First things first: A shoutout to @EyeSores for being the one that put us to 400 fans! Congratulations and thank you!

So first things first: I started a Patreon!

It's under review...

UPDATE: It's been approved, so I have a Patreon now too!

However I also started a Subscribestar and Ko-Fi, which are now fully open. Ko-fi offers one-time donations, so if you don't want to commit to a subscription, you can go there to offer support as I'm basically making it a tip jar for the time being. Subscribestar seems to be largely identical to Patreon in functionality, with tiered subscriptions for support that offer different perks. As of right now, I don't have the financial stability to offer much more beyond WIPs, updates and early access to completed projects, but if enough support is provided, I can expand.

One perk I intend to offer is alternate variations of my animations and right now, if you sign up for the $10 tier on my Subscribestar, you get access to an alt version of my last animation:

So this is the big leap for me. It means they'll be some big changes one way or the other, but support from you folks who value my work will be the determining factor on if I'm able to continue making it.

RIght now, I have one animation to finish up:

After this, I'll begin my next projects with these platforms in mind.

Things were pretty dire last we spoke and that hasn't changed too much, except for two key moments. One was my tax return, which has allowed me a lifeline and my 'promotion' at work from seasonal to regular employee. This promotion gives me access to options with the company that mean that if this last ditch effort to get some income through my art falls through, I can drop it entirely to focus on my current employment options, which I'd have to do. I don't want to, but I can breathe much easier now knowing I can if it comes to it.

Okay, so I gotta lotta things cleared out at the start of the year, the latest of which is this animation:

https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/project/5393820

Which I'm using to gauge interest in being financially supported for making animations. Both here and in this post, I ask people to let me know if they would offer financial support if I opened a support platform such as Patreon or Subscribestar.

Everything on the backburner is cleared out until I can determine if moving forward with a support platform is worth the effort. So if you enjoy my work enough to support me, please let me know here in the comments, in DMs or on Twitter.

Still only just scraping by, so new content's going to be...well, it'll happens when it happens if it happens at all. I've made my peace. In the meantime...

Tom's art updoot justified one of my own. A few pieces had alts placed in the comments

Anyway, such pieces have now been upgraded to equal status and thus, equal resolution to their original counterparts. The stacked layer icon on the thumbs will show which one's have alts. Enjoy!

Whelp, I'm done.

Chair's been broken for a while, but now it's to the point where I can't work on art for more than a few minutes before my back starts screaming and I don't have the money to replace it. So now it's over.

I've had commissions open since the beginning of the year and in all that time, I've had one single person contact me who backed out cause they didn't use Paypal. I won't say I get it, but it does suck to feel like you're being ghosted. I won't say my art's the cream of the crop, but I'd say it gets a decent amount of views/faves. I see people posting commission work all the time that I'd say I'm at least on par with and their price tags are a lot higher than mine are!

It bums me out because I like making art. I love drawing and I love animating. I made as much as I could back in the day, but I also had to eat, so instead of doing what I loved, I broke my back on multiple labor jobs just so I could keep my head above water and ten years of that accomplished savings amounting to six months of living expenses. So I decided to do this because it didn't matter. Either path was just staving off the inevitable, but I wanted to look back on my life and say at least I was able to do something I enjoy. I just wanted to be happy for once and I was happy doing this. Just wish it could've lasted longer.

Look, the 'tl;dr' take-away from this is pretty much, if you want to see more art from me, commission me. I just flat out need the money. I'll prolly keep shitposting in BBS and I got some old finished pieces I might add to the gallery at some point, but if I suddenly go dark, this post should make it pretty unambiguous what happened. Assuming anyone even notices...

Holy shit! 300 solid ass follow'ns?! Damn! That's...kinda jaw-dropping honestly. I'm don't know how to thank y'all other than...y'know...thank you!

Times have been tough as my previous post noted, but I aint homeless yet. Lost the comp, so I gotta make due with an emergency backup laptop that's finicky and runs like ass. Need funds to bring me back from the brink, so as always, please feel free to contact me for commissions.

In the meantime, I still got projects in the works and I'll give another status update soon with samples of what I'm working. Gonna keep it out of this semi-celebratory post so this can be E for everybody and you know how I do!

So thanks again for the support! I'll do my best not to let y'all down!

Whelp, I'm screwed!

This weekend's been absolute dogshit! My computer died and the engine light flew on for my car. At minimum, I'm looking at having to buy either a replacement mobo or power supply, if not both. If the car light's not a false positive...I don't even wanna think about it. My job doesn't earn me nearly enough to cover a worst case scenario of this.

I've had commissions open for 'bout half a year now with no bites whatsoever. Not even scammers. That's certainly a punch to the old ego I'll admit, but pride is a luxury I can't afford right now. I need to be commissioned right now. I need it or I'm fucked, so consider this to be me, on my hands and knees, begging.

My commission details can be found:

*HERE*

My commission email is:

narratorway (at) gmail (dot) com

Or you can DM me through the sites listed in my commission deets.

Not going to lie, shit sucks right now. I'll never forget it if you can help me make it suck less.

I have updated my commission info to allow NSFW requests!

With the completion of my current animated project, I decided the next thing to tackle was updating my commission info to include adult content. That's right, I'm going sicko mode! I have 10 slots available!

I guess this could be viewed as a New Years Resolution. Gonna try and be more active about what I work on as I focus more and more on animations, which can involve long turn around times and so a lotta dead air in the interim. So what's on the docket?

Finished the animation I've been working on! Now it's time for a lil break from animating and get some art practice in.

This is a more long term project that will most likely take the entire year to complete, but it'll be something I can fit into the space between completed works.

The rest of my time will be filled with illustrations, but I'm also likely to be forced to go back into the labor force real soon, which will cut into production time obviously. Unfortunate, but I've tried the commission angle and I'm getting no bites whatsoever. I'm STILL open for them though for the time being!

Sooooo yeah. This is where everything's at as of this moment! Exciting, terrifying and all that good jazz!

I have opened up my commissions! I'm going to be starting with 5 slots available as it's the holiday season, but it will open up after the new year.

Details are available HERE

You can contact me at narratorway@gmail.com

Okay, now this is story all about how

my life got flipped turn upside-down

I'd like to a minute, just sit right there

I'll tell you all about the BULLSHIT i had to deal with getting this shit straight!

So a few months back - riding purely on whims and boredom - I was checking prices for new tablets to replace my old one. It wasn't broken or even giving me the slightest bit of trouble, but...I 'unno, boredom. Anyway, I found out that getting basically the exact same model would run me less than fifty bucks. Bare in mind, this is a full hundred dollars cheaper than what I got from the original (which was on sale) and that sucker had lasted me a good eight years up to this point with no signs of slowing down! I didn't even need to make this purchase!

But I did. God help me, but I did.

It should be noted going forward that I honestly cannot tell you whose to blame for what I went through. I say this, because the workstation I use to make content still uses - well...used - Windows 7. It wasn't hooked up to the internet, or even the wi-fi so upgrading didn't make much sense since Win10 would offer little more than taking up more of it's now meager resources (a lot of its internals predate Windows XP). Until now:

A short google search made it clear that an upgrade to Win10 would be the easiest way to solve my problems, but I'm a stubborn fuck who didn't want to pay for a new OS. Instead, I spent a full day deleting, downloading and reinstalling every windows redistribution file dating back to fucking 2005! It...didn't work. I gave up and gave my newly purchased tablet to a friend. I was annoyed, but I understood most of the wasted time was on my stubborn ass. It was a cheap buy and I still had my working tablet.

No I didn't!

Initially, it was - again - my fault. During the hours spent trying to get the new tablets drivers to work, I ended up deleting the old tablets drivers. The eight years old tablet drivers...which were no longer listed on the company's website. Now this panic was actually short lived. They still had the legacy drivers listed under an inscrutable title that did not indicate what they were in the slightest. That's...it put a breath of frustration in my throat, but I still considered myself lucky to snag the win. I still had a fine working tablet and lost very little except ti--

The USB port broke off the tablet's circuit board. This isn't the bad part yet.

It's not, because I know guys! Guys who like to solder! Basically fixing shit like this is what they do as a hobby, so naturally I broke open my tablet for the first time, gave 'em pics of the damage and they came back saying, "Hand it over, it'll be done in an hour!" Boom!

A month later the thing dies completely.

STILL not mad. I knew a solution. Windows 10. I didn't LIKE it, but at this point, I was willing to bite the bullet and just see if I could actually get away with upgrading for free. I could. I did. Turns out that 'Windows 10 installation' was the least issue-laden part of this entire process! Think about that.

Got the new tablet, installed the drivers...and they didn't work. No errors during installation, no explanation. It couldn't detect the tablet. Windows could, but that just meant I had essentially a pen that could second as a mouse. The actual guts of the thing - such as pressure weight - were out of my reach until the drivers saw the tablet. On a whim I checked to see if the old driver was still there and maybe, juuuust maybe, it could detect it. Both drivers were showing up and instantly I realized the issue. I closed the old driver and BAM! Tablet detected. All is right in the world! I just get into the guts of Windows 10, delete the old drivers and all is right in the world!

The driver no longer detects the - no wait! Now it does!

No! Wait! Now it doesn't!

No! Wait! Now it does!

No! Wait! Now it doesn't!

...

What the fuck?

Yeah. I don't know why, but on its own, the new tablet drivers detect the tablet every two seconds...which functionally means it doesn't detect the tablet. I had to reinstall the drivers for the old tablet - which meant trying to remember what that inscrutable name was and finding it on the company website - and now have to manually close it and then the new drivers work. I don't know why and at this point, I am too tired to care! I have a tablet. I can use. I'm going to start making smut again!

Other stuff too, but that shit'll go on twitter or whatever...