hollyqk

July is break month

Hello!

As you might've guessed, I've been taking July off from Patreon work. I'd been meaning to take a month at some point to rest a little, and July ended up being that month.

I'll be pausing my page such that patrons won't get charged come August 1st, so there's no action needed on anyone's part. This is just a heads-up so that no one's surprised later.

Apologies to a couple of new patrons that joined this month! There should be August rewards, though.

Today is Bikini Day, didn't you know

June rewards out + LLENN doodle

Hello! I've sent out June's rewards to those whose pledges were processed with no problems. Thanks for another month!

I don't have any big write-ups for my plans this month, but here's a sketch page from today instead.

wip

Got some lines done last night!

Still trying to make sure not to be so heavy-handed with it. Time to get a Cintiq 27QHD so I can use bigger strokes (☆⌒∇゜)♪ 

mini sketch dump

I haven't updated here in a while, but I've been making these over the past couple of weeks and posting them to Twitter. Up there is Kaos-sensei from Comic Girls, which aired this season and finished just recently.

Then there's all this other stuff:

This next one is a sketch for a friend, based on Hakumei and Mikochi which aired a couple of seasons ago, crossed over with some OCs (and done on Procreate):

And finally some more design sketches:

WIP sketches

Getting some things ready for the end of June. Maybe not the header drawing (which was just me trying to get back into it after a bit of a break), but mainly the one below. What could it be?

Hint: I don't have any $10 tier rewards yet...

smkz cardigan ver.

shinonome megu

The brightener of people's days,  VTuber Shinonome Megu 

momo

[edit: I wrote a bit of plans for future months, but retracted them for now. Also removed some comments that lost their pertinence because of the edit.]

I took a short break from drawing to set my PC up with some new parts. It's all working now, so I painted this yesterday!

As for the title: Momo is actually the name of this character that I first designed and drew in 2015. I borrowed her name for a while without really telling the world about her, but here she is now.

bonsai

(today's sketch)

Ko-fi page!

Hello, I made a Ko-fi page! https://ko-fi.com/F1F6EDQK

If you're more into occasional, no-commitment support, Ko-fi is a good option that I appreciate a lot. Thanks!

May rewards out! + June...

May rewards

Hello!

I just sent out the May rewards. I hope you like them.

May was kind of a slow month on all fronts, but that's okay. Down time is important too. As long as it doesn't stay down...

During the last week or so of May, I started drawing in my sketchbook a lot. I hadn't done it in a while, the last time being around March or so. That plus drawing a lot of original designs made for a pretty refreshing few days. I'll likely continue that going into June, so that's something to expect.

Speaking of which

Concerning that, I've been developing characters for a series that I want to start working on! It's kind of big news, but for lack of a more impactful way to introduce it, I'd like to one day make it the focus of my Patreon, somehow.

And this, which I've posted before:

One day I'll have a good, proper scanner.

So yeah

Though there's still quite a lot to work on, I'm making progress. It's a bit unfortunate, but I think I'll probably be taking a break from or putting on hold a lot of things in order to properly focus on this (things including other projects, the other comic I was working on, making silly games and fan art and such). I should still have Patreon rewards at the end of the month, of course, but they might be different from usual. I'll announce it beforehand if it's anything to look out for.

I think that's about it for this long post. Thanks again for your support up till now!

-momo

rika onee-chan mode

finished version

hi-res + PSD in the May reward pack...

rika onee-chan mode WIP 2

Today is update #2 for this drawing. I tried thinner lines to see how it looks. I think colors will be finished in the next couple of days.

rika onee-chan mode WIP

rika onee-chan mode (sketch ver.)

lines and color to come...

May 14 doodles for the day

doodlin'

(with a purpose)

koume and morpho

I figured Koume's affinity with the spirit world would do something to draw blue butterflies to her...

sealed letter

b&w version

Something of a folds practice piece, but really just a doodle. It ended up being more detailed than I first intended, which is all right because it was enjoyable and therapeutic, almost.

Feel free to imagine her story...

Storyboard day

Hello!

Today felt like a storyboard day, so that's what I worked on. This series is sorely behind, but I think it'll definitely get done someday.

I'm not actually making anything too new here, but mostly just redrawing an old storyboard I had. Things like how I want the main character to be to the actual style of the drawings have all changed since I last worked on this, so I wanted to update it all before I started lining in earnest.

I feel a lot better about the drawings this time around, which is good since I still wasn't sure about them when I finished the storyboard the first time... I still need to work on speeding them up, but I think the lines will come out nicely, in any case.

New panel <- -> Old panel. Using fatter/rougher lines is kind of an attempt at forcing myself to leave detail for later. (Procreate on iPad actually helped a lot with practicing that since it's very easy to just tilt the pencil and instantly get more ambiguous, sketchy lines.)

And at the risk of getting conceited, I think I'm just like, better at drawing than I was the first time, so things feel better overall.

Still, I worry about whether or not this project will pay off, in whatever way that it can. Most importantly though, what happens as a result aside, I do want to see this short story finished someday since it's been written for so long, and I'd like to finally send its message out into the world.

I'm wondering if I could eventually focus almost full-time on short story webcomics like this one will be, so this will be the beginning of that adventure.

Procreate dump

I've been doodling on Procreate! My last drawings with it were in like March. momo bad

It's still as magical as ever. It's like my sketchbook but without the mess... though there is still something special about holding a spiral-bound sketchbook and pencil in hand.

Actually, a few of these were exercises in drawing bigger since I tend to draw kind of small. It's easier to make mistakes when all your strokes are tiny, so I want to try drawing bigger again (I used to but stopped for some reason) and see where it leads. It's times like this that a Cintiq 27QHD would be useful. ha ha

Here's everything in the order that I drew them over the past couple of days.

April rewards sent + plans for May

Hello!

Yesterday I sent out the April rewards. I hope you like them if you've checked them out already.

For May... well, April was a little hectic for me, truth be told, so in May I plan to go a little slower. There'll still be rewards going out, of course, but I'll most likely be sticking to smaller drawings overall. I need to use my iPad more and Procreate is good for that kind of stuff.

My friend told me, "anything you draw is technically for work," so I think I'll just take it easier for a while, draw things I like and see how it goes. Lately I've been in a "have to draw this, have to draw that, and have to make it look real good" mindset, which is more exhausting than productive over the long term, really. I wouldn't recommend it!

That said, I hope you'll continue to enjoy what I create here. As always, I'm extremely grateful for the ongoing support. Thanks a ton!

-momo

announcement for commissions in May

(And for some time after)

Hello! Some news...

I wanted to post those two commissions before announcing that commission slots will be closed in May. That means this month's commissions were the last for now, and effectively there will be only $1, $5 and $10 tiers next month. I know this isn't affecting more than a handful of people, but I hope this is enough advance notice so that you can adjust your pledge before the cutoff on May 1st. Thank you for your generous contributions all this time!

For the sake of transparency: I don't intend to bring them back immediately in June or even the following months. I decided that I want to free up my time a little so that I can work more on other things, like comics and more illustrations (and games, of which there are a couple currently in the early stages of development, but that's less of a priority). It's possible I might bring them back in the future when I feel more confident in being able to balance it all, but for now I want to take a step back, then build things up from there as I'm able to.

Admittedly that's probably what I should have done in the beginning, but... so it goes.

That's all for now. There are still some other changes to come, but this is the only one that's certain enough that I can announce it here.

Thanks for your continued support!

-momo

comm: Ichigo

Ichigo from Darling in the Frankxx is the second commission. Thanks to both for another month!

comm: Cui Yifei

Commissions! This is the first of two: Cui Yifei from Muv-Luv: Total Eclipse. Thanks!

Chieri and Usadama-chan

It's Usadama-chan! (this: http://amuseshop.shop5.makeshop.jp/shopdetail/000000001848/)

Needed to draw something to unwind and this just kind of happened. I have one on my desk so it felt appropriate.

I have some other stuff I've been working on, but I'm going to hold off on posting it for now... I've also been working on commissions. Almost done with those.

And I still have the $10 tier rewards to make, so things should be pretty busy for the next week and some. Here's a last Chieri sketch:

~Just iM@S things~ part II

A lot of iM@S doodles getting done recently, for some reason. It's just fun.

I took some process snapshots of Miria up there, so I'll put that together for the $1 tier sometime during the month. Here's some Koume-inspired sportswear in the meantime! I want to try to flesh the design out some more, maybe render it with the actual materials and stuff.

~Just iM@S things~

Just Koume on floor things. Also these pose practice/general practice/just for fun sketches:

March rewards out! + April plans + potential news

I just sent out the March reward packs! Have fun.

April plans

I miraculously already have ideas for April's drawing planned out, so I'll start on them soon. Lately I've been wanting to go back to GJ-bu things, as you saw last month... might have some iM@S doodles on the side again, too. Either way, I'll be trying my hand at another animation loop, I think.

+ potential news

I don't want to say too much yet and get anyone too excited or nervous or anything, but: I've been thinking about the structure of my Patreon page here and I'm contemplating some revisions. They could include tier prices and the nature of the rewards, so it'd be a pretty big change. I have more planning to do before announcing anything very concrete, but I'll make sure to keep the updates flowing regarding that.

That's all for now. Thanks for a wonderful March of support. Send in the commission requests if you have them!

-momo

March rewards...

Hello, everyone!

I'm writing this post to say that unfortunately, the rewards won't be going out today... the truth is, in some freak accident yesterday my HDD with all my work on it suddenly died, so all the original files have been lost. What this means is it'll be a little while before I'm able to get the March reward pack back to a proper state, which I am absolutely determined to do, and also it's April Fool's day so that was all a lie. Ooohoho

With that out of the way, it's actually true that the rewards will likely be going out a bit later, say tomorrow or later tonight or something. Everyone's pledges except a couple of patrons' are currently still pending, so we can only wait for all those to finish. Thanks for your patience!

For the record, I do keep backups of all my work, so in the event of an HDD failure nothing really awful like the above scenario should happen. Foresight!