Visual Novel & July Updates!

Hi everyone! For my Canadian comrades, I hope you had a great Canada Day on the first, and to my U.S. American chums, I hope you had a wonderful Fourth of July!

Also, I haven't given one of these updates in a little while (mostly due to lacking exciting news) but as always I wanted to take a moment to welcome new patrons, and thank my long-time existing patrons for all of your support! You guys are the best. You motivate me, inspire me to keep trying new things, and see me improving every month. I absolutely love what I do for a living and it's only because of your support through Patreon that it can happen. :)

In personal news, due to covid and unforseen circumstances, my husband is out of a job and looking for another. (stressful, yay...) But, he's in good spirits and planning to start something new. It might be a blessing in disguise, or maybe that's what we tell ourselves when life keeps dealing lemons. Anyway. He's incredibly motivated and ambitious so I know he'll find something. In the meantime, I'm grateful for the stable job that I have here, and know we'll be okay. 

Onto better news! As most of you probably recall, I'm turning my Valentine's Day story with Jim and Oscar into a Visual Novel. For those who don't know, a VN is a digital format for reading a story that includes background scenes, characters onscreen while they deliver their lines, different chapters, etc. Essentially it's a story viewed through an interactive game. I'm an illustrator and a writer both, so this style seems like something I might be able to do well. I am working with a very talented programmer and patron, MarshallBananas, who is doing all of the tech-related stuff. (and doing a great job too I might add!) I've been putting a little work on it here and there, but I'd really like to do my bulk of work this month and get the project done sooner rather than later. This *could mean a little less content to view on Patreon this month, but that only means I'm doing a ton of work behind the scenes, editing, illustrating, re-writing, etc.

To that end, I've attached a couple of screenshots from the VN so you can get a better idea of how it may look. Please note that these are NOT final images, there's still plenty to go over and adjust, but they do give a good indication of what's coming down the road. The ultimate goal is to give all 5$ and 10$ patrons access to the visual novel when it's all done, and also put it up for sale on itch.io. Of course the hope is that it's successful and can help get my name out there in more diverse ways than just Twitter, FA, and Patreon. If it does especially well, it likely means we could see more projects like this down the road!

I'm excited for this new venture, I hope you folks are too! Thank you again for your enthusiastic support lo these many months. As always, please don't forget to like Patreon posts that you especially enjoy, as this is my best measure of knowing what content everyone most wants to see from me. I read every comment that is left on a piece as well, and appreciate hearing from you guys. I hope everyone is having a good month so far, and looking forward to seeing what this artist has in store! 😊

Respectfully, D.B.