Gabriel Grey (Sketch Ask)

This was drawn up as a payment/sketch to thank KarakuriCentral for all he's done in regards to being my editor, for fics and otherwise. Many you may remember some of his previous commissions were very Gideon Grey X Sharla centric, one of the more recent releases being that of the 'Sharla pregnant yoga' flats piece. 

On the most recent stream, Kara had asked me what a future potential kit for the pair would look like. And I told him I had actually done that before in an ask, wherein I sketched up a few potential hybrid kits from the pair.

So in order to put a little twist on it, I decided to draw one of them as an adult, and allowed him to pick which kit that got to be. 

With that, I present to you, Gabriel Grey, the king of fluff and the goodest of boys.

Gabriel is a soft, rather sweet-natured Shox who takes a great deal of his looks from his father over his mother, right down to his rather stocky frame, and spare tire. Since he was kit he had always looked even more chunky than he actually was due to his rather luxiourus wool fur pelt, and that's always made him super self-conscious. The boy has also always had a natural talent for baking like his Pa, something he had tried to resist when he was younger but over time grew to love. This was largely because he already got more than enough flack at school for being a hybrid kit in general. being talented in what many would see as a rather girly profession would have only made him more of a pariah. 

So there's a quick write-up on Gabe. Maybe some other time I'll do one on his lil' sister.

-Wasty

An April Update (Future Stuff)

First and foremost I'd like to thank my backers, both Parishioners and Donators in general for the continued support. It's been a really...rocky late winter in terms of health stuff, so thanks to you guys for continuing to stick it out with me. Especially being just about two months late with this whole 'shout out' and 'general update' post. But for once, I'll say the time hasn't been....well, wasted. Anyway, before we dig on in, here are the shoutouts! Freshly audited and pruned for the month of April.

PARISHIONERS

Warwolf416

FluffyWolf117

O.C.R.

KarakuriCentral

AmanCalledDominik

Toonophile

Sypher597

Unformed

Ver min

Luposong

BovineMage

BatDuskyLycanroc3blr

Alexander Eckhart

Kei Fox

FOLLOWER

RandomGamer24

Reddawn7744

Martin Nilsson

So lets roll up our sleeves and dig into this with a sizeably large truncheon. But where to start?

I guess it would be best to start out with the status of the ask blog, which is still running. It's not on some sort of temporary Hiatus or anything of that nature. And I have no intention of ending it in the foreseeable future. all though it's no real secret that I've lapsed with quite a few posts on 'AskTheBellhunters" Last month. The bulk of that was related to my health issues being...well all over the place if I'm being honest, and that's both mentally and physically. I'm going to spare you the gritty details, for both our sakes. But it got into the way of...all of my plans which I should have come to expect by now.

Initially, I had planned to take a vacation from the start of March into the first half of April. I had dubbed the idea as more of a sabbatical when I came up with it. The idea was that I'd close commissions, finish up some pending project work, and then take the next month and a half to work on personal projects and study tutorials that would be boring to watch me stumble through with an audience. So it wasn't so much of a 'vacation' as it was...well more like a personal retreat.

When we were coming up to it, I had two key things I wanted to finish up before I declared my official leave. There was the second Page of 'Savage Love', which I posted earlier in the week, and the next chapter of "The Family Vulpes" That was the last two pieces of work I needed to finish before I could delve into the sabbatical proper. Needless to say, that didn't happen as planned.

My health knocked me off of my very flimsy and clumsy legs, making it so I could barely get anything done for multiple weeks. It dragged me ankle-deep into the mud, and I had to claw my way through to get these specific projects wrapped so I could take my sabbatical proper. This overlapped into me skipping asks, and other stuff just so I could focus on Savage and Vulpes. And while this was easier in terms of working on Savage Love's second page, as I had already planned it out, and it was merely a matter of putting pen to paper. The new Family Vuples Chapter is still only half-finished. Writing is, and always has been tricky for me, especially because when it comes to writing stories, I'm always waited for the 'muse' to take me away. The words refuse to come unless it's under just the right conditions. So feeling nauseated, dizzy, and having no appetite for three solid weeks was....well there was no way I was getting into that head space during that time.

So while I was aiming to finish it up in early March, it's now the cusp of April and I'm only halfway through the chapter. That's where I'm at, and with that being the only thing on my plate at the moment, I'm going to use this week to focus on hammering that out. No promises on progress, but ideally...with my health growing increasingly more manageable, I'm hoping to get a few good days in where my fingers don't stumble all over themselves across the keyboard and something coherent comes out of it.

In terms of asks, I'm planning to resume them on Monday-Tuesday, but the jar has been getting pretty low in terms of written only replies I've got stockpiled. I tend to use those to fluff out my post days, because...well, just not every ask is going to make for a good mini-comic or sketch, and my arm needs to rest. To be frank, I've got a lot of cool asks building up that I'd love to draw in comic form. It's just a matter of picking a nice balance of written asks to supplement it. I could...technically go all in and just bang out some drawn asks back to back within the same week...but the whole purpose of the asks were to be...well the last priority on my list in terms of workload. A way to keep folks interested in The bellhunterverse while I work on the fics, or do commissions so I can...eat another day. It was not meant to ever play the sole focus of my workload in favor of projects like improving style and techniques and growing as an artist and a creator, as well as...be the thing I push hardest to get to when dealing with my health setbacks. I've...tried and tried to push through so often..and only now...I've come to terms with the fact that you can't always just...push through physical limitations, and I'm hoping I can...better learn to live around that now.

As I mentioned above, Savage love page 2 is done for now and out. so that's all set. Don't expect a page three till like...May I guess? I've got the scripts plotted for the next three pages ahead of time, so it's just the matter of putting it to page and arranging it all in a visually interesting way. After that, I'll work on condensing the next several pages of the script (With the help of Karakuri Central, thanks bud.) into scenes and dialogue...although I expect the overall dialogue to drop off to some degree once the clothes come off.

When it comes to "The Family Vulpes chapter six'...or five...hold on...yes five, Id love to have that done by the end of the week, but more realistically I'm shooting for end of April overall. When I began the fic, I had plotted out a giant missive planner for it, with all sorts of key plot details and important significant moments that would come up as each of the four major characters journeyed from one side of the narrative to the other, and I went on to sort of break those down into arcs from there. The first four chapters were meant to center around Val, her Dad, and her family, to show you how they got to where they are pre-and post-rehab...without spilling the entirety of the beans on every aspect of them. It explores their family dynamic in contemporary Zoot and how they got there, and to get you familiar with them. That became the focus, and because it's me...and I can't help but always go long in the tooth that stretched into five chapters.

When this chapter is over, we'll essentially be shifting into the second act which will go on to establish both Clover and Kodi, the outsiders in this story, and their respective social dynamics. So I'll need to take a small break to drum up the next five or six chapter briefs about them before I go into writing them proper as I did with Cameron and Val. That shouldn't take too long as I'm merely condensing more of the bits and pieces I've already got set up for them into easier to manage bites. I hope guys will look forward to it...and manage to keep up some degree of investment and interest despite how long it takes me to get chapters out now.  I wish I could turn out a new chapter every week like I used to, but...that's just how it's going to be I guess...and I hope it still reaches folks regardless.

Over the next few months, I'm aiming to get back into animating, 3d stuff, and maybe a little voice acting. I actually used to....do that when I was younger...not to brag. It was fun, although I've always been too shy of my own voice to act along with anyone. So I was thinking this might be a good opportunity to well...sort of start my own audiobook project with Rehab and Law. Maybe a motion comic thing of the old story sometime. but that's still a way at this point. right now I'd like to focus on getting some simple stuff together...maybe a few models are actually suitable for use in something like Misfit or Wasty Cuttlfish. We're a long way off from Misfit V-tubering it around. Maybe some dry tuns in VR chat, that sort of thing.

So...I think I've said...oh wait...yeah! So Before I sign off, I also wanted to use this time on my sabbatical to work on what my patreon offers, and the prices overall. I'm going to need to restructure a lot of things soon. The chat, the perks...and I want to reach out to other artists that...well know what they are doing in terms of merch and prints and see what I can learn from them. It's easier said than done at this point, as I've always been terrible at networking....and I don't want to get ahead of myself here. But I'm formulating some big plans for this patreon and well...I hope those of you who've stuck with this long throughout my modest career in art will be excited to see what's coming.

Thanks for everything, and sorry for the delays, I love you all...

Wasty