leave2gether
patreon
What happened.
🕑 Added 2025-12-11 08:38:37 +0000 UTCI was delaying this post for months, always finding 'something else' to do. But here we are.
It's like ripping a band off a wound that never healed underneath... and actually got worse under the band.
WARNING: Below is a kind of shit-posting (mostly consisting of poor English) that I never ever liked myself, honestly. However, I owe you guys an explanation of what happened.
First of all, I want to thank you all. With all this community support, even in my darkest hours, I had an understanding that I had at least once done something good or even cool in my life. Like I had a place to return. My small guiding light.
This topic will be broken into multiple posts, so let's call this one an "explanation part".
So. What happened?
The project was always falling apart as much as I remember it, but at some point, everything had sped up significantly -which was hilarious (in a bad way)- not only because of my drowning in depression. My false hopes of "everything comes to a good end" at the beginning of the year never turned into reality. I was mixing weeks of work with weeks of deep depression when my team started breaking apart. My artists were experiencing their own burnouts many months before 2025, and they were looking for their own ways of solving it (yeah, finding another job :D). At some point, almost simultaneously, both left the project, stretching the completion of already paid tasks to some barely foreseen future. In 10 months some tasks are done, some are still not. (At this point you might ask - Why are you so stupid, prepaying tasks anyways? Well, I don't deny that I'm a fool, but I also always envisioned this project and the team as a group of creativists, not a business or something. So, when artists were in a bad shape, I've supported them prepaying future work (when supportive words were not enough)).
Anyway, I’ve lost an art team. What else could go wrong, right? My main and only animator (my star) left the team too.
All that happened within the first two months of the year (maybe three, I don't exactly remember).
It's hard to explain the emotions that I had at that moment. The best description is "tired and broken".
And it did not go away that easily. Instead, that feeling started to take root in me.
I would start drinking at that point, though I never was a fan of the idea of turning something from bad to worse :D
So instead, I've got into some creativity & communicational coma. Not talking to anyone, not socializing, being ashamed of myself, losing any self-respect or self-confidence.
That took a while, though I was making irregular attempts to fight it, or at least not getting consumed by this shit.
Health activities first (yeah, spending most of the new life indoors and poor light did not go unnoticed by my health), then I tried pushing things back and started animating. Well, that did not go well - apparently, my so oh-so-smart Brain wasn't exactly aware that I should start to love doing something that WE NEED TO DO. Oh fuck I hated animations, always did. I've spent two weeks full-time animating stuff until I've burned out again, and -well, if I was going too dramatic I'd say things got worse, but not really - they turned out to be the same. In the end, I never learned to be an animator - I was pretty much like Google search AI does for inputs - guessing the right patterns and barely ever hitting things right.
Though at that point, I've finally got extra energy "to do something". Mostly dreaming of fixing everything in my bed. Those were good dreams, but they did not work either. I've spent weeks with AI (voice, arts, scenes) - nothing really that could significantly help either.
I was like, "I need to start fixing things", but start where? I did the list of what content should be added to call a game 'finished' (more or less), and I've found out that I was missing a few essential parts - Vault comics update. Oh well, my artists weren't delivering their own ongoing tasks (and at that point I wasn't even sure if they even deliver at some point) and there was no one to draw those arts instead. So, I've decided it's better to go without that part than... without all parts.
And then my animator returned to the project. Thankfully, with your ongoing support, I was able to rehire him. I made a list of scenes we can do from the existing pool of previously finished art. This did not solve the problem with a lack of new arts, however.
Arts. Hm. I was an artist many years ago. And who am I now without hired artists? What can I do?
I couldn't throw this simple question out of my head for months, and the answer was - "I can't do much".
But hey, wasn't it me alone who started this project, drew most of the original art, characters and stuff? Well, surely pToon-T pulled this project on a completely different quality level of arts, but I wasn’t that bad in the past. Why do I think I suck now?
I've started drawing again, mostly to regain the skills. I've started in October, but real work and training began in November (like full working hours per week). My friend pToon-T helps me a lot with this. So now I do my regular arts training and prepare the next tasks & review animations. I even started doing dialog sketches for Scene dialogs to implement some in the foreseeable future.
I must say the drawing heals me a lot, my self-confidence. Now I don't feel like I'm nothing without hired artists. Even though my skill level is low and I cannot draw sex scenes, it's all a question of time and more training.
And while I was slowly putting more and more effort into my work and slowly unrooting this whole depression shit out of me, one of the artists found time to finish his long-awaited scenes. And he also proposed to work over Vault comics pages (those that I need to finish the game). Am I happy? Yes. Am I sure he'll finish those arts? I don't know, but I guess I don't have better options either.
Comments
Cratty
Yo! Im so glad you're back! I knew it's the matter of time. Just so you know, you do have a community that will help you (at least try to) in your lowest of times. So, just let us know, if something happens. We're here for you. <3 You've done so much for so long, and there are a lot of people who acknowledge that. Personally, I would check patreon page 1-2 times a month for a news. And really happy to see you back.
Kraz4LifeRidesAgain
Glad you are feeling better and are back! Sorry to hear about you losing the prior team members, but glad to hear you are still committed to this great game and characters!
leave2gether
thank you!!!
Trivemix
Man, I am glad you are back on this game, gonna support you from now on.
