The Astukari Newsletter #98
Weekly Update #001
(Taken from IndieHackers)
Hello all,
In addition to the Monday Morning Coffee and Astukari Newsletter segments, I wanted to have another smaller blurb where I just talk about what's been going on with JBR/Astukari recently. These updates also get posted to both IndieHackers and LinkedIn which are the two places were I easily have the least amount of (fresh) content.
As some of you may know, the main focus as of late has been releasing Boys & Girls: Part I by the end of the year. This is pretty ironic speaking that I haven't worked on editing it in about two weeks. Instead I have been completely and uttering distracted by new imagegen technology, which I've been using to my advantage in creating character concepts for both B&G as well as other in-dev projects. Which is productive, kind of! These are all concepts that you'll be seeing a lot more of as we continue rolling out the marketing campaign. The first batch (created in WD 1.2) is already up on the website and wiki, with some more (even prettier and accurate-er) ones made in NAI and WD 1.3 coming out later. The tech is going so fast I feel the need to keep up!
Of course, there are other things I so desperately need to work on. Like new blog post features. And fixing my website, the internal site, the JBR site... maybe that's what I'll focus on today. Hope you enjoyed this update, though!
New Releases
Blog posts: A Guide to Fiction Writing & The Productivity Tool World Tour 2022
Monday Morning Coffee: Releasing Stories Iteratively (#004) & The Good (and Bad) Ways to Market on Social Media (#005)
IGRU: None this week, but we did release our Quarterly Report
Astukario: Yui810 Is A Psychopath
Podcast: Conscience Questions, Unchristianized Edition
Instagram: Check out new Stable Diffusion art, 5x a week.
Other links: Pinterest, Quora, JBR Subreddit, JBR Tumblr
Updates
Creative Focus: As I mention in the above blurb, the focus is still on Boys & Girls! Also as I mention in the above blurb, I have gotten no work on it done this week! I can’t help it, imagegen is too good, etc. etc. Just this week we got the brand new NovelAI model, which easily creates the best anime content so far. And, in the time it took for me to post that IH article, said model got leaked and is now available for local use. So yeah, it’s hard to not get excited about imagegen. I am making B&G concepts with it, though!
JBR Focus: As I become more focused on building product this quarter, I’ve tried creating a “pipeline” that tells me what updates/launches are slated to come out each week. Technically this is something that fits for Creative, JBR, and Astukari, but the reason that I put it here is that a lot of the releases coming soon are going to be small tools I’ve been making on the backend for creatives. Hope you all find them useful!
Astukari Focus: I just did a lot of sitemap changes to clean stuff up on the website. This includes new page layouts and menus. Technically I’m still making these changes, so when you click around some pages may be more… finished, than others. Hopefully I remember to complete these changes sooner rather than later.
Other Stuff
Currently Reading: A lot of stuff. Most notably I’ve officially started reading NNT’s “Incerto” series, starting with Fooled By Randomness. I finished Black Swan a few times but have never read his other stuff. He is very pretentious, but in a good way — one that makes you want to keep reading!
Currently Watching: I finished Will Wright’s MasterClass about Game Design. MasterClass courses seem to be very hit or miss, but Will’s and also Werner Herzog’s I really enjoyed and got a lot out of.
Currently Listening: The Cyberpunk: Edgerunners soundtrack. Okay, fine, I was wrong, 2077’s in-game radio is pretty good. Provided you know where to look. And Akira Yamaoka clearly did know where to look, speaking that every 2077 track in Edgerunners is phenomenal.
Currently Playing: I have been chosen to play Dead Rising for Halloween month. Initially I hated it — the manual saves, weapon durability, and stunlock on zombies all made it a nightmare to play. Then, I, well… “stumbled upon” a CheatEngine table that removed stunlock and durability. And now I’m having more fun. Though not sure if this counts towards the Halloween challenge anymore.