending all my energy and creativity on Rhea's VN lately. I can only ask for your patience as I juggle between the VN and the monthly rewards. (On that note, I'll start the March suggestion/poll soon!)

One thing is for certain though - I want to keep working on ero VNs after I finish Rhea’s ^-^ As I mentioned before, this year is the year of the OCs and I’m committed now more than ever to making my own ero VN projects going forward. I’ll talk about all that in more detail when the time comes, but for now let’s talk about Rhea’s VN

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Last update I talked about how I would start drawing the H-scenes for the VN, and oh boy that I did! ^^ I wish I could show you guys some of the CGs but that would defeat the purpose of the VN. I honestly believe that the writing supplements the CGs pretty well, so I think you'll just have to wait for the release for the full experience ^_^

Anyway enough teasing about that, let's talk about stuff that I can show you!

As you can probably tell by the OP image, I’m starting work on finishing up the sprites! I'm actually in the process of redrawing the sprites because I'm using a different lineart brush again. Here's a comparison of the new(left) versus the old(right), they're both WIPs but it's pretty clear how crisp and clean the new version is. The old one was good but I just felt that it was a little to rough in the end.

Moving on, some of you probably recognize the character next to Rhea in the OP image, but for the uninitiated, she is Manuela. Other characters appearing in this story are Shamir and Catherine (possibly Flayn and Seteth, if time permits). Before anyone asks, No, they will not have H-scenes, they play important roles in this story so I wanted to give them sprites. This is strictly Rhea's VN so all the focus is on her.

On the topic of writing, I finally found a way to organize my outline that really works for me, and that solution is to use flowcharts! It's kinda basic if you think about it, but as a visual person, this really helps unclutter my mess of a mind and organize everything in a clean visual manner.

This is important because compared to having a gigantic google doc listing all the events, a flowchart simplifies everything and actually enabled me to just point to scene and just dive in and work on it. Here's the first half of the story in flowchart form, the red circles indicate a CG or CG sequences.

It's simple but very effective for me^^

Lastly, I finished up customizing and implementing some of the in-game screens (options screen, save and load screens, and confirm screens) pictured below. They're not the most important stuff but they're a critical part of the game nonetheless, so I had to customize them. All that's left are the Title Screen and the Gallery.

And I think that's all for this update! To sum it up, I drew a bunch of ero CGs, discovered flowcharts to help me write the story, started polishing up sprites, and worked on presentation.

With this, I feel confident that I'm on track to finish the project on June 10. That's only 43 days from now or 6 weeks. Like I said before though it's a soft deadline, so the plan is to release whatever I finish up until that point. But honestly, I'm pretty excited because I think I might just finish it in time! ^^

Alright, I think I'm gonna end it here. I know that I disappeared for a couple of weeks and delivering your rewards has been negatively affected by this... But I'm starting to develop a routine of working on the VN and drawing non-VN stuff. My hope is to be able to do both more efficiently at the same time, so I'll be able to progress on the VN and share that and also draw rewards/other art faster. Developing a new routine/habit is a pretty big deal so unfortunately it does eat up a lot of time and energy, but like I said earlier, I'm committed to making this dynamic work (making ero VNs while drawing other stuff) going forward.

Thank you guys once again for your support. Cheers!