News - June 2016

Hey, everyone! It's time for that monthly update! I'm posting a few days early since I'll be busy tomorrow and am liable to forget otherwise. Also, there's a few time-sensitive things that are best to be posted before the 1st of the month. It may become the norm to post the monthly news on the 29-31 of the month.

Table of Contents

- Update Status
- Buffer Status
- Patreon Updates
- Weekly Livestreams
- Recordings
- Movie Nights
- PRSilly
- Spreading PRS
- June Calender of Streams/Updates/Events


Update Status

The PRS hiatus will be ending in just a few days on June 3rd (my birthday) with the cover page for Chapter Six. A normal update schedule can be expected for the most part as my summer class schedule is on the light side for June. If there are any delays, I'll be sure to say something ahead of time.

Updates will continue to go up on Fridays as they have for the last year or two. However- in addition to the weekly Friday update, there will be one additional update on the first Tuesday of each month since the Patreon page reached it's first milestone goal! It may be one extra update- but that +12 pages per year if nothing goes wrong! (More on Patreon Stuff below).


Buffer Status

So, I've been on hiatus for what- three weeks? I must have a nice big buffer by now... right? RIGHT? Whoops.

I spent most of the time working on outlining, other art things, and other important life things like apartment nonsense, family, etc. Sorry to say I don't have any buffer- but that's fine. Once I get going on page production, things typically go well. With a weekly update schedule I can easily get pages done in time.


Patreon Updates!

So the Patreon page went up to a great start a week or two ago! I wasn't actually expecting any interest in it- so I was pleasantly surprised to see a few people jump in! A big shout out to Robin, Gigi, Andrew, and Rym for donating to the Patreon page! Every little bit helps and means a lot to me!

So for those wondering, the patreon page is a means to help support PRS/My art stuffs with small monthly donations in return for a bunch of extra goodies. These goodies include concept art previews, monthly doodle requests, time lapse videos of my art, early PRS pages, post cards, etc.

Note that everything offered as Patreon incentives are in addition to what I normally do. I will not cease my usual sneak-peak panels/WIP shots on the PRS forums or change how I've done things in the past. The comic will always remain free to view and update as normal.

The only 'change' that will happen is that I will no longer be doing regular commissions slots in December/January and June/July like I have done in the past. Instead, I will do a commission raffle for patrons each month. However, until there's enough people for a proper raffle, I'll just alternate between those who would qualify for the raffle instead.

Some time sensitive rewards are listed/detailed below. These are ones available each month to processed patrons. What does 'processed' mean? It means that your payment/donation cleared and was succesful. Patron donations are processed on the 1st of every month- so anyone who wants the below rewards must sign up for the appropriate tier prior to the 1st or they will be unable to recieve them.

I restrict these to processed patrons to prevent people signing up for one tier then lowering their pledge after they recieve their reward and before the next processing date. It isn't that I don't trust the kindness of people, but I do not wish to take risks. The processed list will update each month.

- Monthly Postcard
The monthly postcard that I'll be sending out ot Patrons of the $10+ tier are currently on their way! If the tracking is to be believed, they should arrive at my apartment sometime on Tuesday the 31st. All processed Patrons as of June 1st will recieve the June postcard. So if you want in on the postcard, the deadline to join is Tuesday. I will mail out the cards on either the 1st or 2nd of June.

This Month's Postcard

- Monthly Desktop
This month there will be two desktop wallpapers for Patrons. One will be the $5 tier wallpaper, the other will be a celebratory 'This Patreon Launch Went Better Than Expected!' one for all patrons regardless of tier. All processed Patrons as of June 1st will recieve the desktop wallpaper/s.

- Request Stream
I'm doing a May request stream (despite all other main rewards starting in June) for fun- all Patrons of the $5 tier and up will be able to make requests. The stream will be public for all to watch though.

- Monthly Art Request
Patrons of the $10 tier and up get a monthly simple art/sketch request. All processed Patrons as of June 1st will be able to request.


Patreon Page: https://www.patreon.com/Nekomata?ty=h


Livestreams

Starting this week, I'll be resuming regular art streaming sessions where everyone can watch as I attempt to art. (Keyword: Attempt). I'll be hosting at least one every week at the same time: Thursdays at 7 PM Central Time. I would have liked to do weekends, but my weekend schedule can be unpredictable at times. If for whatever reason I can't do the usual Thursday time, I'll reschedule as soon as I can.

Do note that this is just the weekly time for the summer break period. I may adjust in the fall as my school schedule changes around. Weekends will be more predictable then, so it's likely they'll move to Sundays for the fall. Also note that I may have random streams for whenever I feel like it. These random ones will not effect the weekly Thursday streams.

Lastly, there will be a monthly doodle request stream for patrons. The stream will be open to the public to view, but only patrons may make requests.

Look below at the schedule for a full list of planned streams/movie nights/updates.

Stream Page: https://picarto.tv/Nekomata


Recordings

Because of my recent switch to Picarto as my main streaming site I've had to install some new software and change things up. One of the positive outcomes of this is that I can now record my streaming sessions (or record my screen without streaming) and post it up on youtuve for people to see! These will be sped up to fit within 5-20 minute art videos (depending on how long the orginal recordings are/were) so that people may see my art process.

Many of these videos will be Patron exclusive or begin Patron excluse for a while before going public. However, most PRS page recordings, doodle request streams, and simple art stuff will be public for all from the start. Currently, only the process for Page 05-32 is the only public video.

Page 05-32 Time Lapse Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkvAGyDk7k4


Movie Nights

I have officially begun prepping to resume movie nights! Thanks to the patreon page, I can more easily set aside some funding to rent/buy movies for these. They will be held hopefully once or twice a month depending on how busy my schedule is. Currently, the planned movies are:

Finding Nemo
Zootopia
The Jungle Book
Captain America: The Winter Soldier
The Good Dinosaur

I only have two dates planned though. Keep an eye on the news page/s for future movie night dates.


PRSilly

During the PRS hiatus in the last few weeks RobinHoude has been working on a little side-comic relating to PRS that we have dubbed 'Pokemon: Relentless Silliness' As the name suggests, it's a silly comic that is essentially a re-script of the original PRS. I've give Robin access to all text-less pages so that he may add new dialogue. The result? Pure nonsense.

PRSilly will update whenever PRS goes on break or misses an update. Think of it as something to pass the time when I'm unable to update!

PRSilly: http://www.smackjeeves.com/comicprofile.php?id=160114


Spreading PRS

PRS has been doing quite well on SJ over the years with nearly 400 favorites and a lot of positive support from the community! It has been PRS' home site for a very long time- and will likely remain so in years to come.

However, PRS is also present on other sites- and just recently I've decided to add to the list of places you can find PRS: Tapastic! This has been something I've considered for a while and finally found the time to get it up. It'll be updating a few pages at a time every day until it is up to date.

One of the pros of Tapastic is that allows you to view entire chapters in one page by scrolling down which increases the ease of reading for newer readers instead of reading one page at a time.

And just for the heck of it, I'll list all PRS related links below for everyone in case they see a site they'd prefer following on. I don't post PRS pages on all of the below links- some of them are for other content such as Asks (currently inactive) or things like the Patreon page or the Streaming page.

Smackjeeves: http://www.smackjeeves.com/comicprofile.php?id=133766
DeviantArt: http://nekoyugito.deviantart.com/
Tapastic: https://tapastic.com/series/Pokemon-Rising-Shadows
Tumblr (PRS): http://prs-comic.tumblr.com/
Tumblr (Asks): http://ask-prs.tumblr.com/
Tumblr (Main): http://nekoyugito.tumblr.com/
Picarto: https://picarto.tv/Nekomata
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Nekomata?ty=h
PXR Forums: http://www.pokemoncrossroads.com/for...Rising-Shadows
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCai...ZPYYpenWnd52tw
PRSilly: http://www.smackjeeves.com/comicprofile.php?id=160114


Calender of Updates/Streams/Events
All times are in Central. All bolded entries are events that do not happen on a regular basis.

05/31: Request Stream (Starts 5-6 PM)
06/02: Weekly Art Stream (7 PM)
06/03: Page 06-00
06/03: Neko's Birthday!
06/03: Finding Nemo Movie Night (8 PM)
06/07: Page 06-01
06/09: Weekly Art Stream (7 PM)
06/10: Page 06-02
06/10: Zootopia Movie Night (8 PM)
06/16: Weekly Art Stream (7 PM)
06/17: Page 06-03
06/23: Weekly Art Stream (7 PM)
06/24: Page 06-04
06/30: Weekly Art Stream (7 PM)
07/01: Page 06-05

Schedule Update!

The Patreon page made a jump today and I now owe another update each month. I'm going to die at this rate. The change is in red.

05/31: Request Stream (Starts 5-6 PM)
06/02: Weekly Art Stream (7 PM)
06/03: Page 06-00
06/03: Neko's Birthday!
06/03: Finding Nemo Movie Night (8 PM)
06/07: Page 06-01
06/09: Weekly Art Stream (7 PM)
06/10: Page 06-02
06/10: Zootopia Movie Night (8 PM)
06/16: Weekly Art Stream (7 PM)
06/17: Page 06-03
06/21: Page 06-04
06/23: Weekly Art Stream (7 PM)
06/24: Page 06-05
06/30: Weekly Art Stream (7 PM)
07/01: Page 06-06

Ever since I started reading MTMTE I've noticed how much happens in the comic in such a short amount of time. And then I looked at PRS and how slowly things have progressed.

I came to ask myself 'how can I make things move faster' - and I found that the answer wasn't 'make more pages faster'- it was to use the space on each page better! But that brought another issue: How can I make the most out of each page?

I've been looking at other comics to see how much goes into each page- especially when it comes to paneling. PRS has had many many pages with few panels. In the past, I thought it was because my pages were too small for more panels- but in reality, ratio wise- it's the same as comics like MTMTE. So what was causing the problems?

Then it hit me: The text bubbles. I always leave a lot of space for them because I always want to ensure that the text is legible. Late last chapter after Bern is saved and Talon/Mist show up, you notice that there's a lot more going on in those pages- that's what I'd like to do more. Yet- it suffered because the text had to have been made small to make it happen.

So what's the solution? I will no longer be scaling down pages to 600x900- now they'll be 800x1200. This will allow me more freedom to put more on each page without worrying about the text bubbles being hard to read when scaled down.

I've changed all pages from 05-16 onward to the new size on Smackjeeves. Other sites will get the updated page sizes later down the road when I feel like getting around to that. Unfortunately, all pages made prior to that are stuck at 600x900 until I can remake them.

Wait- did you hear that right? Yes. Yes you did.

Starting in the near-ish future I'll be remaking the older PRS pages. Why? Well, even if PRS IS a for-fun project, I want it to look nice. So when I can, I'll start remaking 1-2 pages a month to avoid interfering with the regular updates.

Updates to the SJ site layout will be made to accommodate the new page size.

Also, thanks to the PATREON page (and all the awesome people there), I've decided to go ahead and upgrade PRS to Donator status on SJ so that I don't have to link the new pages from DeviantArt (which has resulted in broken pages in the past!)