NovelChef
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April Summary + Going Forward
🕑 Added 2023-04-29 06:22:38 +0000 UTCHey everybody! Thanks again for another month of support, and welcome to all the new Patrons as well! There's a lot to talk about this month, so let's dive in.
April Restrospective + going forward.
I think I accomplished a lot during April.
I made progress on all of my goals except the Remilia story, and made six big 30+image uploads. (Plus posting the Disastrous Delivery story, but that was more of a leftover from last month.) I feel a lot more comfortable in certain aspects of photoshop and NovelAI.
*RANT ABOUT NOVELAI BELOW*
One problem that I need to work on is my quality standards. I waste so much time on unimportant nonsense that's barely visible on the image. I can be real OCD about off-pixels and coloration that really doesn't matter. In the last post for instance, there's an image where gary pushes Ash. This is impossible to generate normally with NovelAI, so I made an image of Ash looking like they were getting pushed, and then tried to get a good image of an arm pushing towards the back of the screen.
Well I got the arm, but the hand sucked, so now I have to generate a hand that matches the positioning of the arm. Oh! I got a hand, but its a little too tan, and putting "tan" in the "avoid this" section of the generator ruins the hand. Guess I'll recolor it. Recolor isnt cooperating even after raising it's tolerance levels. Go to generate a new hand, rinse and repeat. Then after wasting over an hour, I think to myself, "This is just a setup image, does it even matter?" and I kept the shitty first hand.
TLDR there is definitely an equilibrium between time and quality that I just haven't found yet.
Going forward I'm pretty confident that I can produce 4-5 big image posts a month from now on. Even more maybe if AI improves or I get a larger following and can devote more time to this.
I spend a lot of my day messing with images though, so if I get a new job or my life situation changes I won't be able to upload near as much. I'm hoping I can reach my goal of making $1500-$2000 a month doing this. Then I can continue having this be my fulltime job. If not, I might need to get a fulltime job in a few months.
Prior Goals
#1 Unfinished Patron Requests.
I'm over halfway through The Factory, but I still have three requests left from prior months. I'm working on it guys, sorry for the long delay.
#2 Gyaru Story
I wanted to do part 2, but captioning part 1 turned out to be more more of a time-sink since I basically redid all the images. I wanted to prioritize requests as well.
#3 Finish Captioned Reposts
Did gyaru, just the ballerina one left. Which is ironic because it was my first requested story. I'll probably need to redo a lot of this story and add a big "scene" onto the end in a similar vein to "Paddled into Pinkness."
#4 Get Started on Patron Request Winner.
3 parts in one month, which makes me look lazy compared to everything else I've stalled on. I'm not sure I'll be able to get 3 more parts out next month. Depends on my priorities and how requests are coming along.
#5 Good Ending Story
It's been a long time coming, but the Ash story is on the road to having a good/happy/acceptance ending. All the mushy goodness and sappy love nonsense one can ask for- ...hopefully. We'll see how my writing goes...
#6 Remilia Story
I want to finish this. There are 3-10 patrons that really want me to finish this as well.
One day friends... I'm leaving a blank spot open in the schedule for next month.
#7 Learn more.
I learned more about photoshop/ pixlr. Uploading custom shapes into photoshop and managing paths to insert photos into those shapes while still being able to move the photo around within the shape. Learned some better shortcuts for changing text strokes and saving images faster. Little stuff that makes the process overall faster.
New Goals
#1 Unfinished Patron Requests.
People have been waiting since February. I'm really hoping I can get 2-3 done next month.
#2 Ash story
This is going to be an ongoing story for at least 6 parts. I think I'll make these long running "patron picks" stories a mainstay for this patreon. I might slow down sometimes to work on other stuff, but expect at least 2 parts a month.
#3 Gyaru/Remilia Story
I'm not sure which of these to prioritize, but the Gyaru story will probably be more immediately "exciting" so maybe I'll do that one first.
#4 Captioned Repost
Just ballerina left. It will need a whole new coat of paint and a new ending, so it'll be a decent amount of work. Low priority.
#5 Learn more. Get Stable Diffusion working on my PC with addons.
It might be good for me to download python and get stable diffusion working on my PC. It's easier to generate multiple images at once, and the post image processing is sooo much better. I hear they have addons to fix hands and faces after the image has already been generated, which would save me loads of time.
NovelAI is cheap and very convenient though, so we'll see how it goes.
