2024 Newsletter and plans! (Patreon)

> tl;dr at the end!
> Addendums (1&2) at the end!

Hello everyone! Hope you had a great new year and enjoyed the end of the year celebrations!

I'm just getting back home, so I'm going to take the rest of the week off to rest and recover from running ragged the past two weeks! Sorry about that!

Anyway, I wanted to give you some update about the coming week and properly send 2023 off!
(tl;dr at the end tho I'll try to keep it short cuz man I'm beat!)

2023 was a though year! Lot of experimentation, trying to find a new direction for my style, a lot of new comics to test new stuff, the best of all being the creation of Vex, and of course, my wonderful goober of a Kitesona... :P

Art & Style: 2023 to now

I kinda took a step back as 2023 ended and thought about about where I was going and where I wanted to go as I was simplifying my style's shading and trying to get rid of my tendency to over-render. I think I'm going in a good direction, style wise... It's simpler to do, yes, so is more expressive and also keeps the shiny look I like. The most important to me are colors and light, and I'm gearing to work smarter, not harder!

Curious to hear your opinion on it... I should make a poll. :P

Comics: What now?

As always, comics have been the stars of my activity as always! Lots of Unsheltereds were launched so i could explore stuff, projects were cancelled or left on the backburner... I have plans for it going forward too. This may be the most important part of this announcement: Let's take them one by one!

HMGBAPS has gotten where I want it to be style wise I think... Could use some simplifying but it's a work in progress! Story wise, it may have been a bit confusing but I've been setting things that will pay off at the end of the current chapter! Overall, I plan to conclude HMGBAPS within Q1 and Q2 and reduce the amount of comics I do. We're actually closer to the end that you think, too!

HMGBAPS was originally created to be "a short comic of 20ish pages" I launched because, well, Pokémon was my favorite series, and I was undergoing a massive Fallout 4 burnout after 4 years of uninterrupted Fallout. It since then grew into my main series and honestly, I'm very proud of what it became! However the experimental nature of how I wrote and did HMGBAPS caused some troubles when it became a more established, serious story with its own worldbuilding. As such, I want to give it a proper conclusion, and use this conclusion as the set-up for what comes next: it's sequel and the "true" HMGBAPS- no "experimentation" (beyond naturally evolution of style and such-, and a three parts stories that will explore conclude our beloved character's arcs. I won't tell you too much about it, but the parts will be centered on Lou, Laure and Aya, for part 1, Eerie and Lou, her profession and their future on part 2, and will conclude on the Lacroix family and Annabelle on part three!

Addendum: 'HMGBAPS 2' will NOT be a SFW story, do not worry. If anything it'll be steamier than HMGBAPS, which admittedly isn't very difficult; I didn't NEED to separate it from HMGBAPS main but I thought that starting on new, fresh bases would be better, since the next part isn't about **becoming a pornstar**, but about going to the next step. Also, the Eerie part will actively focus on the pornstar part, whereas as of now it's more suggested. Lou's part will involve "mommy issues" too if you catch mah drift wink wink :p  ! (I'll copy this at the end too)

The visual style of this will also be simpler than HMGBAPS as I learn to simplify and also maybe 3D background for everything isn't necessary lol

Hope you'll enjoy what I planned for HMGBAPS! :]

Travelogue will be on the short end as well, about 20-ish page and is a set-up for the returning Poison Tales. It should be done within Q2.

Unsheltered:Sq32 will conclude in Q1 after the Angelstorm arc (that should have concluded in Q4 2024 but I was doing too many high production value comics at once and both my health and energy paid the price. I will focus on concluding both HMGBAPS and Sq32 at the same time. :p

The Unsheltered side comics will conclude with Sq32 as well.

Wildest Wasteland will likely either be my next comic to conclude (20-ish pages as well) and for the future fallout content, I will either front Welcome to Martha's Vineyard or propose you something else if you're not interested in that project. If you so desire, I am willing to resurrect and continue The Overbitch although it will not be as dark and gritty as previously. We'll wait until US is concluded anyway.

The Wanderlust case

Wanderlust has been the main project on the backburner from 2 years now; "Light of Ida" was an attempt to produce it along the main content but it proved to be adding too much work, and was subsequently dropped. Part of my 2024 plans are to get a steadier and healthier work rhythm and ethic and less "create and drop" projects I just cannot do because I have too much at once.

So I'm honestly considering dropping Wanderlust in its comic form, after thinking about what I wanted to be doing this year.

The reason is somewhat simple: Wanderlust, like HMGBAPS, is high in production time and value (3D background and shading). One HMGBAPS page takes 3 days in the fastest scenario, and Wanderlust would probably take as much. The original plan was to conclude HMGBAPS, THEN replace it by Wanderlust, but with some recent developments, I am going to take a different direction.

"The Saintess and the Witch"

A long while ago I'd shown you a SFW project I'd been writing for years, and polled whether it interested you or not (it had polled at 83% in favor back then). This is coming back, and will be my main second project going forward, featuring a fully original world and story initially told in the form of illustrated, silent story vignettes with the goal of making a full webcomic down the line. It's actually a project that predates the creation of my HF and me doing porn in the first place!

"Kite!! But why? Are you abandoning NSFW?!"

No, don't worry! But HMGBAPS is mostly a SFW-ish ecchi comic with some porn in it, a lot of people follow it for the story and I believe I can deliver you a similar (and even better) story and experience with the, well, experience I gained from writing HMGBAPS. And let me be a little more direct too: NSFW isn't really conducive to a stable future.

Between platforms regularly shadowbanning NSFW artists, the usual attempt of passing a law regulating NSFW because some fucko somewhere did something some politician want to exploit to get brownies points, this very website I'm writing this on being very grey about NSFW because at ANY given time, Mastercard can decide to try and pressure them to ban porn again... Being a full NSFW artist is a source of stress of "my income can disappear in a flash". YES, another platform I will not name so I don't get deplatformed exists, but it's not a guarantee either. Not to mention that doing NSFW on IPs such as Nintendo's IP is a very, very tight balancing act in itself, and if they're actually pretty tolerant so long as you don't step on their search engine optimisation, it's still a source of worry.

I honestly considered doing an fully SFW HMGBAPS V2 at some point. Same story, same events, but absolutely no porn and focused on modeling and fashion.

Anyhow, I've had this project running in my head for a long while now. I firmly believe I can deliver you an equally satisfying SFW project, maybe on a secondary Patreon, and post some steamier shots from it here. It will allows me, hopefully, to grow stronger as an artist while expanding my reaches, diversifying the baskets I put my eggs in, and be a little less stressed.

So this project will arrive around Q3 to 4, tho you may see designs and vignettes I'll post way before that as I (re)design the characters and work out how it'll look.

I really hope you'll give me a chance with this!

Quid of Wanderlust then?

That's zee big question, and is linked to comics in a way.

Recently, I've done some standalone illustrations that you folks seems to have really liked, including the Kitesona pinup, that was very well received... So I consider dropping Wanderlust as a comic in fine, as the goal going forward is less comics worked at the same time, max 1 big project-2 comics and a steadier, healthier publication rhythm.

I promised I'd bring back Wanderlust by end 2023, I solved the background issue somewhat by hiring a 3D artist, but it's still going to be a long of work that would be possible if I was doing JUST that and a side comic, but with HMGBAPS, US, and everything else, yeah, too much.

So, I consider bringing WL back in it's og format. One monthly picture, story in a visual novel style (ish, idk if what I was doing could be called VN); in general I plan to bring back more pictures like the Caelyn-Merel ones, and WL can ALSO be done in that format when you people want a more differend pinup.

I think that in the end, it's best I return to that. Less comics, some side sketches and content, a monthly (if I reduce the number of monthly comic weeks to 3 instead of 4 so a week can be dedicated to comfortably doing the pinup ) or bi monthly pinup if still too much, etc

When? I have no idea because January will be short but I realistically can start in February, the Patreon Anniversary date.

In short!

2023 was a bit of a maturation year, and I decided that I needed to approach things differently and learn from all of my years as a NSFW artists so far, to have an healthier relationship with my work. So this style I've worked out the past year will be the style I will build on going forward! Experiment phase over, now it's time to do, and do steadily.

There will be less comics overall. HMGBAPS in its current form will be finished within the 6 first months and then have its sequel on new, shiny bases, but also with less production values to focus on having a steady, smooth comic.

Travelogue length set to 20ish pages

US Sq32 will be finishing within the next 3 months, along with its side comics, then we'll do something new

New SFW project that will become my main project to build after HMGBAPS, probably with an entirely separate Patreon, but will be posting spicy stuff about it here as a bonus, because this sfw apple is still falling from a nsfw tree and I'm not abandoning NFSW entirely. :p

Wanderlust will come back in its OG form, and I'm dropping the idea of doing it as a comic because I do too many comics already, I am restricting the amount of comics I'll do OVERALL to two, and to ensure an healthier work schedule I'm lowering the amount of comic weeks by one (three weeks dedicated to comics, one to pinups). MAY lower to 2-2 depending on how the post HMGBAPS world /HMGBAPS 2 world look

...That was longer than planned. Thank you for reading, and thank you for your support until now!

Arceus willing, 2024 will be a much sexier year with some epic and dramatic newcomers!

Cheers!

Kite

Addendum 1: 'HMGBAPS 2' will NOT be a SFW story, do not worry. If anything it'll be steamier than HMGBAPS, which admittedly isn't very difficult; I didn't NEED to separate it from HMGBAPS main but I thought that starting on new, fresh bases would be better since the next part isn't about **becoming a pornstar**, but about going to the next step. Also, the Eerie part will actively focus on the pornstar part, whereas as of now it's more suggested. Lou's part will involve "mommy issues" too if you catch mah drift wink wink! :p

Addendum 2: You won't need to pledge on both patreons if I launch a separate SFW one; all content will be publicly accessible as usual, and people who are already pledging here will get  the additional sexy content people who are subbed to the other patreon will get as well. The proverbial other patreon is mostly to separate this CLEARLY NSFW patreon focused on my general work from the other patreon, which will have a "sexy pics of characters" tier but that won't be NFSW in nature. All NSFW content for SFW project will be de facto available here, as well as links to public content. If needed, I'll create an additional tier with the same price to allow people who are interested in the additional SFW content to received it here too, but you won't need to double dip or pay more in any case :)

Unlike me, who'd need to buy an additional DLC set for Scarlet if I wanted to buy Pokémon Scarlet to have the exclusive pokémon...