Writing What's Next for GG (FEB 2025 Update)

Hey yall!

Here is a well-deserved update for you patrons on what I've been working on the past couple weeks. Although we don't have an active project (yet!), much progress is being made on the future of the channel & Gildedguy's story.

A quick unrusting animation.

Digital Housekeeping

Most of the past few weeks have been filled with commissions work and programming. On the drawing side, I had opened up commissions to keep my hands artistically busy, as well as to help pay for some bills. I enjoyed working out my drawing skills after all the mouse-heavy post-production work from Violet vs Dummy. It was also fulfilling to bring some of your guys' characters to illustrated life. You can check out my process via the Twitch VOD's here.

You can check out all of the finished pieces in the Gallery above!

My commissions are closed, but my wife is still taking some! She even takes animated requests. Throw me an email at michael@gildedguy.com and I'll forward it to her.

Programming

In addition to unrusting the art, I dipped back into the old IDE and got some code done on the website and stream overlay. One big improvement was a MAJOR refactoring of the overlay's architecture (basically how all the components are now much more organized). The 3D overlay is about 4 years old now, and I've just been tacking on feature after feature without much thought to the overall structure. So this re-organization was long overdue.

The cleanup allowed me to bring back a very important feature to the stream experience - proper giveaway screens and our classic interactive minigame, Penny Picker! Now in version 2.0 in full 3D.

Before:

After:

PowerMeep and I have been tinkering with a fun widget that oughta make sharing fanart and photos more fun. We've developed a little browser app that'll collect and display images submitted to the stream (and eventually, from the Discord server). In addition, we have a curation system that our mods will use to sort out any bad eggs. Every once in awhile, I'll type a command that'll display your shared images right in the 3D overlay, like a little community gallery. I can't wait to test it live with y'all!

You can check it out here: https://gildedguy.com/fanart-viewer

Lastly, due to Twitch's regularly changing API requirements, I had to retrofit the old PubSub code using their new EventSub service. This is the stuff that informs the overlay of Follower, Subscription, and other chat events.

In short - I did a lot of digital plumbing.

These coding tasks took about a week and half of hacking.

Juicy Storywriting

So I've been offline for the past few days doing some serious brainstorming and planning. As you can recall, the ending of the previous story, Gildedguy & the Dragon of Mar, left our hero in a pretty cushy and happy position.

The reason that is, is because I, myself, didn't have a concrete plan for Story 9 and beyond. I have general ideas, and a fairly specific ending in mind, but no roadmap. So after all the aforementioned housecleaning tasks were done, I committed myself to solitary confinement and a blank canvas.

Obviously for spoiler reasons, I must remain vague about my writing process. But it involves lots of MindMaps, which are basically flowcharts used for brainstorming. I'm a fairly visual writer, so being able to arrange plot events and character in a space is helpful.

The app I'm using is called Draw.io (it's free and syncs to Google Drive)

I'm currently planning out the final stories all the way to the end. This series has been in the works for several years now, and I'm dedicated to finishing it to the best of my ability. I've always said that the Stellapent represents a sort of final destination for Gildedguy, and as a parallel to the animations, I do not know exactly where it leads - all I know is that I'm drawn to it.

I believe I'm now ready to open my heart to the metaphorical green star and try to concretely depict what this whole Gildedguy thing all was really for.

So please allow me the time to meditate and write out the final arc/arcs. I don't exactly know how much longer it'll take, but it shouldn't be more than a couple weeks.

Once the broad story plan is set, I'll be able to more confidently take on the future projects, and the animation work shall continue!

Thank you for your patience and support! I am already incredibly excited for the new ideas & territory we'll be exploring in the next year.