It's Monday! Or thereabouts. I don't know when you're choosing to read this, I'm not the boss of you. But if you're reading this within a week of its publication you technically have a share in being the boss of me. So, uh, I suppose I'd best get to it then, sir/madam/your magnificence.
So we're ramping production back up from a couple of rather droughtful months. In order to rev the engine to speed a little lubrication and shoulder-barging was required, manifesting distinctly un-neatly in the form of a ragtag page of chaotically inspired doodlage. Having worked from the bottom-left out, I 'm entitled to quote the inimitable words of The Killers in saying 'It started out with a kiss, how did it end up like this?'
Subsequent to this I got straight to work on, uh, things that aren't finished yet. Editing is merrily trotting along for the second instalment of the Dead Island highlights. In fact editing is almost entirely complete, waiting only for me to make 21 silly little PNGs to wiggle on screen for 0.7 seconds a pop.
I've also been head-down grafting away at the disparate components of this month's Parsnip Supplement, hopefully due by the end of [current week]. Both little comic strips are complete, as well as a couple of puzzles. I'm starting to get a little worried about my attitude to how much I put in these newsletters, so I'll state it here for posterity: A few jokes, a character spotlight, and a little bonus doodle segment should fill the remainder out nicely for public consumption. Yum.
Since we're very much circling the perimeter of WIP-land, I naturally have scant-to-nout to show you as yet. We've rolled into one of those now-familiar local minima before a feature-packed update next fortnight. In lieu of production though, how about procrastination? It also begins with 'pro', so it must be good!
Between standard work I've also been noodling around in a little RPG called 'Hylics' that I suspect is worth a humble shout. A short game, clocking in for me at about 4 hours, it may be one of the most surreal games I've ever played. And this is surreal in the literal artistic sense, as nothing in the game resembles anything in reality.
The most astonishing thing for me, though, was that despite not having any of the traditional trappings of a classic RPG - character arcs, meaningful cutscenes, helpful quest-givers, sensibly communicative mechanic names, plot, etc - I never felt as though I didn't know what I was doing, mechanically speaking. That's either the mark of a surprisingly well-made game, or the mark that I've played too many RPGS. Anywho, it's cheap, quick and very very strange: Two and a third thumbs up.
Streaming! Golly, still? You bet your house it is! Having rolled credits (get it, rolled, like dice?) on Lost In Random we dove anthers-first into the freshly-tilled peat of Strange Horticulture! Soon to be wrapped up, it's been a fun dip into a spooky, fantastically floral world of killers, cults, cats, cartography and crocuses.
Weekends find us (when I'm not being held hostage by weddings) scampering around in Dying Light, endeavouring not to get too distracted by the next patch of mushrooms or the following curious wet hole. And naturally to round things out we continue unabated, unabashed and unafocused doodling whatever we wish together with friends.
My word, you wouldn't think this took me two hours to write, would you? Less so an hour to make and upload the assets and a further half hour to format it for Patreon and later release on my website. Frankly I'd be suspicious if you did think that. Those are some very accurate numbers you've got in your pocket. ¬¬
Thank you all so much for your support, it's very enheartening and up-pressing as always. By the next update you'll have all the goodies of a new not-a-newsletter newsletter, hopefully a highlights video, another standalone comic about the early life of January & February and perhaps a glimpse into the next video I have in the pipeline. I don't own a plunger though, so it'll have to stay stuck in there for now.
Look after yourselves,
Crispy 💜