Happy New Year 2022!

HAPPY NEW YEAR! 

First of all, I could have sworn I did one of these New Year messages at the beginning of last year, but no such message appears to be in the archive since 2020 so I guess I lost a whole year.  Oh well. It is definitely my intention to make one of these posts at the beginning of each new year moving forward, so at least I am on point so far in 2022. 

I can honestly say 2021 was THE most productive year I have had for Green Tower City EVER!

I started a Patron account and actually am making a few bucks a month from my labors!  I've never really been in this for the money, but getting a bit of cash for my work definitely inspires me to keep cranking out new panels on days when I might otherwise just sit and watch true crime videos or play mindless video games on my laptop for hours.   If you are feeling generous, here is the link and all contributions are GREATLY appreciated!  I don't really do commissions, but if you are a paying Patron, I can promise you I will at least listen to any suggestions you might have. 

https://www.patreon.com/greentowerillustrations?fan_landing=true

I've made tremendous progress on my "Workshop" and all the action templates are now divided into 2 separate poses, which was something I should have done in the first place, but after all, this whole process has been a work of trial and error, and now I finally have a good system that works.

It's come a long way.  The very first incarnation of this concept was to draw individual poses for every character on paper, and then LABORIOUSLY cut the poses out with scissors and/or an Exacto-knife, place the physical drawings on a physical background that I would also separately draw on paper (or poster board) and then take pictures of the result and that would be the final panel.  It was VERY time consuming and the end result looked terrible!  

Now I still draw the original images by hand on paper, but everything else is done on my laptop.  

I will NEVER use a 3D or poser program.  I have nothing against anyone who does that, and there are some VERY talented artists out there making cool work that way, but it is not how I do it. (And there are enough people doing it that way anyhow) 

There are currently 88 of these Individual Pose templates and 450 Action poses!  I have gone through and applied nearly ALL of these poses to Brandi and Raija, so you can bet they are going to have an EPIC feud going back and forth throughout the years of the timeline in every possible venue and setting. 

I'm not going to go into too much detail about my "Process" here, as I wrote a blog about it earlier. 

Here is a link to THAT blog:

https://greentowercity.blogspot.com/2021/09/my-process.html

Speaking of which I have ALL of this material in a folder which can easily be transferred to a USB drive.  I am offering these USB drives to ANYBODY who donates to my Patreon for only the cost of the USB and shipping to wherever you are. If you have donated 20 dollars or more all I need is an address and it will be on it's way at NO additional charge to you.   Anyone else who is interested need only pay for the USB drive and shipping.  The idea behind this is that you can create your OWN Green Tower City fights using the templates I have already created.  This requires you to have MS Paint and Office Publisher.  I know these are somewhat antiquated systems, but they are what I use, and I have built a rather elaborate system for creating new GTC panels that I personally enjoy making, and if you are visiting my blog, you must have some appreciation for my style of artwork. 

I also plan to make a screen grab instruction video to show you exactly how my process works but I will be unable to do this until this coming weekend of January 8th-9th so if you want that to be included, I advise you to wait another week.  (The plus side is there will also be more templates by then, as I am constantly working on new material.)

This USB will contain, in addition to the workshop, A comprehensive slideshow of every catfight drawing I have ever created, all the GTC girl's fight records (though none of them are 100% complete) and the current timeline which is now at well over 500,000 words. 

Keep in mind, all of this is a work in progress, and I am continuing to add to it pretty much every day.  At the end of each year I will offer to update everyone's USB with new files.

Also, if you have this workshop, and are able to create your own fights between characters, if those fights work out with my overall Canon, and you want them included in the Big Story, that is definitely a possibility. 

My current panel count for The Ultimate Slideshow is at 3884.  I am bummed that I can't find where I wrote down this number at the beginning of last year but I believe it was lingering around the 2900 mark.  This number does NOT include alternate canon stuff or panels I created for the Choose Your Own Adventure fights, which would easily add another 1000 panels at least.  

ALSO:  Tis last weekend I undertook a complete blog housecleaning, and made sure all my stories were there (found a BUNCH of short stories that were NOT, and also I went through and made sure the links at the bottom of each fight story does indeed link to the next one chronologically.  You can start all the way back at this post of my EARLY and UNFINISHED work, and link straight through every single story I have EVER done.!  

https://greentowercity.blogspot.com/2019/12/random-stuff.html

So, moving into 2022, I have big plans as always, but I try not to outline them too much because then I don't feel like doing what I said I was going to do.  The secret of my success in the last year has been my newfound resolve to simply allow myself to go with the flow and just delve forward with whatever project I feel like working on at THIS moment.  Sometimes projects linger on the backburner forever, but I will get to them eventually. 

I have developed a loose system of keeping about a dozen or so projects slowly moving forward a few panels at a time.  Sometimes I get obsessed with one particular story, or I figure out exactly where I want it to go, and I plow ahead with it obsessively until it is finished.  Sometimes I just keep poking away at one story a few panels at a time off and on for months.  This system seems to work well for me and keeps me producing at least a few new things week after week. 

Speaking of which, I am really starting to ramble on now, so I am going to bring this New Year's Diatribe to a close and get back to the business of creating violent girl fights. 

I try not to make too many specific promises about what I am going to do specifically, but here is a sample platter of stuff currently in my "To Do" folder. 

Excelsior!