Weekly Update #18

So as always, I've been a bit over ambitious with this update. There's so much content I want to put in this game and just not enough hours in the day.

I've probably written far too much detail in certain scenes, requiring a lot of art to be drawn as well. I just don't have the time to get it all done. Even the quick rough backgrounds and simple art I've been using from time to time doesn't quite cut it. While technically I have all the time in the world to make it, I'd rather try and get an update out every few months at the latest. I don't want people to feel like their support isn't getting results. I do spend all day working on the game, but there's just so much content I want to put in.

This is the most ambitious update I've had to date. I've got over 70 images planned for it, even cutting as many corners as I can, that's still a huge amount of art (not to mention the writing or the coding). While a lot of these art assets will be reused later and will streamline future updates, for now, they'll be taking up the bulk of my time for this update. If I wanted to make every single image (Including backgrounds) fully detailed, I would probably be looking at an entire month's worth of work just on the art alone. 

So I'm thinking about cutting some corners temporarily, keeping backgrounds to a minimum here.
Each background I draw takes anywhere from a good half hour to half a dozen hours. Though I can reuse them for multiple scenes, so it isn't too bad, but it would save me a lot of time if I skipped drawing a couple of them for now. It might make a few scenes look odd though, because I'd be using pre-existing backgrounds rather than a custom background for the scene.

Additionally, one way I could streamline production is to make scenes without shading or even colouring.

Colouring doesn't take too long, but it's usually a good half hour to an hour per picture, which adds up.

Shading is the area I spend the most time on all my pictures. It's probably anywhere from 2-4 hours on average. If I didn't shade certain scenes, it would massively cut down on my drawing time, meaning I could get the update out quicker.

Here's an example of how the two would probably look:

No colour, so the different layers are more apparent. Faces would probably be a little more simple than I normally draw too.

No shading or detail work, just basic flat colour. Saves a lot of time, but does look unfinished.

So my question to you is this: How quickly do you want the next update to come out? Would you rather I spend time making the art look decent now, or cut a lot of corners to focus more on the story? I will get to making the art look better eventually, but I do want to ask people's opinions on what they think.