ARMORS and NAPP status

Hi everyone!

So, it has been a while, and I wanted to update everyone on how things are going!

I'll try to keep it short for the people that just want to check the progress and go on with their day! (I know I tend to beat around the bush) but if you wanna know more about how NAPP (and me) are going, I'll talk about it at the end!

Well, these days I've been mainly focused on the armors. I've been 'sketching' and trying things to get the free update ready.

To be honest, I wasn't happy at all: the designs didn't convince me very much, plus I kept trying to outline them directly on substance and making the stuff on the go so things were not coming together as I'm used to.

To be frank, during these weeks I realized that I'm not really good at hand-crafting this kind of stuff... I consider it a positive thing to recognize your own weaknesses, and well... outside textures and procedural organic stuff, I'm starting from much further down, and the quality was not what I expected.

Also, time was passing by and I think it is not fair for all the supporters to spend a whole month without anything on the table... so this is the deal:

As for the free update, in order to upload it before the month ends I'm going to put a hold on the armors for now, and make the update without them. I'm going to upload on #📢progress-pics (in Discord) the '''final''' sketches of the armors that I've been working on (I tend to work on paper first when I feel something is challenging but I'm a little hesitant on showing my sketches in general, as I feel are not that good and full of dumb shit... but whatever) so everyone can give feedback, and so that we work on them together step by step. Then, when the armors are ready, I will make a free armor update with all of them.

Also, I'm thinking of ways to compensate you all for my bad management of time and making all of you guys wait this long. I have some ideas but if you have some, let me know!

To close this up, just some things I have in my mind... I just wanted to say (about some comments I've seen here) that this project is not dying, not even close.  I think I've always been transparent about NAPP and myself with you, so I will tell you as it is. I think it is very easy for a creator to lose perspective with a project like this with so many people involved... You start losing that pressure you feel at first, when your thing starts going 'viral' and many people notice you. As you are the only one controlling your work schedule, it is very comfortable to go 'easy' on yourself, specially if things don’t go your way and you get frustrated, or blocked. I could make up some excuse on why the delay on the updates, but the truth is just laziness. Don't get me wrong, I open my PC, sketchbook or whatever every morning, and start doing stuff… I'm not on my couch eating doritos (I do that at night) but I'm talking about the struggle of facing new challenges (like the armors). On the same note, as I'm writing this down, I'm noticing that today is the 2nd year anniversary for this project... Two years, making textures every day on the same software, with a limited creative playground as I keep everything as vanilla as I can, and pretty much alone in my room (don't worry, I go out with the boys from time to time but more on a 'work environment' sense) so yeah, that has been also adding up and taking a toll on me.
Also, to clarify, I just want to say that I’m totally aware of how ‘out of touch’ and cringey it sounds coming from me, someone who is basically being paid a good amount of money from you guys, to talk about how ‘tired’ I am sometimes, or how ‘difficult’ some things are… but I just want to speak my mind here, as this has become my life now.

To wrap this up, this project is not dying. NAPP is like 'my baby'. I've always been that guy that sticks to things, hobbies, projects, etc, just for a few days and then gets bored, but not this time. I'm getting this done! So don't worry about that.