Brass Tacks

Good morning everyone!

Half of you going "oh yeah, I'm on that Patreon" right now, I'm sure :P Hopefully you're also on the Discord, and read my post from the other day. This is largely a recapitulation of that, just with a better idea of timeframes.

So, since we last spoke, I've been focused on a final paying side project that needed to get done to address some income shortfalls this year has sprung on me. It was planned to wrap up end of June, but has dragged into July. That will be done this month for sure, though, and then my focus will return to LOTM.

The character designs we discussed in May have been sent to the artist, who will create a variety of sketches which I will post with a poll to decide the final design. Tanu is dealing with some personal issues at the moment related to the mess we're all in lately, so I do not currently have a date when I can provide those. But they have been paid for and will receive her attention as soon as her life is in order.

On the writing side, I have been thinking about characters and potential arcs and cross-interactions. The finer details will take a while to map out, of course, but the overall plot comes first, and that's what I'm going to start mapping out on August. While that comes together, I'll be posting about the characters I have in mind, and we can figure out their species and other key attributes. I already have a species & backstory in mind for each, but everything is subject to whatever feedback I get on here :) I will probably post one per week, starting in August, until we've worked through the fifteen-odd I have planned. I'm sure this will generate a ton of fun new ideas for how to weave them all into this world, too.

Finally, a thank you once more for supporting me in this venture. I know this isn't an especially exciting part of the project, what with no constant stream of art or such, and a whole bunch of mundane planning going on, but your contributions have already allowed me to guarantee a good amount of work from Tanutanuki. Being able to provide payment for a larger volume of work gives her the ability to skip commissions for a while and focus on LOTM, collaborating with me much more than she would typically have time for on smaller, once-off commissions - which will ultimately produce better work :)

If you have any other questions or concerns, please comment here or shoot me a DM on Discord. If not, I look forward to interacting a lot more with you all very soon :)

- Zaggy