JULY UPDATE: Blender has eaten my life

Hey folks! Thank you all so much for being here. July marks the first month that this restarted Patreon is in full swing, and I'm so, so grateful to have you all here. 

Some Project Kintsugi updates are: I have finally started scripting. Which, for me, means I'm also thumbnailing at the same time, because that's just how my brain works. Please enjoy this incredibly bitchy little Daniel on the bottom left of page 10.

My thumbnails are very endearing chicken stractch that mostly just needs to be legible to Future Kira and my story beat editor, Mark O. Stack! 

Okay, at this point you might be wondering - what the hell is up with those screenshots of 3D models in Blender. WELL. I got to the part in the script where I need to write some pages that takes place in Denver's childhood home, which, with the advice of my Chicago-native friend, Frankee White, we've decided to set in Bridgeport. Bridgeport is a cool area with a lot of lower- to middle-income single family homes and some very cool bars and breweries Frankee took me to when I was visiting them, and is perfect for the setting of Denver's lower-income family.

EXCEPT.

Chicago houses are EXTREMELY SPECIFIC?! I quickly realized some of my generic American 'suburban' home models wouldn't work, because Chicago lots are a standardized 25'x125', and so the worker's cottages and bungalows that live on those lots all have a really long, narrow profile to them. Chicago also has the most extensive network of alleyways in any U.S. city, and those alleys cut across the rear side of all the lots, so that's where Chicago folks build their detached garages and put their trash.

Chicago houses also have pretty standard architectural features across the board -- like a bunch of Bridgeport houses tend to have partial or full basements, which makes it look like the houses are all sitting below ground level with lil bridges connecting them to the street level that I find absolutely fascinating. I come from a place where basements pretty much don't exist in houses (we don't really build down in Hawai'i because you pretty quickly run into straight up lava rock). And Chicago houses all have porticos or front porches over their entryways to keep the folks safe from the elements as they're leaving or entering their house, which makes sense when you consider Chicago likes to be buried in 175,413* feet of snow on the regular.

*extremely accurate, trust me, don't look it up

ALL THIS TO SAY, my ADHD brain got stuck on scripting because I didn't have a 'set' in mind for the scenes of Denver's house. (...I do already have actual Blender sets built for pretty much all the locations in Project Kintsugi, including Daniel's apartment, Denver's apartment, the piano bar where Daniel works, the divebar Denver frequents, the bar the band will play it, the practice space the band rents...)

 So before I could continue on, my brain insisted we build Denver's house and street, so that's how I spent most of my week last week. The upside of this hyperfixation detour is I'm now better at Blender than I've ever been. Oh - and if you're curious, my Blender sets are a mixture of royalty-free models I've bought, and models I've created myself. 

Anyway, big shoutout to the Chicago Workers Cottage Initiative and the Chicago Bungalow Association for providing the extremely granular knowledge about Chicago houses that I didn't know I needed until I was reading it.

Oh, and the last Blender screenshot? I decided to try to model Daniel (and eventually Denver's) hair in Blender, because it's always a struggle for me to imagine what their hair looks like from different angles in my mind. So far, it is very frustrating and I feel like I am Bad at it. Yet I will persevere, because that's what my brain wants to do.

I will see you all on the other side of this hyperfixation. Hopefully.