Hi!

Been a while. 2 months went by in an instant, at least that's what it felt like to me. I'll tell you what I've been up to but first let's address the elephant in the room. I won't be able to get it done this month either. Despite that, I'm not stopping payments because I AM working, even if the work hasn't bore any fruit for you to taste yet. Needless to say, if you're tired of waiting it's up to you whether you stop your pledge for the month or cancel it for good. It's fine because at the end of the day I'm still just a random guy on the internet and there's no real way to validate the honesty of my words.

Buckle up, this post will be long!

Right after my last post I decided to take a week off to not have to deal with the mess that needed fixing. I watched a show that gave me a really good idea for a ntr story and I also worked on the storyboard for some of my future projects.

For the first time in forever I tried out a bunch of ntr games only to realize that I am indeed still a nukige fan so I can't really enjoy any other type of H-game. No matter how good the writing is, at some point I'm going to press that skip button. I also played a management game that was supposed to have ntr but got frustrated by how nonexistent said content was in the game. But at least it gave me a really good idea; there is literally no good ntr management game, just shit that "contains ntr". Think along the lines of the yakuza games' cabaret club minigame where you run a club with a roster of girls but all of them ntr's you.
To anyone who steals this idea; you're welcome! At the rate I'm going I'd be a fucking geezer before I'd get something like that done so I thought I'd put it out there.

Now what's up with GfTapes? After my week was done I practically binned another week because I made next to no progress. As I said in the last post the art was almost ready at that point so I did what any sane man would do and started to redraw everything. IIRC I hated how the faces looked both on the CG's and the sprites so I watched a bunch of art videos and redrew one face with some newfound knowledge in mind and that's what started it all. I liked how it looked so I decided that I needed to make all of them look like that. When I get fixated on something I just need to see it through. 

I have zero regrets because look at this. There's just no contest whatsoever. Tbf I was always doubtful about most of the faces I've done in the past but comparing them side by side was crazy. The other day I also went through the 0.9 folder for something and I stopped to look at the art and it was wild how bad some of that stuff is. What's even wilder is that I thought that was my best work at the time. For the record I know there's plenty of mistakes with the new stuff but at this moment I can't imagine looking back at this in 6 months and thinking it's THAT bad. But hopefully I will because that's going to mean I've improved.

Just another example. I'm all about that little speck of shadow on the nose now. That's the game changer. It gives so much more definition/ character to the face, which I've always struggled to achieve with anime art.

And yet another game changer. I'm finally able to kinda draw backgrounds! My most dreaded stuff, which I've always hated doing is now somewhat fun because I found a perspective grid tool that some blessed human being shared in Clip Studio. There's no way the old shitty backgrounds could've stayed with the new sprites. I was really conscious about them from the beginning because a good bg is almost as essential to the piece as the character art. I know nobody complained or anything but that doesn't mean it was acceptable. Maybe for the more cartoonish look of the early updates but those are long gone.
I thought about buying bg packs but that won't work because I'd still need to create some for the CG's and it's unlikely that one pack has everything I need. So no, artstyle needs to be uniform. Hiring an artist is not an option and the images I tried to generate with AI art looked nothing like what I wanted. So the only way to go about it is to clench my buttcheeks and git good.
Now, this was my first attempt (after studying stuff ofc) and wonkiness aside it's not that bad. Perfectly fine for that CG. But this post's cover pic, the background on that turned out fucking great IMO. I didn't include it separately because it's not that special on its own. With the characters though, damn, I'm actually proud of myself for being able to create decent backgrounds.

Finally, the sprites. It was essential to make the girls look the best they can because I just couldn't get past how the old versions were just so right. I don't know how much time I've spent on them or how many times I've redrawn the friggin faces but it was so worth it. Without a doubt I consider those two my greatest achievement and looking at them and comparing them to the old ones is the best way for me to grasp how much I've learned and improved as an artist.
Oh yeah, there's pregnancy too. If someone asked me I always told them but I don't think I've explicitly said it here that pregnancy will be in the game. So now you know and hopefully look forward to it.

Now that I'm done redrawing CGs and sprites I can finally move onto the dialogue. No matter how I tried I'm only able to focus on one task at a time. Just hold on for a little longer my dudes. The worst is behind us.
Though I'm tempted to start redrawing all the old backgrounds but for now I'll do just one to test how long it takes. If it's long I'll stick with turning photos into bg's.

Goddamnit it's almost 5:00AM so I won't even try to go through and edit this rambling into something coherent. Night, fellas! Go watch Chainsaw Man. More importantly go read Chainsaw Man!