5/15/20 - Health and Family Update; Looking for Artist

Hello everyone,

It seems every time I want to make an update post, something comes up that I need to see play out first.

So far Justin, his dad, and I are safe from the virus.  We’re doing everything we can to protect ourselves.  Masks, hand sanitizer, frequent hand washing, quarantining in the house since before the call to do so, the whole nine yards.

A lot has happened in a relatively short period of time.  Originally my surgery was going to be on April 8th, but at the beginning of that week our dog started to develop a few problems that needed to be investigated that instant.  After getting him to the vet, we learned that he suddenly has developed diabetes.  His diet has been fine his whole life and apparently this is just some sort of freak happenstance.  However, this sudden onset of diabetes pretty much caused him to go blind from cataracts practically overnight.  So a lot of our days are spent helping him get adjusted to his blindness.  We’re hoping to get his levels in range soon so he can have eye surgery to fix the cataracts, but we’re still unsure when/if that will be possible.

After another appointment shift, my surgery is on May 27th, so Justin and I have been cleaning and preparing the house so I can have an easier time getting around while healing.

For roughly six years, Justin’s brother, Willy, has been dealing with stage 4 cancer and the last few months have been exceptionally difficult.  Within less than a month’s time he had to go to the hospital for severe dehydration, which led to pancreatitis, which led to bacterial pneumonia.  Just three days ago, he dealt with the dehydration again along with a 102 degree fever.  This was during their hospice intake appointment and pretty much made their choice to go into hospice for them.  They’ve looked into clinical trials for practically his entire cancer battle, but because of COVID those trails have been closed.  One of the trials they had been waiting for, reopened its application services but looked over Willy’s file and said he would not survive the trial in the first place.  This has been incredibly hard on everyone.  With the two person limit per day at the hospice, everyone is forced to visit at such a slow pace that everyone might not get to see him before the end.  Justin managed to see him yesterday and I’m hoping to visit from the window (bypassing the two person rule) sometime this weekend between other people’s visits.

In between cleaning, family stuff, and my own health, Justin and I have been looking for new artist(s) for sprites, CG, and Kickstarter rewards.  A few of my friends have started to look for people that might be interested in working with us.  With everything that’s going on it’s making it really hard for us to search as much as we’d like to, but we are still searching.

If anyone knows of an artist that might be interested in working with us, please let them know to reach out to us either through Twitter, Facebook, or Kickstarter.  It would help us out greatly and we’d really appreciate it.

Update 11/24/2019 - Major Health Concerns

Hey all, we’ve got some icky news.

On November 18th I had my second colonoscopy. It turned out they only took one large polyp (that seemed sorta dangerous) because they felt it was pointless to remove the 100's of smaller ones. They said they wouldn't be able to keep up with the growth of them and they can only keep me under for so long.

Due to all of this, I’ll have to have ALL of my colon removed VERY soon. My doctor sent a referral to the Cleveland Clinic for a surgeon as they do a LOT of colon removal surgeries and our area doesn't really have anyone my two doctors would suggest to go to. The other problem we run into is that I'll have to be in the hospital for 2-4 days and will have 2-3 surgeries over the course of a couple months, so I'm not sure how much work I'll be able to get done on the game during those time periods. My first appointment will be on November 29th and I’m assuming we’ll be figuring out what type of surgery and when I’ll be having it.

Truthfully, I don't know what my quality of life will be like afterwards, especially when you pair it with the aftermath I deal with from the thyroid cancer. I do not plan to let this affect things too much, but it probably will at the beginning of treatments and getting used to my new life.

On top of the colon situation, my current thyroid medication isn’t working as well as it used to since the manufacturer has changed suppliers. This is the second time this has happened with my medication. My primary care doctor recommends me going to a Functional doctor as she thinks I need to get a compound thyroid medication specially made for what my body needs and also to finally have a doctor that will look into all of the health issues I have. Problem is that my Medicaid won’t cover Functional doctors and the first appointment would be $936 (and unsure how much subsequent visits will be) which doesn’t cover lab work.

As I’m unable to work and Justin can’t because of his own medical issues along with acting as my caretaker 24/7, we have no income. A low rough estimate comes to $4,000 for the trips up to Cleveland, hotel stays, and doctor appointments between both the colon issues and the Functional doctor. The goal is to diagnose what’s causing the muscle weakness, muscle and bone pain, memory issues, worsening depression, anxiety, and fatigue along with many of the other problems that I’ve been dealing with for seven years. During this time I’ll also be applying for disability, getting treatment, and hoping that I can eventually work again at a real paying job.

I’ve been so proud of all of us for working through whatever has been put in front of us, but lack of funds are truly a roadblock in this situation. I am beyond upset that I need to setup a gofundme for this, but there’s really nothing else I can do. I do not expect any of our fans to donate, but I would very much appreciate it if people could share my gofundme link. I feel like the faster I can get all of this over with, the faster I can put all my focus back on game dev work.

Along with my own personal health issues, Darkenmarr is out of commission for a while. In September her right thumb swelled up out of nowhere. For awhile she was able to still work on Alison’s sprite, but it’s gotten to the point she can’t hold anything in her drawing hand. She had gone to urgent care for help and they claimed it was arthritis, but after talking it over with her, Justin, Darkenmarr, and myself disagree with the diagnosis (we believe it to be fractured somewhere). She’s trying to get the VA to approve her doctors to look at her thumb and it has been taking awhile to get a chance to even talk to people at the VA. There’s also some very personal family stuff going on at the same time that understandably needs more of her attention.

The plan is to contact her on December 12th to see what’s going on and the plan of action at that time. In the meantime, I think Justin and I will focus on helping the other team members with their work and dealing with our health issues while we wait for Darkenmarr’s return.

Since I last posted, though, we did manage to get a couple of backgrounds done and Justin’s been finishing up the look of some of the GUI elements. So some progress has been made at least. Hopefully, we’ll have more to update on in the next post.

Update 6/3/2019

Hello all!

It’s Julianna’s turn today!  Here’s the flat-colored variants of her main pose, with her different outfits and emotions.

We’ll post another character on Monday, so be on the lookout!

Update 10/14/2018

Hello, everyone!

We apologize for the lack of updates since July.  Life situations and school have been getting in our way, but they haven’t slowed us down and we’ve still been working hard the entire time.

In our first bit of news, the Log feature has been implemented into our newest build and testing it out is next on the docket for Justin and I.  In his most recent report, @wolfborg13 said he also has most of the gallery GUI working, only needing to add in the retrieval coding for the CGs.

On the music side, we have two more songs finished and titled, one of which is a secret song that we are extremely happy with and is Justin’s favorite thus far.  Right now we’re going over which song from our list to have Geoff work on next.  There are only a few left!

On the art side, @darkenmarr and Justin have finished the flat coloring phase of the main pose of the entire main cast, sans Alison.  Darkenmarr has also been working on body pillows while she prepared for her shoulder surgery and got her house ready for the monster that is the Wyoming winter (it’s already snowed over there!).  Her surgery was on Friday and she’s not supposed to do any heavy work for 90 days.  Original plan was that since it’s not her shoulder connected to her drawing hand, she’s going to see if she could get back to work on November 1st, but she has to have her left arm in a sling for six weeks, so we’ll see how it goes.  To try to speed things up a bit, we’ve asked Kooriesque to look into helping out with doing the shadow and highlight work on our sprites and CGs.

Backgrounds have been moving along steadily like usual.  At the moment, Justin just finished sketching what is probably our most ambitious background yet which when finished will span the same location over the course of a decade and will have five very different versions.  He’s going to try to get ahead with a few more sketches, then we’ll go right back to working on Rory’s route again.

In our last bit of news, we had hoped to be starting the release of the game this past summer.  With people getting full time jobs, school starting, major health issues rearing up, and the death of family members for three of our team members these last few months, we sadly will have to push back the release.  At the latest we’re hoping to start rolling out stories in the Summer of 2019, but, of course, we’re hoping for sooner.  Regardless, we will keep everyone posted on this matter as more and more things get finished.

Thank you all for being patient with us.

Update 6/6/2018

A lot has been going on in some of our members’ lives that caused a bit of a slow down, but we’re still working hard.

Justin has been working on flat coloring Gwyn in between sketching backgrounds for our background artists.  Along with this, Justin and Noelle have been editing Rory’s main story again, trying to get past chapter five.

Darkenmarr is working on Ashley’s sprite in between working on art for A-kon.  After A-kon Noelle and Darkenmarr hope to get back to a normal schedule with the character art and start again on the body pillow designs now that we have it narrowed down to what characters we need for backers.  The other characters will be done eventually, but we want to focus on what we need now.

Geoff just sent us our latest song and Justin and Noelle will be listening to it soon to decide if any changes will be needed.  If approved, the team will come up with a title and then Geoff is onto the next song.

As we mentioned above, Darkenmarr along with Noelle and Justin will be attending A-kon this week with a table in the artist alley.  You can find them at table D10 under the name Naive Sprites and Darkenmarr.  We’ll be selling A Very Important Date merchandise, fanart, and some of Darkenmarr’s original art.  Any profits made from the AVID merchandise will go towards the Kickstarter stretch goals.

We’ve already shipped out some of the keychains and had hoped to mail out the second batch before getting into Texas, but some travel situations have made it so that we won’t be able to get them out until after the con.  Still we will send out tracking numbers as soon as we’re able to send them out.

Today, Darkenmarr, Noelle, and Justin launched another Kickstarter for a side project they’ve been working on called Chimikipos.  This little venture will be making a bunch of different kinds of stuff, but our first Kickstarter focuses on our first idea:  our adorable sea cow enamel pin!  So please check it out and share the link!  We really appreciate it.  Half of the profits made from Chimikipos will help fund AVID and other games that Naïve Sprites might make in the future.

Update 3/26/2018

Hi, everyone!

A lot has been going on with project development since the last update!  So let’s dive into it all.

Firstly, on the art front, @darkenmarr has been reworking sprites to make them more cohesive with each other.  She’s currently got the first poses for Emil, Rory, Harlan, and Sven flat colored and is working on finishing up the line art of Gwyn’s first pose.  This includes multiple emotions and outfits for each character so far.  After Gwyn’s finished, she’ll work on Connor, Lowell, Julianna, and Ashley then rinse and repeat until we get the main cast done.  Our backers have seen some progress of the sprites and we hope to be able to show them more soon.

Justin is finishing up Sven’s third chapter so we can hopefully send that over to our read and review group within the next few days.  During the last few months, he has also finished Connor and Lowell’s first three chapters.  In between editing, he’s also been sketching background concepts and finding references for our two bg artists.  Since our Kickstarter, our bg artists have completed a total of six scenes with most of them having two variants.  So the overall total is 11 new backgrounds in the last few months.

During this time Geoff, our composer, has completed our romance song.  We’re in the process of titling it currently and I can’t wait until we can show it off because I absolutely love this song.

The keychains reward for our backers were a process!  It took the manufacturer three times and four months to get them correct.  There was a point where we had to weigh our options about going with someone else, but we finally got them and we hope to send those out to our backers within the next month, bearing responses to our Kickstarter surveys.

In closing out this update, we’d like to say that Darkenmarr, Justin, and I have been accepted into the Artist Alley for both A-kon and San Japan!  We absolutely plan to attend as long as nothing gets in the way.  There is a possibility that Darkenmarr might not be able to make it to them due to an upcoming surgery, but she’s trying hard to make it.  Regardless, we hope to see you there once again!

Until next time, all you wonderful people!

Update 11/27/2017

Hello, everyone!

Stopping by to give a quick post-Thanksgiving update.

First up, for news about our spin-off game, we have some images for fans that were not a part of our Kickstarter.  Back in September, Darkenmarr, with the help of Justin and Noelle, came up with the designs for the Spin-Off characters.

The image below features our first sketches of Lily, Caelius, Dem, and Layton.  The poses are just Darkenmarr’s templates, so the body types aren’t finalized in this image.

We also finalized the proof for our keychain reward and have ordered them from our manufacturer.  We hope to have them in mid-December.  However, we will be receiving more than we need for our backers (about 20 extra).  So, if anyone is interested in purchasing any of our extra keychains we will be selling them for $10 for the USA and Canada, and $16 for international shipping.  After we have shipped out all of our Kickstarter physical rewards (hopefully mid-2018), any remaining keychains will be sold for $16 or $18 + shipping, if we have any left at that point, that is.

Here’s what our keychain will look like:

To avoid a longer shipping time, we will post a link to purchase the keychains after we have them on hand, in the off chance we have to remake them due to defects or other sorts of issues.  So stay tuned for that link!

While I’ve been busy with an insane school semester, Justin has been working on writing and editing as usual, creating a rough outline for Julianna.  On the background front, both BG artists have just finished another two pieces and Justin will work on another for both of them in the coming week.

That’s what we’ve got for today.  Stay tuned for more news and a link to purchase the keychain in the coming weeks.

Update 11/15/2017

Hello, everyone!

We’re stopping in to give you a quick update!

Justin and I are still working on the twins’ first three chapters.  We’re going to read over the chapters one last time, making corrections while we do so, and then we can put them in our read and review group.  After that, we can go over Julianna’s or Sven’s first three chapters.

School has been crazy this semester with all of the projects and exams it’s been throwing at me, so getting the surveys done has been a little difficult.  I’m hoping that after December 10th I can get the rest of the surveys out to everyone.

For Backers, look forward seeing to the finalized keychain proof soon before anyone else.  It took me a while to find a company to do our keychains as the company we originally wanted to go with seems to have gone out of business.  It looks like we’ll be saving nearly $200 from going with this other company than the previous one, though.  The metal plating is a little different than what we originally had planned, but we think it still works well for what we’re going for.  I should be getting a proof within 24 to 48 hours.

My plan is that once the proof is approved that I’ll send out the surveys for tiers that just have the keychain as their physical reward.  It looks like I’ll have roughly 30 extra keychains due to minimum ordering, so if there is anyone that wants the keychain and it wasn’t a part of their tier or wasn’t a backer but wants the keychain, contact me.  I’ll help figure out how much you’ll need to send over through paypal to get the keychain.

If you are a backer that has the Facebook access in your rewards, when you ask to join please email us at [email protected], so I know who you are on both FB and Kickstarter and I can accept your request.

Update 9/23/2017

Hello, everyone! Noelle here.

Time for a quick update of what’s been going on the last few weeks.

We originally had plans to go to San Japan at the beginning of the month, but because of transportation reasons and concerns about Hurricane Harvey, the team had decided against going to the convention.  Instead Noelle and Justin used the time that was already allotted for the convention to travel to Wyoming to visit @darkenmarr and work together in person.

While visiting, we were able to fix her computer situation by helping her get a good desktop.  Her laptop had issues with running art programs, leading to frequent crashing and freezing, which caused a major delay in art progress.  We hope with the nice desktop set up there won’t be any issues now.

Speaking of art progress, while we were visiting Darkenmarr we were able to come up with designs for Lily, Caelius, Dem, and Layton!  Kickstarter Backers have already seen the sketches, but we plan to show them off to everyone else soon. While we were in Wyoming, we were able to work on a schedule for the sprite work, but it might have to be pushed back just a little bit.  After we left Wyoming, Darkenmarr reported to me that she hurt her hand when she was walking two of her dogs and she currently has her drawing hand wrapped up.  Also just a heads up, if you ever meet her dog, don’t touch the laser pointer unless you want to lose an hour of your time playing with her.

On to more updates!  I plan to send surveys out to tiers that are $55 and below once school calms down some more.  $75+ tiers will wait a little longer as I want to wait until we have body pillowcase sketches, unless everyone at those tiers knows which character(s) they want regardless of the design.

In writing news, Justin and I have finished editing Harlan’s first three chapters and are currently writing Connor’s first draft, where we’re about halfway through chapter three.  Once the first three are finished for Connor, we will give it to our readers in our read and review group for feedback, and then Justin will work on Sven while I take a crack at Lowell.

After working through the romance song, Geoff and I agreed that it wasn’t working, so we’re still tinkering with the romance song.  The next version of that song that we show off will be entirely different from the last one.

That’s all for right now, but we’ll be sure to check in soon with more updates!