Greetings and salutations from the wonderful world of February! A time where time seems to turn back on itself, the sky is only the greyest shade of blue, the floor seems made entirely of mulch, and time seems to turn back on itself. I hope you enjoy your stay since you cannot leave.
We begin at the beginning. Specifically the first newsletter of the year. That's right, it's Issue 7 of the Parsnip Supplement! Replete with jokes, a video, a comic (only had time to finish one, I'm afraid), silly doodles, a character deep-dive, puzzles, the works! I mean... I hope it works.
I've also finally released the video in which I make last year's festive card. Alas three of the ten cards I sent have yet to arrive and I've rather lost hope on them ever getting there. Rather puts a dampener on the idea of doing this again, unfortunately, but we'll see what blind optimism the future may yield.
Other video work is cracking along, albeit in a slightly awkward order. Much progress is being made on April's video, but I probably ought to pull my finger out for February's one, hadn't I? 😅
Commissions have been, frankly, bustling! Many completed, many to go! I am, for once in this illustrative life, on course to make a profit at the start of the year. Perhaps I might be able to afford that new drawing tablet before this one Trobbios into a plume of colourful smoke.
In the process of revamping commissions I have stolen an idea from somewhere on Tumblr of offering 'Style Roulette' commissions. As a rather restless 'I'll give that a go'-er and belligerent botherer of many a visual style, I thought it'd be nice to offer a fairly cheap option to throw an OC my way, perhaps a cheeky little adjective, and just leave me to whencever my whims take me. Painting? Comic? Poster? Art Nouveau? Pulp fiction cover? Pointillism? 3D modelling? Who knows! I certainly don't, but I assure you whatever it is it'll be something I'm proud of having made.
I have, in fact, already had requested and completed such a commission before even having the chance to announce it outside of a sideways stream reference, so that's not bad going 😅
On the personal and admin side of things a variety of faff has been going on behind the scenes: Betwixt making plans for my intended February work (video, comic, newsletter, etc) I paid my taxes (and briefly miscalculated a fee as being £1300 instead of the 3p it should be, much to my heart's chagrin) have been dealing with cats (little Bobbi has had his first week outside and is very much making that our problem) and dealing with the occasional, proverbial 'bad head'.
Of course the way I'm dealing with the bad head is to continue programming the roguelike dungeon-crawler game, because time absolutely flies when I'm on the hunt for missing brackets and uncapitalised words. This is evidenced by the size of the devlog I've been keeping which, in the continued spirit of not clogging up vertical space and communicating progress in the least digestible way possible, I have condensed into the following unreadably fast-scrolling gjif. Screenshot and pick your favourite entry! Mine's "Made it so October cannot help themself"
Streams! Ah yes, those things. Sometimes they work as well.
Silksong has, inexplicably, actually delivered me an ending and rather a nice one at that. I repaid the favour by delivering my long-suffering viewers more jank in the form of Sherlock Holmes: The Mystery of the Silver Earring, the story of which has so far referenced an earring exactly twice in seven hours.
After a brief, silly foray into the board game Descent we returned to the """Seamless""" co-op mod for Elden Ring, now with a complicated diagram to help me manage sound sources without 20-year-old CPUs exploding. This naturally draws us into the end-of-week cadence of friend doodlage wherein we scribble our troubles away, typically by giving those troubles to OCs.
And thar she blows, another update has crested over the waves and is now splashing back into the murky depths of tortured metaphors. I'll be back in a couple of weeks with, all being well, a comic in hand but until then a most gracious thanks for all of your support, monetary or emotional, it all means a great deal to me. I only hope my nonsense helps return the favour.
Look after yourselves,
Crispy 💜