another Faces Update

OMG ANOTHER UPDATE, JUST FRICKEN RELEASE THEM ALREADY!!!! GEEEEZZZ!!!!

=_= I hear you fam... orz

As I said in my previous faces update, all of the bases are drawn and I'm at the final stage of polishing them individually at the pixel level. But here's the situation: that process is taking a little longer than I'd originally planned for.

Here's why:

I hope that this animated image gives you an idea of the extent of the "cleanup" process.

I'm doing a lot of work on each face to really make them up to my standards. This process is becoming more than a simple cleanup, and in some cases involves a lot of re-drawing and correction. This stuff is a lot of tedious detail-work, particularly when it comes to details like hair-- that's why I described it as a "grind" in my previous update.

And some more examples, from the exported drawing to the completed pixel-detail face:

So-- right now about half of the faces are finished and ready to go (I "only" have about 50 faces left to do...). I'm looking at where I'll be by the end of this week (my original release deadline)-- the whole set won't be finished by then, at least not to a standard of quality that I would find acceptable.

This faces set is planned to contain the faces for characters included in the original character set as well as the human and orc characters from the Monsters expansion (others, like the dwarves/elves, beast tribes, or future fantasy, would be planned for a separate release).

But... based on the speed I've been going so far, I think that finishing the faces from the first character collection this weekend is realistic. 

So this is what I am thinking:

I've delayed these faces long enough!-- remaking them entirely caused them to be delayed by an  entire year (and I still feel really bad about that as a major failure, even though I think it was worth it because the quality of the current set is much better).. it's absolutely not fair that I delay them any further for patrons. 

Therefore my current plan is to finish and release the first half of the faces as a patron download, and then follow that up with the second half (the monsters characters) a couple of weeks after. Then I can compile them into the full release originally planned.

That way, patrons will get the first half of the faces after this weekend (probably Monday), just as I had originally planned, and there won't be a full delay. 

Instead, we can pretend that it'll be a patron pre-release ahead of the finished set. Then I can spin it as a good thing  👼 

Let me know what you think! Does this plan work for you? 

As always your input is important to me.

---

Thanks!