Every once in a while I make one of these wall of text posts to collect my thoughts. Today I'm sitting here with this Qhala model just one or two work sessions away from being upload ready and I feel....conflicted. Partially because I've been feeling absolutely drained from a completely insane situation I just had to deal with in my life, and partially because that situation has put me in a position where I'm going to have to change how I approach my work in this community. So this is an attempt to take a deep breath, collect those thoughts, and share them with you guys before I start making some major shifts in my output going forward.

So first....the chaos.

The short version is, I just had to deal with a situation where a tenant of mine, who had relapsed into a drug habit, basically tried to take over my house. We're talking finding heroin needles in your toilet after coming home from a root canal and having to move your valuables to a friend's house because you don't know what kind of fucked up situation you're in. There were junkie girlfriends, police raids, smashed furniture, and all kinds of messed up shit. Add on top of that me trying to recover from a pinched nerve and being on disability leave from work, and the fact that all of the residency laws in my state are thoroughly stacked towards tenants, and you get a complete clusterfuck that basically sideswiped my entire life from about early April through the middle of June. And I'm actually incredibly lucky I was able to get him out when I did, because if he had dug his heels in I would still be working on getting rid of him right now.

Now I'm back in the house, locks are changed, I've had some time to decompress and recover mentally, and I'm in the process of rebuilding the strength I lost healing from the cervical impingement. I'm fortunate enough to have a stellar group of people looking out for me and helping me through situations like this, so I'm in very good shape all things considered. But all of this leaves me with another problem which is the reason why I've felt so art blocked the last few weeks.

Keeping this house relies on me making consistent side income alongside my day job. I live in a very expensive part of a country doing everything in it's power to make things even more expensive, and I work in a dish room in a college kitchen. Not exactly making big boy money over here. I was able to keep things in the black last year with the renters income, but being that I'm renting rooms out of a house I'm living in, it made for a somewhat uncomfortable living situation. And this year, both tenants turned out to be major problems; the first tenant had to be asked to leave earlier this year, and now this.

At this point, I am completely over the idea of renting out my living space to anybody that I haven't THOROUGHLY vetted, and have a third party involved who is able to remove them when things get problematic. And honestly, I'm just done with the idea of being a landlord. Because of this, I have two options, as far as I can see it;

1) Sell the house, get a smaller living situation (Condo or apartment), and give up on the one chance I probably have at home ownership.

2) Keep the house, and find some way to make consistent side income.

I really like this house. It's a bit much for me to handle with on my own, but there are ways to deal with that. The problem is I'm going to have to make about an extra $10k-$15 in order to comfortably keep it. I can soften the blow with some belt tightening, but to make this work, I'm going to have to both take more shifts at work, AND find some way to make income with my 3d skill set.

And the latter part is the part that has me unable to pull the trigger on wrapping up Qhala. Because to be honest....I'm not really happy with how that model came out. Neither back in the SFM days, nor now. She badly needs a remesh/retopo/repaint, and my intention was to use this minor update to figure out what I had to do for that process. But if I'm going to commit to what I need to do to grow my audience and start treating this like a profession instead of a hobby, then I'm going to need to put that plan on potentially indefinite hold.

There are other things I'll need to put on hold too that I'm not happy about. Vega and Nika both could use new rigs and some adjustments. Vega I'm particularly frustrated about because I made an entire set of armor for her that I've been keeping in my back pocket, and I still haven't gotten around to figuring out how to properly rig it. Nika also needs more clothing options than just a sports outfit and swimsuit. And my plan for the last few years has been "learn high quality Blender production, update some of my old models, then start figuring out production strategies". Effectively, I'm now cornered into punting on that middle phase of updating Nika/Qhala/Vega and skipping straight to the production grind.

That fucking sucks, and I hate it. I took some time to chew on it and run the numbers, and I keep coming to the same conclusion every time. So I guess....consider this journal me making peace with that and moving forward. At the very least I managed to get Qhala a reasonably functional blender rig, and perhaps I'll find someone to commission to get that Vega armor rigged. And Nika has someone actively maintaining an IK rig for her, so I think she'll be in good hands until I can finally get back to her.

All that said, on to the future. I have some problems to solve and a house to hang on to. lets talk about ways to work out solutions.

First off, the prospects for making consistent income creating these characters is.....not great. 3d character modeling and rigging in this community has a bit of a value perception problem. To provide a point of reference, here's one of the more consistent Blender tutorial youtubers out there (RoyalSkies) talking about his prices and commission practices;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Tm_7UgOWfY

A few key points from the video;

- Industry standard rate for 3d art is 35$ an hour in 2024
- For a set of armor, RoyalSkies charges about $250 per part
- For a *rigging* commission, Royalskies charges about $2000-$4000 for a basic realtime Maya/UE5 rig
- RoyalSkies *avoids* working on faces entirely; They are time consuming to produce and eat lots of resources

So, I'm not RoyalSkies, and I can't just go out and charge his prices. That's not the point here. The point is this; take those bits of info and look at the kind of commission prices people in our community charge for complex 3d character work. RoyalSkies is charging $2k-$4k for just a rig that would be considered basic for what we do with our characters. Many of us are charging a fraction of that for a FULL model/texture/remesh/rig job for characters with expression and genital functionality. Compared to other 3d niches, we charge comparatively bargain basement rates for highly technical work.

If you've ever wondered why it's impossible to find consistent 3d character artists in the furry community with open commissions, this is the problem in a nutshell. Most of the ones that know what it really takes to make these characters avoid commissions like the plague, and the ones that dip their toe in the water get snapped up by a feeding frenzy of starved commissioners. And in that case, it's rare to see someone able to settle into a pricing rate that respects the hours they're putting in.

It's not that I don't want to offer commissions to make characters like Shani for people, it's that right now, I can't. She's the equivalent of a fully custom Rolls Royce built by hand; 9 months of straight R&D on hand rigging with an advanced expression control system. I'm going to need to find a way to take that feature set and mass produce it. Take the handcraft Rolls Royce method and cut it down to a production line Honda Civic method. I'll probably have to charge commission prices that are slightly uncomfortable for people in this community to pay, and I'll need to develop a high quality base body to bring the workload per-character down to something reasonable. I need to output consistently high quality results to make it work. But whatever I do, if I do commission work, I NEED to make sure I'm not cornering myself into a spot where I'm making considerably less money than my $24/hr kitchen work day job. Because at that point I'm probably better off just taking overtime shifts.

So that's the core problem I'll need to adapt my workflows to solve. That said, there are alternative paths that I'll be exploring as well;

- Storefronts like itch.io and Jinxxy seem to be potential alternatives to Gumroad these days, so selling "delux" versions of character models I release for free as well as a few exclusives is a possibility. I would need to figure out what features would be gated to the delux version without gimping the model, but I could probably start with alternate skins, extra clothing, and extra expression controls and branch out from there.

- VRChat seems to have a very healthy marketplace for character content as well. It's tricky for me because being in VRChat kind of gives me the heebie jeebies; the social anxiety goes into overdrive when I realize people are reading my virtual body language. But I could probably find a way to get over that, and I know some people doing solid work in that community, so I have some inroads.

- Render commissions are something I could do almost immediately. I tend to focus on the lighter end of the NSFW stuff, but I do try to provide quality lighting and results. So I might start by offering some pinup commission slots, and branching out from there.

- Down the line, if I develop a stable modeling pipeline that can put out a character or so a month, it might be worth setting up a patreon for it. This is one of the options I'm least enthusiastic about, but if I find a way to do it that delivers consistent results without cornering me into timesink productions, it's an option.

- More piecemeal commission services; rig doctoring, texturing, modeling parts or props, etc.

All of those are ways I could start to dip my toe into making this a side hustle. My hope is to maybe start figuring out what services to offer by September, do a trial run for a couple of months, all while working towards the first character pipeline by early next year.

I'm also going to need to start focusing more on properly building up an audience through consistent render work and more social media posting (the horror). Up until now I occasionally post some renders in short bursts when I'm really in the mood, but I don't have a consistent output or focus and generally stick to my own OCs (or ones I've worked on). That inconsistency needs to change, and I'm going to need to start branching out more and interacting with other people's characters as well. The strategy for that will be leaning harder into Mia and Shani, and trying to flesh those two out a bit more as my own characters instead of letting them exist as blank slates for the general public. Maybe start doing some light worldbuilding around them as I add more characters to the roster and network with other OC owners.

As for something like a Discord server; I don't have a plan to do an "AnnoAD's Discord Server" arrangement just yet, but there is something I have in the works that might eventually evolve into something more interesting. I've got a small R&D server I run for a handful of other artists where I'm figuring out how to teach people Blender. Not just character stuff, but the full package. We're hoping that once we've built up more training material and resources, we'll have enough material in the tank to build a public facing server designed around collaborative learning. I feel like for me, my audience has always been other 3d artists, and there are a lot of people who want to get proficient enough at blender to work with their characters. So actually training people to use the models we make for them seems like a unique way to build that.

So...that's that. Everything off the chest. The next year is going to be a make or break year due to this shaky financial scenario. Until I know whether I'm able to keep the house or not, my blender efforts are going to be focused on improving output for my audience and streamlining my modeling workflow. Once we're in the clear, I'll get to do my Qhala, Nika, and Vega rebuilds in peace. But for now, it's time to get this Qhala update out the door and get down to the real grind.

Here are some download links to some of the character releases I've put out there over the years, barring a few old releases that I can no longer support;

SHANI
Blender - https://smutba.se/project/08c1ee5c-.....-f101c2e7deef/

MIA
Mia for SFM - https://www.furaffinity.net/view/50984312/
Mia for Blender (Source Files, IK Rig Alpha 1) - https://www.furaffinity.net/view/51057746/

NIKA
Nika for SFM - https://www.furaffinity.net/view/36902732/
Nika for Blender (Source Files, Reptilligator IK rig) - https://smutba.se/project/29871/

VEGA
Vega for SFM - https://www.furaffinity.net/view/41140305/
Vega for Blender (Source Files, IK Rig Alpha 1) - https://www.furaffinity.net/view/52268802/

QHALA
Qhala S for SFM - https://www.furaffinity.net/view/33830665/
Qhala for SFM - https://www.furaffinity.net/view/34932878/
Qhala Source Files - https://www.furaffinity.net/view/37740299/

Also, a quick journal about some things regarding the last couple of years, and some plans going forward: https://www.furaffinity.net/journal/10774124

Alright.....not really sure how this will go, but I'm gonna do this off the cuff and let it rip. Been a while since I dropped a wall of text here, but you guys are about a year and a half overdue for an update, so lets get schwifty with it.

I'm going to try something I haven't done before and just.....try to write in the voice I speak in. I had a conversation with Warfare and the crew the other day about written voice versus spoken voice, and how I kinda write in a COMPLETELY different style than I speak, and I hate it. Long story short, my internal editor is too powerful. Gets me triple proofreading and quadruple guessing every word that goes on the page. So I got the editor tied to a chair this time. Maybe spellcheck tho. Don't wanna be too much of a mess you know?

So here we go....the last two years, where I've been, and where I'm at.

Last time I wrote a journal I was dealing with a big loss. One of the most important people in my life, and one of my strongest advocates when my jacked up neurology shits the bed. Fortunately, my mother had her shit together, and left me with a roof over my head, enough funds to get me through the dark times and keep the house afloat, and a strong support network to help me through the transition. It sucked, and I'm a different person because of it, but I was able to get to the light at the end of the tunnel and escape the abyss. Unfortunately....it took a while.

2022 was an absolute disaster of a year. While I was picking up the pieces, the job I work at full time had allowed conditions to completely deteriorate during Covid, and made every effort to avoid fixing shit when the world got back at it. Thankfully it's a union gig, so I had some manner of support and agency, but it was a long year of conflict, anger, insane situations, and lies from management and administration. Things came to a head at the end of the year when we made some big, BIG pushes to force considerable changes, and as part of the push, I manage to get myself moved to another spot on the crew that involved less socialization and multitasking, and more single minded focus and physical activity.

Physically and mentally, I had a lot of health issues and psychological work to do to pull myself back together. I was effectively unable to sleep, socialize, and function. I ended up having to face my over reliance on THC as something of an antidepressant, busted my ass to get myself back on an exercise grind, and did lots of tinkering on my diet. The work situation kept me in something of a perma-trauma state, so it was a rough grind, but we got there. Ended up sussing out a gluten sensititivity through the whole ordeal, so there was a silver lining in that now I don't feel the low level of fatigue, itchiness, and nausea that I've been battling for the last decade or so. Also really zeroed in on some strategies to sort out sleep issues I've had since before I can remember.

As far as art....I was completely fucked on ability to focus and learn. I kinda spent the year occasionally taking stabs at sorting out the clusterfuck of corrective flexes I had to make to get Mia's expression range to actually work in SFM (she's got somewhere around 650+ total flexes, jesus fuck), but for all intents and purposes it was a lost year for progress on learning character design and creation.

So that was 2022. Rough times. How about 2023? Aside from some fluctuations here and there, 2023 was a complete turnaround from the state I had been stuck in for the last year. In fact....looking back, 2023 was something of a turning point in my life. One of the best years in a long time, and one where I managed to rebuild my mental, physical, and financial situation.

The change in pace at work proved to be exactly what I needed to turn this ship around and start cruising back to port. I'm a person with very short social batteries and a need to wear myself out physically, so the shift actually helped the recovery instead of stalling it. We're still in the process of a union push to repair relations with administration, but we managed to win some big victories and dismantle some long standing facilities issues. We even got ourselves a complete renovation of our workplace, so for all intents and purposes, things are looking up over there.

On the personal side, 2023 was a year of intensive growth under the radar. I managed to cut my reliance on THC for sleep management, though I did end up experimenting for a little while to see if I could get an idea of what my thresholds really are, and what constitutes a healthy usage pattern in a therapeutic sense without nuking my motivation (been thinking about talking to a doctor about medical use in the future, since most pharmaceutical alternatives fuck up my body). I also "hit the books" as it were, pushing to rewire my philosophy on life, the world we live in, and how to adapt to the wild shit that's going on in the transition we're making into a way too ridiculously online society. I think part of the reason I even started my profile in this community was to escape from some of the social dynamics of the internet that have been coarsening, and I managed to re-asses and rewire my understanding of all of that in a way that no longer requires me to feel like I live in a shitty hellworld full of insane people. Not that there's any lack of insanity out there these days but.....I understand it more, and judge people for it far, far less. You can't live your life hating the world and expecting it to not affect your health, ya know?

And as for art, well......I haven't posted very much, but the amount of work I'm doing to learn and grow have been starting to bear fruit. I have a goddamn solid update for Vega coming down the pipe that's a bit roadblocked by some rigging problems at the moment, but should be ready to rock prettty soon. Dropping SFM has allowed me to fully embrace custom rigging with Rigify, and to really push my understanding of high>low poly baking and texture painting. There's still a lot to do and learn, but I'm hoping that by the end of the year I'll be able to speed up these workflows and start delivering some interesting models for y'all.

Most importantly, I managed to connect to so many other artists in this community by hanging out in the discord back channels and VCs. I'm honestly more of a voice-to-voice kinda guy; text interaction isn't really my thing. So having all of these little VC lounges to hang, shoot the shit, build knowledge, collaborate, and mutually support each other has been a godsend. I'll probably make this the last full on journal for a long time, as I'm now more or less a discord creature in this community, but you'll always have access to the fruits of my labor here on the galleries once things pick up a bit.

I want to shout out so many people here, but I just feel like I would forget too many, so for now I'll just say that if you've ever had an extended, positive interaction with me on a VC, you are an awesome person, and thank you so much for helping pull be out of the shit. But I will give a special shout out to Kaitou3d and Warfaremachine, two of my closest collaborators on the 3d production grind. We've been discussing some plans for 2024 that I'm going to keep close to the vest for now, but know that we're cookin' for real, and we're looking to serve the good shit.

For those of you here and there who have tried to message me over the last year or two only to not get a reply, I apologize if you caught me during one of my rough patches. I have some social overload issues that get particularly bad when people try to contact me via any sort of text medium. Like I said before....I have an internal editor that only pops up when I'm talking via text, and it socially drains me way faster than when I'm speaking over a mic. Add neurological reasons for social burnout to the list, and it just creates a dynamic where when someone hits me up on text during an "off" period, I just.....can't. If I'm socially blown out, it needs to be via voice, and it needs to be interfaced through a group that I trust to take the heat off me when my batteries crash. I'll never be able to "unwire" that, but with time I may be able to push my battery capacity to make it a bit easier to interact. But for now, I think I'll keep my non-discord-VC communications to a minimum to preserve the energy levels I need to do the work I want to do.

One last thing........the next "phase" of my work will be major overhauls for 4 characters; Nika, Qhala, Vega, and Mia. instead of just moving on to new characters, I want to dig in and push those four as far as I can. Not just upgrade the body functionality and bump to blender 4, but also create high quality clothes, gear, props, and maybe down the line, environments. These 4 have been a big part of my artistic development over the last 6-7 years, so I'm going to treat this as my "Senior Thesis" to graduate from the doldrums of being an intermediate level 3d artist and push myself to professional grade. After that.....sky's the limit in terms of what I might make. Maybe I'll make more characters. Maybe I'll get wrapped in some bigger project. Or maybe I'll work out some stories to tell with them and actually use their character attributes to create cool art. Maybe I'll do all of that. Or maybe I'll do something I don't expect. Whatever I do, it'll always be focused towards making unique, dope ass characters that don't have to hide the naughty bits to appeal to the masses. I've come to the realization that I'm not one for publicly creating porn, but I'll always do everything I can to facilitate y'all that love to get wild with it.

2024 is going to be an interesting year. Lets roll up our sleeves and get to it. AAD out.

Just wanted to let you guys know I'm doing a bit better after that last check in, and to thank everyone for their kind and supportive comments. Writing that post and talking about the situation is still really difficult for me, but getting things off my chest helps the process of working out how to get back on the horse and move forward with life.

I've been doing my best to focus on some of the strategies I used to work through tough times in the past. Helps to clear away the fog, even if just a little bit. I still have lots to take care of in my personal life, so I'll have to be careful with budgeting my time.

Once I've regained more of my balance, I'm going to check back one more time to sort out the states of some of these projects in a journal. The situation over the last year meant I had to leave lots of lose ends lying around and many projects untouched. Pinning down a list and locking in game plans for everything should help get the ball rolling, once offline life permits.

Going to cut off here. Things are tough right now, but there are some genuine opportunities coming up in the near future that I'm going to focus on working towards. I'm going to cross my fingers and push in that direction, will see how it goes. Thank you all again for the support over the last few years, and keep on keepin' on <3

This is a post I was desperately hoping I wouldn't have to make this year. Or ever.....

About a week and a half ago, my mother passed away from cancer.

We had some reason to believe that we might have been out of the woods after her surgery earlier in the year, but everything flared back up in August. At that point, there just wasn't enough time to do anything direct to combat it. Two months was all we had from that point on to say goodbye and help her wrap up the last moments of her life.

The last few months have been a nightmare. I've been avoiding talking about all of this purely to avoid the trainwreck that my head turns into when I think about it. Tinkering with Vega and Mia here and there and hanging out in discord VCs during some of the moments of clarity between work/family/anxiety overload was a tremendous help in keeping my sanity intact, and I can't thank you guys enough for putting up with me.

So yeah...just wanted to get this off my chest. Not talking about it was starting to hurt worse than talking about it. Right now, unfortunately my focus is completely fucked. Projects will not halt, but the pace is going to stay extremely slow for obvious reasons. Apologies to anyone who DMed me in the last few months that I wasn't able to respond to. When I'm in this state I just can't manage replies sometimes.

Don't waste time. Don't take the people you love for granted. And take care of yourselves.
- AAD

Been a while since I posted one of these. What's up people!

First off, just want to give a quick shout out and huge thanks to  artica for supporting and signal boosting the Vega model, and greetings to new watchers in the crowd. As I said in the post, there's still a long way to go on this project, as well as the underlying base body project she's a part of. But I'm excited to see what people end up making with her, and what improvements I can work out based on what people post. I very much hope you all enjoy the results so far, and am looking forward to showing you what I can build when I'm able to polish and fine tune the model!

I ended up going a lot quieter over the summer than I thought I would, but thankfully the time was well spent. Most of my "project time" was spent learning the particulars of working with Blender, and I'm feeling very confident in the software now. Sculpting is much less of a struggle, and I've got a way better handle on armatures, weight painting and general modeling/shading fundamentals. Also have a nice arrangement of plugins that should make for some interesting scene building results going forward. Other than that, mostly focused on staying indoors, stay healthy, and not stressing out about the hellworld situation too much.

I'm also hitting the limits of what kind of projects and plugins my hardware is able to support, which makes working on full scenes a bit of an uncomfortable process. Thankfully, I've got a solid amount of money saved up for a new production rig, so hopefully that shouldn't be a problem for long. Getting my hands on a video card is going to be an adventure given the amount of turbulence in the video card market right now, and I'm still waiting on Big Navi benchmarks before I make a decision to jump on team red or green. But once that locks into place, I'm REALLY looking forward to getting the rest of the machine built out. I won't be leaving the SFM crew behind when it comes to model releases, but when it comes to renders, it will be nice to finally be able to break away from the limits of Source engine and go back to working as a true 3d generalist again.

As for model production, I've got another break from work starting towards the end of the month that will run into the new year, so I'm hoping to pick up some steam on that front. Current plan is to have both a female and male base body fine tuned by the end of January with a compatible clothing pack. With any luck, I'll be able to figure out some basic rigging as well in that time frame, which should make the blender side of each release a lot easier to work with for everyone. Whatever I end up with should carry me through the next year, and make it possible to build characters faster when the day job ramps up.

I also need to get a male model produced to prototype the male base, just like I'm doing with Vega on the female base. Some of you can probably already guess what character I'll be building for that ;) but until I've got some headway made on that front, can't make any official announcements just yet.

So yeah, a few more months of laying low and doing groundwork for future projects, then we'll see what the new year brings! Until next update, stay safe everyone, and take care of yourselves <3
- AAD

So it's been brought to my attention recently that there is someone on Gumroad attempting to resell a VRChat port of the recent Qhala model I released:

https://gumroad.com/trioguru?recomm.....y=search#VoJlA

https://sfmlab.com/project/27382/

Just to be clear; under NO CIRCUMSTANCES should you ever have to pay money to download this model, or a port of it. DO NOT waste your money on this plagiarized model. The seller previously tried to host this model on booth.pm, who took the model down on the first request. However, Gumroad has been less co-operative in taking action.

All of my models use base bodies provided to me by other creators with their expressed permission (Warfaremachine and Petruz), under the agreement that the derivative model (or any further derivatives) will only be distributed for free, NOT be resold, and contain proper attributing to the parties involved in their creation (Me, the base body modeler, and the OC owners). All of this applies specifically to distribution of model files; you do have our permission to publicly distribute *free* downloads of ports or edits of the model, and you are allowed to commission (or take commissions for) model edits and renders from other artists. The intent is to not hinder any of the common ways people use these models; only to make sure people are not attempting to claim ownership of and directly sell them like this scumbag is doing.

For all intents and purposes, you can consider these models to fall under a CC BY-NC 4.0 creative commons license, with the aforementioned commission exceptions:
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

On that note, I'm going to say something that will probably throw a wrench into everything I just wrote.....

I'm likely not going to go through the hassle of trying to DMCA this model thief. I'm just not in a good position to be engaging in risky legal maneuvers on this, and I have some concerns about submitting personal details directly to bad actors via the DMCA process. It honestly makes me feel like shit, but I just can't afford to get dragged into conflicts of this nature. So after discussing the matter with RatherDevious and some potential collaborators, we have come up with an alternative plan of action:

https://imgur.com/a/nc2IDCE

Back when Qhala dropped, a couple of mad lads going by EpicGhoul/Epix and CaptainJoosh ported the model into VRChat themselves, with some texture edits. I checked in with them to see if they're interested in providing their files as an "official" VRChat port with the original textures/features, and they've been gracious enough to accept my request. We will be sharing the port for free, under the same terms as the SFM model (CC BY-NC 4.0 with commission exceptions).

We will also share the .blend source files for both their VRC model and my SFM model. This should hopefully give people access to everything they would have gotten if they had made the mistake of paying for the stolen port. We should have a download ready within the next few days, so stay tuned!

As for the thief, I would advise avoiding purchasing any of his products. The Hornet model he posted was stolen from another modeler as well, so you are going to be ripped off either way:
https://twitter.com/realHSama/statu.....55573990928391

Instead, consider sending Gumroad a report, letting them know that this user is selling stolen goods. You can report his storefront with links to the original models and written feedback through this form:
https://gumroadhelp.typeform.com/to/b96L4I

On that note, we've got a snek waif to port for y'all. Thank you for coming to my TED talk, and HUGE shout outs to the VRChat/Unity crew for keeping me informed about this situation and helping me sort this out. Stay safe out there everybody <3
- AAD

Running slightly behind schedule, but I'm going to get the update I mentioned out ASAP. Looks like it's going to be a long night....

Swingin' through real quick to drop off a quick Nika/Qhala scene, and wish everyone a Merry Christmas!

My break from work started up just recently, so I took a few days to rest up and catch up on some games I've been meaning to check out. Have been feeling pretty scattered for the last month, so I needed time to blow off some steam and get my head focused again before I dive deep into the blender universe. Also needed to binge sleep a little bit. Finally getting the hang of that.

Going to also try to get in the habit of making SFM scenes a bit more often next year. Maybe branch out a bit to use other characters. I'm still going to keep to the "no licensed characters" rule, but there are so many well made, original character models in this community that it just feels like I'm just restricting myself way too much. Broadening the scope of what characters I let myself work with should make it a lot easier to loosen up. Consider that a New Year's resolution of sorts.

Priority #1 for the next week or two will be the Qhala remodel, and studying character modeling and porting. Will post some scraps and screenshots as I go to track progress. Also need to clean up my galleries a bit, and edit some text and titles. Get everything nice and sorted out so I can focus on keeping up momentum. After that, just going to just try to make shit faster and not defeat myself before I start up a project.

Thanks to everyone who stuck around for this somewhat meandering, unproductive year <3 Last Christmas I was feeling really strung out and stressed around this point in time, and I was having a really hard time acknowledging it or talking openly about it. Still having some gray days recently, and life is tough at times, but in general I'm a lot less depressed and a lot more hopeful for the future. There's still some psychological garbage I need to sort out, and some IRL loose ends I need to tie up, but I'm actually excited about learning new things again, and that's a change that I'm super happy about. Cheers to that!

- AAD

December Check In

Just swinging by with a quick update on projects! And....distractions from projects :X

The Qhala skin update has definitely opened up some opportunities to improve the quality of my reskins. At this point, I'm slowly working my way towards being able to make proper model releases instead of just hacking a new coat of paint on an old model. Once again, huge thanks to everyone who provided feedback and assistance.

Unfortunately, this also means the amount of work per project necessarily has to increase. I made some initial steps towards the re-work on the cobra base after some discussion with  ratherdevious, and I'm feeling confident that the next version will establish a strong workflow for building new, more unique characters. Unfortunately, life out in meatspace tends to hit me with a sideswipe every time I make progress on these things....and right now is no different.

IRL work drama started spinning up around the end of November, and I'm still in the process of handling some workplace situations that have been piling up for me and the people I work with. It's nothing horrible or job/life threatening, so no need for you guys to worry Just one of those "death by a thousand cuts" type of situations that tends to spike my workplace-related anxieties. I ended up taking point to try to help address the issues for my co-workers, so I'm going to have to make sure I'm focusing on getting as much as I can resolved before our holiday break. Until then, "Secret Projects" have to stay on the backburner for a little while.

On the plus side, the Cobra model is proving to be an extremely strong base model for the Qhala rework. I did a small test sculpt a couple of weeks back to see if I could mold her face a bit closer to Qhala's without breaking the rigging too badly in SFM, and the results were very promising!

https://sta.sh/0240ea8igx7p

So yeah...going to put in the work to make this a true remodel. Not just a reskin. I've got some very strong allies helping me figure out the kinks in the process, and I'm making sure to document my workflows so the next character after Qhala will hopefully go a lot faster.

Will keep you guys posted when I'm working at full steam again! Until then, stay safe, and enjoy the holiday season <3

- AAD

I'm working on a maintenance release for the old Qhala skin on Petruz' female snake model this week. There were a few lingering issues that I never got around to addressing, and the pack is a huge pain in the ass to use. Would be good if she didn't constantly blow up SFM sessions due to RAM limits. Less usermod folder shenanigans would also be nice.

For anyone who's used the old Qhala pack, I have a few questions:

1) Are you OK with using material overrides to tweak things like the glow intensity, assuming they were already exposed in SFM for you? Or, would the old "swap usermod folders" method work better? (Going to expose overrides unless I hear otherwise)

2) Would it be fine if I override the rest of the female snake textures to save on texture memory? (Pros: can use other skin slots for on-the-fly glow intensity, MUCH lower texture memory footprint. Cons: no other snake grills in the scene except Qhala, unless you're a material editing wizard.)

3)Has anybody else started seeing these texture distortions in the glow effects in SFM? If so, when did they start appearing for you? After installing models, reinstalling SFM, etc etc.... (https://sta.sh/0skyl4hh4n1)

I'll update this journal with a beta download in the next day or two just to see if anyone runs into a major problem. Assuming there are no issues, will move the download to an official posting this weekend.

- AAD

11-5 update - FUCK YES, finally figured out the glow distortion problem. Never rely on dev/null as a placeholder texture. Lesson learned.

11-6 update - https://sta.sh/02ggjtdmp3he
First attempt at a decompile/recompile session. Consider this the alpha version of a standalone model. Don't use for any projects you care about, and definitely let me know if something breaks.

Threw the old plans in a blender (Wall of text)

Alright, I've been way, way too quiet on here for the last few months. I know this is going to be long as hell, but with the amount of stuff I want to say, there's no real graceful way to do this. Going to just get this status report wall of text started and hope for the best.

First of all, huge, huge, HUGE thank you to everyone who has been going absolutely nuts over the past months making renders and animations with the Nika model. It's been really hard to write this part because I keep catching myself going on these long, sappy tangents writing paragraph after paragraph about my feelings about the project. I'm really not good at expressing sincere gratitude without completely overwhelming people...so just.....let's keep it at that for now. For the sake of writing a journal and not a novel. Just know that the amount of love that you've been showing the model has not gone un-noticed, and has been an honestly inspiring thing to be a part of for me.

I've been thinking really hard about where I want to go with these "skins" since the Nika paint wound down. The project was an honor to be a part of, but it was also an important test of what I've been doing up until now. Something that helped me expose a lot of flaws to myself in terms of the hardware, software, workflows, and resources I was using. It's no secret that I used to do 3d as a "job" for a period of my life, so I do have some skills and experience I brought to the table when I started up here. But I'm definitely struggling with the reality that some of my methods are outdated, time consuming, and sometimes just.....broken.

I also have a PC that's been threatening to die on me for the past three years. I've kept it alive on a combination of hopes, dreams, spare parts that friends give me, duct tape, and the occasional minor blood sacrifice. Nothing too violent. Just need to get a little drop on your heatsink and chant an incantation every few months and you're good to go. Satan ain't gonna hail himself.

Ultimately, the biggest question on my mind has been just how far I want to take these projects. Do I want to make simple repaints of existing meshes forever? Do I want to tinker around making scenebuilds in SFM? Or am I really here to pick up where I left off and resume my development as a 3d artist? Do I want to keep this gallery isolated from the pressures of having it be a "job" in any capacity? Or am I open to the possibility that, down the line, I may actually be interested in taking freelance commissions again?

That last question is the one I have the hardest time answering. Again, for the sake of not writing a novel, I probably shouldn't go too far into it, but my reasons for avoiding commissions have to do with that fact that working in the feild was stressful and alienating for me. Making lewds and cute pinups for myself has always been a combination of trying to counteract the alienation and engaging in a guilty pleasure for it's own sake. So while the idea of becoming a "freelancer" again is tempting, I can't shake the feeling that I'd be sacrificing something if I made that jump hastily. It's why I call myself a "hobbyist" on DA and not a "professional".....I just feel like I have more autonomy as a hobbyist, if that makes any sense. If I ever decide to cross that threshold and take commissions again, updating that artist tag will likely be the signal.

But the question of "do I want to tinker in SFM or do I want to grow as an artist" is one I have a answer for. I'm not satisfied just making skins and digging around for scenebuild props anymore. I want to be a true 3d generalist and start building my own assets again. Stuff built from scratch so I have the option of sharing with other artists or releasing the base files to the public. And I also want to overcome the fact that character modeling and rigging has been my biggest weakness since I started out in the field. I haven't built a rigged character since I was in school, and that was well over a decade ago. That shit needs to stop.

So here's where I'm at today:

After the Nika project, I took some time to relax and make the space shark poster. Then I started working on reinforcing my current PC while building a second one for production work. Now I have a dedicated production workstation again along with my main PC. I can finally handle complicated geometry and high quality renderers again without my PC threatening to explode on me, and offload long renders when I need to. No more drawing pentagrams on my stock intel heatsink to keep my core temps under 80c. We aftermarket custom cooling now, baby. Bigass fuckin' fans everywhere for that sweet, sweet 65c under 100% CPU/GPU load action.

Got that done late June, ended up binge gaming with the new hardware through July. Then I spent August and September learning new software. Drilled beginner tutorials in Blender 2.8 until I could perform the fundamentals I learned in 3dsmax/maya years ago. Spent a few weeks testing out 3dCoat, and ended up picking up a license for that. Also spent some time experimenting with Blender plugins and learning more about working with character rigs. I kept meaning to get back to making skins at some point, but every time I started, I'd end up going down another software rabbit hole and trying to learn something I didn't know how to do. So eventually I just stopped fighting it and committed to the learning phase.

A few weeks ago, I started feeling like I had a strong enough grasp of Blender to start planning out real projects. I picked a testing scene I had built around Nika and a Star Wars Battlefront HDR map that had very promising lighting, and committed to refining it into a finished, polished scene. Pushed myself to replace as many parts as I could manage with custom geometry, textures, and assets that look unique and "designed" to fit together while also testing the limits of my new hardware.

The result was the "Cloud City Opulence" render I posted recently. A little apartment space I built around Nika's character for this and future renders. It incorporates a mix of style cues lifted from Star Wars (Bespin) and Deus Ex (Tai Yong Medical), and feels like a good representation of what I'm capable of making when I'm really feeling inspired. And a big part of that sense of inspiration came from seeing the reception you guys gave our Nika model collab <3

Moving forward:

Things are going to be slow going for the near future while I work on mastering all of these new tools. I'll continue to make renders with Nika and this Bespin scene in Blender as I study character rigging and modeling. In time, I hope to have more to share on that front than just renders, but I don't want to make promises or set expectations until I've spent more time training in the laboratory. I do have some long term goals in mind, but better to keep things simple for now.

Otherwise, the next project is to start figuring out how my new toolkit fits into the reskin process. I was considering working on Kamaterasu to get the ball rolling, but I found that what I want to do there is going to require experience in 3dCoat that I don't have yet. So instead, I'm going to switch gears back to Qhala and snake gals for a little while. I've been meaning to re-paint her onto Petruz' cobra model for months, so that'll be a good opportunity to experiment with upgrades. I'd also like to try branching out into accepting requests using the same base model while it's "on the workbench". There were definitely some suggestions and requests made for other snake characters that I'd like to investigate. I'll try to get an update on all of this in the next few days so I can properly get the ball rolling on this one.

On that note, let's cap off the journal here. I'll work on making these shorter in the future now that we're a bit more caught up. For now I've gotta go write project notes and wrangle some snakes for the next update. More to come when I have the gameplan locked in.

I wrote a whole journal about nerd stuff and production management, but it's long as fuck makes my front page look dumb. Just tossing this out there to kick it to a back page. If you want to see me play a dragonforce solo on a PC keyboard, though, check this link:

http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/8992536/

Hey! I really don't use this space to update you guys on things. Apologies for that. I have a bad habit of vomiting constant word salad when I'm dealing with text posts, so the concept of writing regular journals seems...unwise at times. I guess we'll go with semi regular for now and see where that gets us.

Anyhow, I wanted to touch base on something that's been in my head for a few weeks now regarding the way I approach these projects. I'm not sure exactly what brought me to decide to share these texture packs, or why I focus on reskinning in the first place. I guess the best explanation is, I've wanted to get into character-related work for a long time, and all of the jobs I've done out in the 3d field have afforded me the opportunity to do anything EXCEPT for that. The closest I got was a run in with Poser Pro 2012 on a prior gig that we ended up dropping from the dev cycle. Got to keep the software license tho. I guess given the nature of my content and my avatar....yep, should be obvious where that led me

I kind of just hit the ground running with this alias to see where it gets me, and thus far it's been working out pretty well. Getting Kama out the door was a breath of fresh air. Qhala was something I've really wanted to work on for a while, so that one was on the short list before I even started writing it. Came out GORGEOUS. She's going to be a top contender for extra renders for a long time.

The Nika project is the one that kind of snapped things into focus a bit. The laid back approach can only get you so far, and this felt like something bigger than that from the get go. Actually collaborating with a modeler instead of just reskinning a base model is a big leap. SafetyLion releasing his Nika animation days after the shark model was a pretty clear sign that I was dealing with a much bigger project than I had anticipated. And the feedback I got after the summer poster really drove home that there are high expectations for this model.  nikasharkeh in particular has been a breath of fresh air to get feedback from. Crystal clear and direct on design feedback while being very supportive of our desire to make quality work.

So I'm kind of all in now. If I'm going to meet expectations, I need to draw on a more professional approach. Public prototype renders do not feel like the way to go. Also,  mrwarfaremachine is doing this for a living. I need to respect the fact that this needs to fit into his timetables. I need to respect the fact that Nika has a fan base and a very clear direction she's trying to take with her public persona. That it's not really just "someone's OC"; there's an official capacity that this project needs to fill.

I've been working a lot quieter since. Catalogued some screenshots of a repaint I worked on through the latter half of November that I'm sitting on; maybe I'll do a post-project journal on that after the dust settles. Did more work with the feedback I got, translating whatever I couldn't address directly via paint into project documentation. Basically, I had to pull the project off of Warfare's plate and redo some of my part, with a focus on building him useful resources to make the best character he can.

That's all sitting in a development asset pack and a 10 page resource document now, back on his project list and ready for him to turn into a super sick model. One that's actually Nika, and not a "Nika Skin" on a shark base model. I still have more painting to do when momentum picks up, but I'll be doing it in the background, working at the pace he needs me to. THEN we can make some dope ass renders and whatnot. Dangling hype morsels when we're trying to do real shit never was my style anyway.

In the meantime, however.......I still kinda need that relaxed, creative outlet I started this handle for. And that presents a problem. I can't oscillate between being "developer minded" and being "hobbyist/student minded" on the same project. Ultimately it's not a good plan for getting consistent results in the long term.

Thought hard about how I wanted to deal with this factor today, and I think I have a plan now. One that lets me treat the bigger Nika projects with the care they deserve, while still giving me the option to work on my "chill out" style projects.

Meet one of my back pocket tools for figuring out when I'm getting in over my head in the field; the "Project Management Triangle":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proje.....ement_triangle

Long story short, there are three ways you can manage any project; you can focus on being time efficient, being cost-efficient, or having a massive project scope. Actually, you can focus on being at least two of those things.

If you try to achieve all three at once? Fast, cheap, and super ambitious scope? Good fucking luck buddy. Enjoy your hellbender of a production cycle, and I hope you have a good therapist when the near-eternal crunchtime is over. That's how you figure out if the project you're signing on for is going to kneecap you; if someone wants all three legs of the triangle out of you, just walk away. Believe me, I learned it the hard way.

Anyway, the point is, I think I'm going to take a two pronged approach on a per-project basis, using this as a guiding principle.

I'll be honest....I don't plan on taking commissions any time soon. I like the fact that these projects get me a bit hype instead of creatively draining me, so I want to keep the money factor at bay for a while. Also, I still eventually want to reach the point where I'm modeling characters myself; learning has always been the goal. So every project has to be "cheap" in terms of monetary incentive. When I feel comfortable dropping this leg of the triangle....idk, we'll figure it out when we get there.

This means each project can either be quick and relaxed with a smaller scope, or focused and consistent with a wider scope. One "Fast track" for faster turnaround, and one "Focus track" for higher scope output.

"Fast track" projects will be things like Eno-Retsuko. These are the "Time-Cost" projects. In that case, I had a specific plan in my head, knew the steps I was going to take going in, and cut myself off from getting dragged into minor edits. Turnaround time on that project was 2 weeks from start to finish, mostly on the weekends. So now I have a metric for how fast I can work when I know what I'm doing. I'll also likely do more of what I've done up to now with those; prototype shots, WIPs on DA, and so on.

"Focus track" projects are going to be what the Nika project has turned into; a "Scope-Cost" project. I'm going to play these closer to the vest with longer timetables from now on; I might not even announce these until they are mostly complete if the circumstances demand it. These are projects where I have expectations and collaborators. Or, maybe I'm just trying something new that's going to take time to get right.

Not sure how I'm going to manage adding projects into the queue. I know focus track projects are going to be situational, and I'm going to make them higher priority if I have limited time to work. I might also jump projects from fast track to focus track if there's an opening, and I want to spend more time on something. Or maybe they just turn out to be WAY more complex than expected. Just gotta play that one by ear.

For the fast track stuff, I'd like to get multiple projects queued up in January. I'm thinking I might run a "suggestions" journal for collecting ideas. Time will tell I suppose.

Either way, by speccing my projects like this, I should always have something to tinker with while (theoretically) not impacting more ambitious projects. I'll think more about how to implement this approach, and put it into play for the new year.

I think that's enough word salad for today. Damn.....that was a good one. Maybe I should have been a writer or something. Probably would pay bills a hell of a lot faster than 3d if I could drop these bad boys on a consistent basis, eh? *slaps hood of the wall of text*

Thanks for putting up with my verbal diharrea, and generally letting me hang with y'all and paint OCs onto 3d snake titties and shit. It's been a bizzare yet strangely validating experience that energizes me about as much as it confuses me. And for the record, internal confusion levels are still pretty fucking high, so the energy has been real as fuck. I'm enjoying the hell out of it though, so I guess that means I'm in a good place <3

Take care, and happy holidays!!
- AAD

So it seems that the Nika poster from a few days ago may have set some developments in motion...

A guy by the handle  regbalt has been starting to experiment with model and texture modifications of his own using the Petruz and Warfaremachine models. Turns out he's a very talented up-and-coming unity developer who has been porting and experimenting with character models in a custom VR application. He was very interested in making his own version of a Nika texture mod, and we ended up deciding to support him in his efforts. He's just shared his work to the public, giving owners of the Warfare shark mod an early release Nika skin to play with

https://www.furaffinity.net/view/29292925/

I haven't had much time to work with the skin, but from what I've seen he did a fantastic job on his version of the textures. The resemblance between both of our projects is uncanny;

https://sta.sh/0r1w2k0w4c5

Here is his texture work swapped into my beached poster (Ears, eyes, hair and glasses are still unchanged);

https://sta.sh/0mvqsdarcx2

If you've been waiting patiently for the Nika project, and have access to Warfare's shark, definitely give this a try! Our project is looking like it's going to be a separate model from the current shark at this point, so consider this a sanctioned base shark model option. I'm going to see if I can get the rest of it working myself and check back here with updates. Maybe see if I can get some of my emissive blend presets working, and force myself to learn a bit of source engine porting for the hair.

Check out more of Regbalt's VR work and mod projects here;
https://www.furaffinity.net/user/regbalt/