End year recap! Thank you for a great 2023, and plans for 2024! (Patreon)

Hey everyone! I'm about to head off to my own NYE celebrations, but before I leave the house I wanted to write a few words here to thank everyone for this year, as well as tease some plans for what's to come.

The Girl Who Won 2023!

Let's start with a quick recap of releases this year: other than wrapping up the Kayla & Sayako set at the start of the year, I then went into a flurry of new content with the introduction of four new girls, a brand new plot line with the Peak Performance story, the wrapping up of the Royal Exhibition trilogy with a part 3, as well as that leading into a brand new summertime wedding set that's going to feature the entire Lust Unleashed cast.

On top of that, some Patreon-exclusive releases, such as Kayla's brand new bio, her climax set, as well as the Mari & Breanna bridal set that I posted just yesterday which serves as a fun little appetizer to the rest of the wedding content! 

But honestly, between her appearance with Sayako at the start of the year, her later appearance in Peak Performance and her continued role in that series as it develops, her own biography, and her climax set, Kayla really did come out on top of this year!

Second place will go to who Marcella appeared in two new releases this year, both Peak Performance as well as The Royal Exhibition 3, on top of the A3D store release of The Royal Exhibition 2. We'll be seeing a lot more of her in the nearby future, and I think it's fair to say that after spending a few years in the shadows, Marcella has finally risen through the Lust Unleashed ranks to achieve bombshell status ;) Stay tuned!

Third place goes to Breanna, who featured technically in as many new appearances this year as Marcella did, but neither were as prominent (both her Lust-tier shots from One Night Stand as well as her bridal pair-up with Mari were Patreon-exclusive content), and neither were hugely story-driven (yet, obviously the bridal theme is a teaser/lead-up to more). Nevertheless, it's impossible to get bored of rendering Breanna, and there's something about the way she looks that makes her have great energy in each set she appears in!

What's coming up in 2024!

There are a lot of things I didn't get around to in 2023, that I'll be putting my full attention towards in 2024. For instance, Peak Performance 2 is super high on the list of things I absolutely need to get out the door. I've also got several image sets roughly mapped out again, as I do at the start of each year, hoping to hit an average release of once per quarter, so you can count on those. And of course wherever I have time, fun little extra minisets.

However, something has also become clear to me that I was already beginning to suspect in 2022: in order to meet the ever rising level of quality I've come to expect from myself, renders have become more labour intensive to make. Let's say four years ago, a render didn't involve much: I had a very basic understanding of lighting, I wanted to picture two girls having sex, sometimes the scene was as simple as a very basic set, I put them in some sexy outfits, and off to render it went.

These days, there's a lot more to it: consider this picture:

This is one of the more labour intensive shots I've done this year. It involves outside scenery placement, interior scenery design, exterior lighting elements, interior lighting elements, clothing sim, hair sim (re-simming for errors is such a timesink), small correctives, and then inevitably once dickgirls start being involved these shots also require cumshots which is a whole other step.

No matter what, I always feel like the work is worth it. Nothing hypes me more than finally seeing the actually render and getting that dopamine rush of "holy shit this looks great". But all this labour intensiveness also means that there's a graph where labour intensiveness meets productive time spent, and I think I'm starting to get really close to where those two lines meet.

The Big Word

I've always said that I wasn't going to animate until I felt like I was in a good position for it. That I had really hit the ceiling in Daz, and that the only way for me to keep growing as an artist from that really solid foundation was to move into different software that was capable of doing more things.

I feel like as a render artist, I'm getting about as much as I can get out of Daz while still being able to meet reasonable deadlines. It honestly is just time to move things up to animation at this point.

Now I'm not going to hype you guys up big by saying "I've got a release planned for XYZ date and it's going to be this long and feature those and those girls". What I'm here to tell you is that I've always struggled considering my own technical journey as a 3D artist as content for this Patreon page. I've always tried to keep posts limited strictly to what's sexual in nature. I think for 2024, this mindset has to change.

Throughout the year I'll be updating you guys on what we're working on in regards to animation. I say we because it's me and another 3D artist who's filling in some technical gaps for me. January will be a little slow still, but after February I expect this will start to pick up. This content will be interspersed with regular Daz content that I'm going to keep posting here all the while. I hope to strike a good balance in 2024 of finding time for both.

With that, I wish you all a very happy new year!

I hope for your continued support as I set out to evolve my skillset, deliver more sexy steamy renders, and expand as an artist. I also hope I can continue to meet your standards in 2024, and I'm ever so grateful for the backing you guys have given me throughout 2023 and every year prior. May I never let you down. See you on January 1st!