Weekly Update! (2024-12-15) Yuletide Cheer

https://www.foxsaliant.com/

Hey there, beeps!

This week we've got an update to The Adventures of Clara Cosmos, if you want to go check that out! Comics might be a bit slow around the end/beginning of the year, but I'll do my best to keep going. My main goal, however, is to secure funds for the end of the year, since I have a lot of expenses around the beginning of the year (including my portion of the rent, the payments for the server hosting, my 3-month phone bill, and tax prep.) The money I've got built up in my SubscribeStar currently should cover the hosting and domain expenses, but I still need to make sure I have what I need for the rest of it. I'm right on the edge, and couple more SotS will probably do, but I always fret and watch these things hawkishly.

So if a few weeks get skipped I apologize, but I'll still be working on things; just chalk it up to the holidays. (I'm also going to be taking the holidays themselves and a few days here and there out to just relax and enjoy myself, because I should, frankly.)

In the meantime, check out the schedule on the site!

As I've stated before, I have already settled on commission prices for the new year, I'm just doing a little revamp in the way info is displayed here. I want to clean up the site a little bit, along with trying something new for the front page, so we'll see how that goes and I'll have all of that hopefully done in the first week or two of January.

I've been putting off some projects (like the bookmarks, and the sequence I'm doing with Azzy) for a while, and I want to prioritize those, as well as getting the comics out faster. I'm still learning how to juggle everything, with moderate success, but there's still things that need to be done, that once I get them out of the way, I can put more time towards other more on-going things.

I'm getting close to the end of Chapter 6 of Various Happenings, so once we get that done, I'll probably take a little time to get the buffer for Chapter 7 up and do some preparation ahead of time as well as focus down the bookmarks.

I'm also trying to get all my uploads done, it's just very tedious and catching up from as far behind as I was is quite the challenge. Still, we're getting there! Rather than being as far behind as I was, we're working to stay caught up, which is somewhat of an improvement. Still, as I said, these next few weeks will be spotty as I'm going to be doing holiday things in addition to preparing for the new year, so I apologize. I hope all of you are having a good holiday season, and if not, I hope next year is better. I know I'm looking on next year with trepidation, but we can make good things out of a bad situation. We've done it before.

Take care of yourselves, everyone! A glorious Yuletide to you all, and until next week!
~Spooky

Various Happenings: https://www.varioushappenings.com/
The Adventures of Clara Cosmos: https://www.claracosmos.space/
SubscribeStar: https://subscribestar.adult/foxsaliant

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Weekly Update! (2024-12-08) Winter Crud

https://www.foxsaliant.com/

Hey there, peeps!

Well, last week wasn't as productive as I'd hoped. While I did manage to upload more than I'd hoped as far as my 2024 pieces go, my drawing ground to a halt due to an infection in my throat and I wasn't really able to work on comics at all, which is something I had hoped to do. I apparently had an infection in my lymph node which stiffened my neck up and gave me a headache that basically lasted from Monday to Wednesday. That sickness was probably a factor in me taking a by-week in the first place (along with Dicy being out of town) but it still gets me down a little bit because I really wanted to start getting ahead. Still, there's no point in getting upset about it!

In the meantime, you can check out the schedule on the site!

So no comics this week, sorry about that. I'll try to have something done by the end of the week, like I said, I was just very sick last week, and in addition to having to watch the little one, so I simply didn't have much energy at all in the way of doing artistic work. Most of my accomplishment last week was figuring out the prices for commissions (which I will be working on getting the commission page done and up, so that it's ready for the new year) and uploading art from this year (which I will continue to do since I have a fair few pieces left to go.) However, I'll try and have a Clara comic up by the end of the week, and see if I can't at least get the next few comics blocked out and ready to be worked on.

Either way, I'll continue trucking along! This is the holiday season, which is always kind of rough and it's been rather cold lately (except for today, for some odd reason), so I just have to keep chipping away at things!

Take care of yourselves, everyone! Until next week!
~Spooky

Various Happenings: https://www.varioushappenings.com/
The Adventures of Clara Cosmos: https://www.claracosmos.space/
SubscribeStar: https://subscribestar.adult/foxsaliant

Posted using PostyBirb

Weekly Update! (2024-12-01) The Twelfth Month
https://www.foxsaliant.com/

Hey there, peeps! It's December now!
The year is winding down and we're heading into an uncertain 2025, but that's not going to stop us from doing what we do! We've got a new Various Happenings update, so go and check that out! This week we're going to be taking a by-week from streaming, because Dicy is going to be out of town for a couple of days this week, and I really want to see if I can catch up on these uploads!

In the meantime, you can check out the schedule on the site!

December will be a pretty sparse month. I'm going to be trying to secure my work mostly; seeing about getting back to working on the bookmarks and making those a reality, trying to get ahead in both comics, and trying to get all of my 2024 work uploaded so that I'm finally caught up and can get to working on the site in earnest. Dicy & Tigre are heading down with their child to family's over Christmas, so I'll be taking it easy that week as well. Most of this month will be positioning myself better to move forward. There's not a lot else to go into right now! This week I'll be making sure there's a Clara comic on the weekend and beyond that, I'm just trying to get a bunch of stuff wrapped up! But then again, it is that time of year, isn't it?

Hope you're keeping warm (unless you're below the Equator, in which case, I hope you're keeping cool!)

Take care of yourselves, everyone!
Until next week!
~Spooky

Various Happenings: https://www.varioushappenings.com/
The Adventures of Clara Cosmos: https://www.claracosmos.space/
SubscribeStar: https://subscribestar.adult/foxsaliant

Posted using PostyBirb

Weekly Update! (2024-11-24) Thanks Again!

https://www.foxsaliant.com/

Hello peeps!

Working along. I needed to make sure funds were where they needed to be last week, so that cut into working on Various Happenings a bit. Fortunately that worked out, and I'm almost done with the lineart on the current comic, I just didn't have time on my non-stream days to do too much this week, especially with us preparing for Thanksgiving on Thursday and that. Between that and my sleep not being all that great lately, I've been a bit tired in general, but I will have something new up this week!

I've got the remainder of the current Various Happenings chapter to block out (about a half-dozen pages at this point,) and some Clara comics to block out as well, so it'll be a lot of prepping for the next set of things coming up!

Check out the site for the schedule!

Not a lot to say this time! Just keeping on!

Sorry that I haven't approved any Discord accounts lately (though there are a few I'll look at this week) but I'm mostly going back to word of mouth and having it be a semi-private sort of thing considering the current climate. I also have a really bad habit of forgetting the form exists, and that's on me, but I'll get it done. Still, I apologize for anyone who's been waiting. If you want, you're welcome to join the SubscribeStar, which gives you automatic access to the Discord (if the bots are working, though I post the join link in there every once in a while) for as little as $1 a month (just the first time, too! You don't get autokicked or anything like that) or you can just ask me directly at Fur Affinity or Inkbunny! (I realize that's what the form is for... but, remembering to check it aside, Discord doesn't make it easy to add people with just their username.)

I also need to check on the forums as well, since it's been a bit and I want to start adding more stuff there. That's going to be included in the whole website update plan. Right now I'm just trying to get everything uploaded to the galleries! (It takes a lot longer than you'd think, and I'm not sure how I manage to draw more than I can upload in a week! Oh well.)

Enjoy your food, everyone! I'll see you all next week!

~Spooky

Various Happenings: https://www.varioushappenings.com/

The Adventures of Clara Cosmos: https://www.claracosmos.space/

SubscribeStar: https://subscribestar.adult/foxsaliant

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Weekly Update! (2024-11-17) Work Stability

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Hello everyone!

Sorry about the lack of update last week, I was just... extremely checked out and kind of tired overall, to the point I just needed to take some "me-time" for a bit. I'm sure you all understand. But, regardless, we're still rolling on! Things are going well in spite of everything, and the comic work is coming along nicely!

This last week, we had a new Various Happenings update, and today we have a new update for The Adventures of Clara Cosmos, so I hope you all enjoy those! I haven't gotten ahead yet, but I can feel myself getting faster, so hopefully it's only a matter of time before I really begin to hit my stride with it!

Check out the site for the schedule!

There won't be any survey this quarter, simply because I couldn't think of what to ask. Things are pretty cut and dry right now and I don't have any really fun or funny questions to ask currently, so we'll just not do that this time. I haven't really been cataloguing the results since most of them were for my own curiosity, so a gap in the data shouldn't be a big deal if I do it again in the future. I might change my mind next month, but for now, I just don't see a reason to do it.

Also, I have a Bluesky account now, if you all want to follow me over there! ( https://bsky.app/profile/grayscalerain.bsky.social ) I don't like social media, so don't expect a lot of interaction, and frankly, the posting kind of sucks? Like it jpegs the shit out of it, but that's where the people are going, so it's better to have some presence than not! I'm not going to take it too seriously, though. It'll mostly be for promotion. 

I'm also probably going to stop posting (or attempting to post) on my DeviantArt and Pillowfort accounts. Both have been broken via PostyBirb for a while now, and while Pillowfort is simply... empty, dA is populated by bots, people bugging me about NFTs and its UI has been a mess since 2019. Those of you who follow me on those sites will have noticed that I haven't posted in a while, and that's generally why. Furthermore, I just want to start condensing my experience, and trying to connect with the people on the sites that I actually frequent and the communities I'm actually involved in. If you follow me on either of those sites, keep a look out on my home site, as well as my other galleries, and my comic pages. I am still active, always, I'm just trying to pear things down to a manageable place. I will not be deleting my content or accounts on those sites, however, so don't worry about that if you want to archive anything from them. You're more than welcome to do so, but it's not going anywhere.

The weather's getting pretty chilly now! It was dark at 4:30 PM yesterday, but I honestly don't mind all that much. My roommates are still trying to get used to it, of course, but we will get acclimatized eventually.

See you next week!

~Spooky

Various Happenings: https://www.varioushappenings.com/

The Adventures of Clara Cosmos: https://www.claracosmos.space/

SubscribeStar: https://subscribestar.adult/foxsaliant

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Weekly Update! (2024-11-03) Knee Deep In The Doots

https://www.foxsaliant.com/

Not a lot to say this week! This year's Halloween streams have been doing really well! They've been restricted to Discord this time due to me wanting to keep the volume down and avoid having a huge tail on the orders, but so far everything has been pretty good! Next year I'll probably restrict it to one or two slots instead of three, just manage the amount, but I'm definitely going to reach my goal this year, so I'm very happy about that. There's just one more stream this week on Monday, and then I'll be happy to call Spoops and More '24 a success!

Unfortunately, however, the effort involved means I haven't really had much stamina for comic work this last week, so I'm only about half way through the current Various Happenings update. I'll do my best to get it taken care of by Friday this week though. Sorry about that, but special events require special considerations! In the meantime, you can also check out the schedule on the site.

So yeah, after Monday we'll be going back to normal operations. There won't be any SotS this week, but that's understandable. We'll just use the Friday stream to get caught up on everything and back to where we need to be. We did have a lot of trick-or-treaters this year (seemingly fifty or so, all told!) which was absolutely lovely, and the little bean got a chance to dress up, too, which was just adorable. You all should have seen the haul she managed!

With the end of the witches' year, and the beginning of the dark months, it's time to bundle up and settle in.

Those of us in the states have a vote to do (and you should do it, if you haven't already. I voted early.) but I'm going to try and not focus on that and just keep my nose to the grindstone for the moment. I've done what I can. Otherwise, it's just preparing for winter and seeing what progress I can make. I've got taxes to save up for, after all.

I'll see you all next week. Take care of yourselves.

~Spooky

Various Happenings: https://www.varioushappenings.com/

The Adventures of Clara Cosmos: https://www.claracosmos.space/

SubscribeStar: https://subscribestar.adult/foxsaliant

https://www.foxsaliant.com/

Hey, peeps, meeps, and beeps! Sorry for the lack of updates last week, I was somewhat ill over the last one and I didn't really have the energy for the weekly update or really anything much at all, which is why there was a lack of streams this week as well. My stomach was doing rather badly, and I think I had skipped one too many meals and gotten rather sick because of it. I'm back on track now, but I simply lacked the energy at the time to do anything but focus on Clara and maybe a couple of other things. I simply wasn't up to the task of doing the updates or streaming, and I apologize for that. 

I'm feeling better now, fortunately. And hey, there is an update for The Adventures of Clara Cosmos, so go check that out! In the meantime, you can also check out the schedule on the site.

Updates are slow but steady, and we're getting things checked off here and there. I've got a plan to update the site a little in the future, and the first part of that will be updating my commissions page, so I'll be poking at that over the week hopefully. Everything seems to be working according to plan right now, though, and as time goes on, I would really love to get all my work on-site just in case, so I'll be picking at that now and again as well. I just produce a lot of work every week, so catching up and trying to get all of it posted has always been very difficult, just from a time perspective. Still, a little bit here and there and I'll manage to do it all eventually. I hope.

So far I've been able to do one comic a week for this last month, and I'm very happy with myself on that. I have no doubt I'll miss a week now and again in the future, but my hope is that if I manage a few low-effort weeks here and there, the occasional faster pages will allow me to get ahead and finally achieve that buffer I so desire.  I really want to make my headway, so my ultimate goal is being able to make time for myself to get ahead as well, as be able to work on other things, too!

We'll see what happens, but things are going good! This next week is my Spoops and More '24 streams, so I'll be doing sketches for Halloween as I'm wont to do. It's currently only open to Discord members, but maybe next year things will be a little more public; I just don't want to get swamped again and be making these things up until February!

Still, everything's going alright! I'm on the mend and I hope you're all doing wonderfully as we head through the spooky season into the tail end of fall! 

Enjoy your scares, and I'll see you all next week! ^w^

~Spooky

Various Happenings: https://www.varioushappenings.com/

The Adventures of Clara Cosmos: https://www.claracosmos.space/

SubscribeStar: https://subscribestar.adult/foxsaliant

https://www.foxsaliant.com/

Hey, peeps! Not a lot to say this week! Things are moving according to plan and at a fairly good clip! I need a bit more dosh to make sure everything's covered, but the clean-ups and SotS are going well!

Everything should be where it needs to be in the next week or so if it all goes according to plan!

Check out the schedule on the site!

This week we have a new update for The Adventures of Clara Cosmos! Go check that out! I'm still going to be chipping away at things as I get more settled, trying to keep up with the once a week comics and poking at other projects here and there. If I miss a week now and again, I apologize, but I'm at least in a place where I don't have to put everything on hold to make sure things don't fall apart.

As long as I can keep on checking off stuff on the list, we'll keep moving forward! And that's what's important!

Last night was pretty blustery and I had a nice autumn walk! The weather is starting to get pretty agreeable (maybe a little too chilly in the mornings, even!) But such is the spookiest month!

Thanks again for reading, and I'll see y'all next week!

~Spooky

Various Happenings: https://www.varioushappenings.com/

The Adventures of Clara Cosmos: https://www.claracosmos.space/

SubscribeStar: https://subscribestar.adult/foxsaliant

Weekly Update! (2024-10-06) Putting on the Breaks

https://www.foxsaliant.com/

Hello, peeps! Everything is working out pretty well so far, I'm happy to say, but I'm definitely feeling the lag of my breakneck schedule catching up to me. I've currently got almost two weeks worth of overtime stacked up (for the unaware, I keep a tracker of when I'm working on something artistic or related to my job, so any work that I do that goes over 40 hours a week goes into the overtime bank so that if I do less than 40 hours a week, it offsets that. But I haven't worked less than 40 hours in a week on art, projects, uploads, or updates in a while,) so I'm going to try and chill out on things just a little bit, and only try to do the things that I need to do in order to meet my goal. That means not getting sidetracked by a bunch of other stuff.

Right now I'm kind of just waiting for the gears to lock into place. We're there, we just need to gain purchase and get to saving up money and stabilizing things. If I had managed to finish any earlier in the year, it would have been a lot easier, but leave it to me to exhaust a deadline absolutely and completely! Still! That's where we are, which is a better situation than it had been.

So what's going on, now? You can check the schedule on-site to find out!

We managed to put up our first Various Happenings update in a while! If you haven't yet, go check that out! As I said, I'm going to try and get ahead, but I just wasn't able to work on Clara Cosmos this week really at all because I was still trying to figure out how to manage my time, working on other things on a whim (yes, I know), and not to mention there were also periods where I just wasn't feeling very well during streams and it was hard to really throw my full force behind it. Still, we're going to keep at it and next week is going to focus more solidly on the comic, as well as uploading past pieces. With Sketch on the Spot, I should be able to cover what I need to by around the 20th of October, which I'm planning to take as a by-week. We'll see what happens, of course, plans are always libel to be shifted around, but things are looking steady, which is very good!

After a small hot spell, fall weather is starting to come back and hopefully it sticks around this time! It's nice having the windows open, though!

Thanks again for reading, and I'll see y'all next week!

~Spooky

Various Happenings: https://www.varioushappenings.com/

The Adventures of Clara Cosmos: https://www.claracosmos.space/

SubscribeStar: https://subscribestar.adult/foxsaliant

https://www.foxsaliant.com/

Alright! Well, now that things are clear, I've got a lot more control and it's smooth sailing from here we can hope. From now on, I'm going to do my best not to let things pile up again, and we're going to take everything in little chunks, one week at a time. From here on out, we're not rushing to catch up, after all, we're guiding where this goes!

So what's going on? You can check the schedule on-site to figure it out!

My vacation's done, more or less. To be fair, it wasn't much of one and I could have probably relaxed a bit more, but without all the weight on my shoulders I was very eager to just... do whatever. It was very fun at least and I did enjoy myself, though with the sixty-six hours of overtime I've accrued since my last bout of sickness, I should probably take it a little easy now and again.

Still, the plan is mostly the same as I remarked last week, with one or two changes.

Repeating last week a bit, during non-SotS streams, we'll open with a short draw for myself, and then we'll be doing Sketch on the Spot clean-ups. I'm going to be gathering up a list of items from between the streams for Scream Stream '23 (2023-10-31) and last week's stream (2023-09-20). I'll be running them just like Sketch on the Spot, with a rotating list and I'll be prorating each piece based on how much work it takes to wrap them up (the maximum charge being $40 USD for pure black and white sketch lines to a finished colored sketch.) I will try and do three a stream, if people are there to see it (or if I'm given the go ahead to do them in advance,) and then I'll move on to the next thing.

After that, during the streams, we'll be either working on the bookmarks, or working on either Various Happenings or The Adventures of Clara Cosmos. Usually a few hours on each if I can get away with it. We'll be posting whenever we have something, and the goal is one comic a week alternating between the two, until I build up enough of a buffer to run them each once a week.

Friday streams will be Sketch on the Spot as usual, but they will not add to the clean-up. A separate clean-up period for those will occur at a later date.

Once I've cleaned out the SotS Clean-Up list, I will begin working on my commission page again. I have decided to change my plans, and move the specials to the Discount Bin, instead running my standards as a list based thing much like Sketch on the Spot. Basically how that will work, is I will decide on a stream day if I want to take a commission or two and check the list based on who is ready. Then ask them what they want and we'll go from there with regular ala carte pricing. My hope is that taking them one at a time and working on them then and there will end up with me not building up a huge backlog of stuff, and will allow me to keep things fresh and gauge how I'm feeling so that I can pull back if I'm getting too burnt out or take on more if my energy is high or I need the cash.

I hope this, along with SotS and my Subscribestar (along with the future prospect of the bookmarks and other merchandise) will keep income going so that I can meet my obligations without stressing my ass out. I'm still going to be a bit pickier, but hopefully this will keep things from getting overwhelming.

Once the SotS Clean-Up is finished, I will begin working on side-projects, one at a time. The current one is finishing up the collaboration between myself and Azure, and then once that's completed, I'll be having a vote in my VIP channel on my Discord for what the next project should be. As I said last time, these will be, rather than large scale projects, more bite-sized chunks of projects in progress. So a chapter of story here, a short few pages of comic there, some vignettes or lore dumps for a variety of things, stuff like that so that I can step outside of the worlds of Various Happenings and Clara Cosmos when I need to, because I fully intend to immerse myself in them as much as I can from here on out.

And that is going to be, hopefully, how it is for the foreseeable future. Once the bookmarks are completed and printed, I'll see about opening up the shop and see what that entails, and once those are done, I'll see about making more cool stuff! Again, I'm mostly going to be trying to keep my commission load reasonable and keep my income balanced against overworking myself.

We'll see how it goes, but it can only get better from here.

Thanks again for reading, and I'll see y'all next week!

~Spooky