Saturday Update!

Hello again! It's been another crazy week for me 😅 But I did manage to at least get a few sprites done.

Current Image Finalization: 234/743 | 31%

-----------------

I took a few days off at the beginning of the week, but they ended up being a bit hectic regardless due to my home-buying endeavours.

I'll say the bottom line right away for people who'd rather skip this chunk of details: My offer on the apartment/condo was accepted! Right now the sale is 'pending', because I haven't cleared my own conditions on it yet.

[ The following has nothing to do with my work and is just about the process of home-buying so skip ahead for YKMET related stuff! ]

This is a mix of small-bad-news and big-good-news! The bad news is that I will have to do more work and take time out of my schedule to finish the buying process, and eventually go through renovation process and moving process. [ the unit is so run-down that I need to do some basic renovations before moving in. It's like Jack TPOF used to live there- it stinks quite badly of old cigarettes, has a broken window, and all the appliances are ancient and possibly broken 😂 but it was far enough under budget that I can afford to fix the floors/paint/window at least ]

The good news is that eventually, it will be my home and will have enough space for me to have a real office and a whole room just to store merch. This means that I will eventually be a lot more free to expand my merch and make new products!

It's been quite a whirlwind of learning new things and paperwork type stuff. I spent a couple hours at the realty office talking with the selling realtor who turned out to be really nice and infinitely helpful. She's helped me understand the process so much. Normally I wouldn't want to trust the seller's realtor, but in the case of a foreclosure, she's actually working for the bank [ who owns the property now ] and not a person. So the dynamic is a bit different.

I've researched and made contact with both an inspector and a lawyer, which I will need to finish this process.

I also had to do a lot of reading of condo bylaws and the available out-of-date condo rules I could get my hands on from the unit.

The only rule that's causing me pain is that apparently the building has a strict 1-pet limit. My dream of adopting a bonded pair of cats is dashed. I'm mourning the loss, but this deal is too good. I will have to make my peace with eventually adopting one cat and loving him/her twice as much.

My two conditions that aren't cleared yet are the inspection [ I know the place is run down already but I need to know exactly how so I can target my renovations properly ] and my own reviewal of the condo documents- which are about 15 different documents that I had to buy online for $270 [ ouch... ] Stuff like the up-to-date bylaws, condo rules, history of the building, insurance information, condo board meeting minutes, condo board budgets, proof of reserve funds.... it's going to be extremely boring. But it must be done. The website won't give me those docs for 10 days though so that's a problem for future Gato.

Am I insane enough to elect myself to join the condo board at the next meeting so I can call a vote to change the pet rule from within? I might be. I might be that insane.

But one step at a time. I'm trying not to get over my skis here.

-----------------

In terms of game work, I have to immediately admit that my offering is bit pathetic in light of all the other stuff I've been up to.

I switched back to sprites because I just don't have the brain capacity to learn anything new right now. I need something I'm really used to doing that doesn't involve a lot of decisions. I wish I never had to make another decision again LMAO

I finalized the base for a pretty common Strade pose, starting with some strongish alterations to the body anatomy/pose:

[ placeholder/old version ]

[ new version ]

Here's a finalized combined sprite:

This particular pose shows up fairly often in the game so there was a lot of expression variants to draw for it [ lucky for me, needing some easy work LMAO ]

Here's a couple:

And that is all I have to offer this week 😅

I swear it won't be like this forever! I'm just kinda strugglin' and jugglin' here for now.

But I do want to thank you guys so much for your support. I know I say it every week, but I mean it every week. Sometimes it feels like I'm just LARPing as some character that knows what she's doing and it's so fucking scary to do all these things. But when I read the nice things you guys have said in the comments, it makes me feel like I can really do it if I just keep my head up.

You guys give me so damn much. 6 years ago I thought my life was over, and now I'm doing things I never thought were possible for me. You could never know how much it means to me.

But anyway, thank you. I hope you all have a fun and safe weekend!