May 2025 Progress Report

Hey boo,
It's a rough day.
Part of indie work is learning how to work and how you work as a person. Corporations and work places have learned how to make people work in ways that suck. There's the obvious things like the alternatives of having a job. There's less obvious things like the segmenting of time, workplace layout, and the other things that people have to distinctly get used. Training new employees is like a crash course in how fried your brain is. Then there is serious things like culture and behaviors that undermine your rights. Like not getting a lunch break or voluntary, unpaid overtime. 

There are some things that are fine with work, like coworkers. Taking breaks is a good idea and something I might do more consciously if I could listen to my body. Stretching every hour of deskwork. Actually taking lunch.

I discovered a nice system at work. Where it's a good break if I forget that I'm at work. I did this by isolating myself and automating my free time. I don't watch the clock, I set an alarm on my phone. I have my meal ready ahead of time. Headphones with my own music. I can get into a book or some writing.

I've already seen somethings I need to work on. I think I've been extra stressed this last week because I didn't have a singular set of scenes to work on, so I haven't stopped thinking about the game and what I need to pick up and do.

I left some threads open but I'm feeling better. What more can I ask for? Sometimes, writers don't know their own thoughts until it comes out on paper. What are your thoughts?

Progress!
May is supposed to be my month and it really was, numbers wise. I'm not counting the other artist's contribution for the total, they'll just be an asterisk until the final tally.

May is some of my favorite weather and my birthday. I wanted to squeeze that in somewhere.

Renders
I had some popping weeks for renders. I keep thinking of it as halfway done but it's a lot closer to a third. I spent a chunk of yesterday fiddling with a blanket, which will be the basses for a load of scenes.

I have three exteriors and a three room interior to figure out and all of the assets will be made.

Writing
The writing has been done for a while, even critiqued, but I haven't done a lot for the corrections and revisions. I actually have a bull clip full of papers with corrections that should take place. I'll see if I can make that priority this week but writing new stuff is so much more fun!

Animation
I haven't let the eleventh animation finish yet because I've been too on top of adding more items to the queue, without letting it finish.

Let's highlight this. Chapter 2's opening had a good chunk of animation that felt more like panning around a diorama. Did you like that? Is it a nice effect to get you back into the characters and the story or would a bunch of pictures be fine? I haven't gotten much feedback about it. Maybe I'm just not asking right.

Weekly Report
For the month of May I've been making weekly progress reports and posting them to patreon and substar. It seems to have a negative effect on my patreon, specifically. I'm thinking I could move it over to a supporter channel on the discord, which I haven't made.

Or I read the tea leaves wrong and it's fine. No matter what, the public progress report will continue, as you can see.

One positive thing to take from co workers is the necessity for the social aspect of work. I find that I like to and need to share progress with people as I go. It's motivating and fun. 

Bundle of Joy
The best part of indie work as apposed to corporate jobs is that I am not alienated from the product of my labor. My work is represented in the Pregnancy themed bundle that is still chugging along. We hit our first major goal and I put the game on sale. You can pick up Candied Oblivion or both my games for a discount right now, with a coupon-- coupons work by being a link on itch.

https://itch.io/s/152832/bundle-of-joi-goal-sale?c=preggers

https://itch.io/b/3004/bundle-of-joy-pregnancy-games-collection

Rewards
I saw a cute anime drawing this week and I decided that Byerly should do that. There are a bunch of pregnancy alternatives in this month's batch, which I made for the Pregnancy bundle.