June jinxing

'Allo folks! All good?

Last proper 'monthly' post before the usual summer vacation in July (back mid-august!). Going to cover two topics - the usual workshop news, and a retrospective of the last year.

Starting with workshop news, I could pull up the bullet points, but it's basically two... One of which is several paragraphs. No bullet points for y'all today!

First up, the quick one - 250kg of supplies (aka SUIT-126) arrived earlier this week! If you ever wondered where the patreon support goes, this is a picturesque example :) 

At last, I'm set for the final stretch on the suit-rig-building. A bit of time to build the filler-inserts (SUIT-124), some pump testing (SUIT-133), a bit more building (SUIT-130, etc)... Then it's go-time! Maybe I'll be able to finish it over summer, we'll see.

Secondly, the new hood model (aka SUIT-83, and/or the patreon-todo SUIT-138) has gotten most of my time during the last month... I think I've cast about 30-35 hoods, all with varying permutations of trouble.

Almost a bit mystified, can't remember the previous hood molds giving me this much trouble? Mostly having issues with the surface treatment layers glitching out on me (see pic), but I'm slowly getting it resolved issue by issue. Planning on spending the rest of june on this. Fingers crossed, yeah? Once I'm past this I'll finally be able to send out the patreon hoods with good conscience, and restock the store.

Besides the surface layering, I'm going to try one major improvement here - laser-cut appliques for the eyebrows and lips (see pic). It'll lose the fancy hand-painted look, at least until I comp with even fancier lasering, but on the upside I drop the chance of ruining a cast by like 30%. My hand painting skills are so-so at best :)

Now if I could only get the airbrush to cooperate a bit more... The problem is mainly the way the latex clogs up the brushes. Nightmare to clean, and clogging happens frequently during use too. I'll see if I can figure out a way to chemically clean 'em without dissolving the various rubber seals/gaskets within them. Gets a new ticket (SUIT-139) so I remember to post lessons learned once I figure it out.

Overall I'm finally starting to feel like the hoods are coming together, so the patreon batch from earlier this spring should drop by late june/early july? Fingers crossed. Took way longer than expected. Sorry about that :(

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Second topic for today - retro time for season 3. Then I'll digest things over july, and post the season 4 plans in august.

Season 3 opener post: https://www.facebook.com/awalonsstuff/posts/3211453862406866

Back then I barely had the hood production working, so despite some slowness we have come far! The full list of 'small tasks' I've completed during s3 is attached as an image, and I'm pretty happy with it despite the slog of this spring. Good times. Better will be had next season. Looking through the writeup though, there are a few obvious checklist boxes to tick...

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The easy boxes:

[X] Kept up weekly posts on FB (with like 3 of 48 slipping to thursdays, but eh!)
[X] Kept up monthly posts on Patreon (with dates/time-of-month jumping a bit)

The "almost done"-boxes:

[ ] Sellable suits, prototype-one-offs. If you're reading this, you've probably been reading the updates as we've gone along. No major issues so far, just way slower than I wanted. If I hadn't gotten eaten by stress in the spring we might've made it on time with the new rig even.

[ ] "Fully up and running shop", mostly focused on regular production and stuff. Yeah, the new hood model gave me more issues than expected, but it feels like we're on the cusp of having the pieces click together here. Shouldn't be much longer.

The "didn't happens":

[ ] Better media production. Barely managed any, sadly. Pandemic pounds and the general stress level kind of got in the way of these plans. Now that most of it's getting resolved I reckon it's time for revenge, ey?

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Not the best year, but not terrible either. I think I mainly underestimated how hard the pandemic after-effects would hit me, and the stress impact it'd chain towards me via the day job. It's been difficult to get 'in the zone' for dealing with some of the trickier issues throughout the winter. Can't really think of any ways I could've planned or predicted it, but it'll be a good lesson for next year - be careful with the daytime job stress levels. At least the pandemic is mostly over now, and with my job swap happening things should be much better after summer, aka season 4.

Speaking of next season, I'll post a proper plan for it towards the middle of august, but sneakpeeking y'all I can make an educated guess that it'll contain some of the following:

* Fully finish the new suit rig -> make + sell prototype suits
* Get the hood production going smoothly with the current models
* Tech up the mold production - as mentioned in the last patreon post, there's engineering magic to be had, and it'd resolve a lot of the issues here. Would also open up some new things that are currently not possible to make.
* Media, because gotta' drum up some hype for suits when I can actually make 'em!
* A visit to a fetish market or two, scope out the competition etc. Also to drink beer with weird rubber people.

Looser, wishlisty stuff might show up too, but not sure yet how I'll plan for them;

* bigger workshop. Really, really want and/or need to sooner or later, but it's going to be a massive monthly expense. Can't risk it before the production systems work better.
* Different suit sizes. Genuinely tricky to fit the full-human-sized molds in the current workshop. Once the rig's finished I'll see how many I can realistically store without the workshop upgrade.
* High-tech mask upgrades, movement/mouth/lenses etc. Badly want to work on it, but really need to finish up the core production first. Making a fancy high-end thing on top of a mediocre, fragile base suit... yeah, not really a good thing.

Not sure how far I'll be able to stretch things. More detailed plans to come in august once I've had the summer vacation to digest wtf to do.

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Whew. Wordy one today.

Once again - thank you all for the support. You know the drill - did I gloss over something interesting? Any feedback? All's welcome! 

I also hope you all have a great summer, and I'll see you on the other side in mid-august - well rested and with a good plan for season 4!