Mutant Standard Blog

Happy new year. I wish I could say that things are going to go off to a great start, but not for me it seems.

(The next version will be called 0.1.0. Unfortunately this won’t be because it will be getting codepoints, it just means a variety of internal structure improvements and unified colour palettes. Codepoints will be 0.2.0 now.)

The bad stuff

As some of you know, my abusive parent is trying to throw myself and my enbyfriend out again, but this time it seems serious and with legal teeth, so we’re going to have to figure out what the fuck we’re going to do, plus dealing with the emotional stress the entire situation (which we’ve been suffering under for months).

I made a general plea for support, and directed people to the Mutant Standard Patreon and Liberapay if anyone wants to donate to try to help improve our options. Because of this, we will have actually broken the $100/month mark across all recurring donation platforms come February. (The total will stand at about $115/mo right now). Thank you so much for all of your support.

That money is more mixed between Patreon and Liberapay now so you wouldn’t have noticed on Patreon. I had been planning to migrate Patreon’s goals to the website for when this kind of situation happened, but I’ve had more pressing things to do. I will try to do it in the quickest way possible this week.

I’m going to be looking for really, any way to get a safe roof over our heads. Because of my situation, my options are very limited. My computer equipment is all desktop and if I find a place, I don’t know if there will be a desk, or a desk big enough to do Mutant Standard work on. Even if there is a place with a desk big enough for me to do work, time will need to be taken out to move.

So I think it’s entirely possible that whatever gets made this month could be the last stuff for a while. I’m not sure how much emoji will be in it. I will work on it when I have the time and whenever is the time to move out, will probably be the time it gets published. It’s hard to say for sure because my mother behaves very erratically and my emotional tolerance for this situation is at it’s limit.

Because we broke $100, I’ll try to give you all some sketches, either of 0.1.0 or of previous emoji that I’ve liked over the month. We have a blog now, so it’s not hard at all. 🙂

 

New emoji to expect in 0.1.0/soon:

New and updated pride flags

These have already been made, just yesterday:

• Updated rainbow flag to have black and brown stripes.
• Demiguy and Demigirl pride flags.

 

New, unified colour modifier palettes

Human, paw and claw hands will have a unified colour palette, meaning that paws for the first time will get the unnatural colours that human and claw hands have had for a while. There’s also going to be a few more unnatural colours thrown in. I’ll explain my current plan for colour modifiers in more detail later.

 

Generally just more emoji

This is where I generally make stuff I have in my lists based on my mood. But I do have some priorities in terms of what I want to personally do more of:

• Arts and crafts
• Fishies
• Plants
• Pineapple
• Maybe some more paw hands/claw hands

 

 

Happy holidays, everyone! I hope you’re doing okay, wherever you are.

As 2018 is coming along and because I’ve never *really* done this before, it would be a good idea to roundup long-term goals for Mutant Standard other than just making more emoji, both custom and Unicode Standard.

TL;DR: I want to try to put Mutant Standard in as many places as possible.

Continue reading “Long-term goals”

So as everybody hopefully knows by now, I was planning on just making emoji all this month until the holidays because I was doing a lot of stuff not related to emoji last month. This changed all of a sudden just after I released 0.0.9 because Patreon decided to do what it did (which it then U-turned a few days ago) and I had to radically adjust my schedule and scramble to deal with the emerging reality that Patreon can’t be my only source of funding anymore (at least until better alternatives come along). This meant (among other things) making my own blog so I didn’t have to rely on Patreon’s and restructuring the project website.

I really didn’t want to have to do more organisation and web stuff, but the good side to this is that I’m doing stuff I would have done later, so I’m just paying it forward. The fact that Patreon ultimately reversed their decision doesn’t really change the usefulness of what was set in motion here, even if I feel bad and like I’m letting everyone down by not giving enough emojos in the meantime.

 

 

So what’s happening right now?

Still on Patreon

The project’s Patreon is still the primary source of funding. And it will probably be this way for the next few months or longer until Drip comes along (more on this later).

If you left because Patreon’s proposed fee changes were prohibitively expensive, if you still can/want to donate, the coast is clear again because they’re not gonna do the ridiculous charges anymore.

There is an alternative funding option

I have made a Liberapay account as an alternative source of funding for those who would rather not use Patreon. I originally opened it because it would actually be cheaper to use for some people before Patreon decided to reverse their decision, but I still might as well keep it atm.

Because Liberapay is totally anonymous and because they don’t remit EU VAT, I can’t give rewards on Liberapay donations and I can’t put you in the supporter credits.

This blog

This is now the source for all Mutant Standard news instead of Patreon. You’ll still get Patreon posts, but they will be links to here now. I think you can subscribe to this via RSS if anyone does that these days.

I was thinking of doing a custom theme for it, but I’m not sure how long I’m going to use WordPress for, and I think this one is kinda nice anyway.

 

 

What’s happening in the next few days?

New website

I had to restructure the site again to deal with the weight of having more new things like multiple funding sources and a blog (which this new website will have a clear link to in the menu, as you can see in the above pic). Patreon’s Goals will also be moved here because I’m now getting multiple sources of recurring funding.

I additionally made some more substantial changes to the copy and promotion based on some thoughts I had earlier this month.

I think this website is finally at the point where it can be shown to anyone and they can get the gist of what the project means, and can easily understand how to use Mutant Standard (which may not be the same as downloading it) so I’m proud of that, and I think that’s really important.

It’s also more colourful than the last version, and I think that’s important too. I like some industrial aesthetics, but it was too harsh and dull for the project I think.

Feel free to tell me what you think when I publish it!

 

VIP Emoji release

This is something that will come with the new website. I hadn’t actually had a way of distributing these emoji because they’re intended to be a part of their own ZIP file, separate from normal Mutant Standard releases, and I never prepared the website for this. So with the new website, they will finally be available in their own ZIP file from the downloads. I’m really sorry for the delay. The Patreon bullshit started the same day I was planning to finish that stuff.

 

What’s happening in the future?

Moving from Patreon (hopefully)

Like other “””creators”””, I’m eyeing Kickstarter’s Drip as an alternative and would like to move to them when their registrations are more open (which, according to them, will be early next year). I think there are legitimiate reasons to consider them an better option (or at the very least, more trustworthy) instead of a lesser evil or liable to do the same shit. It doesn’t mean ideal, but definitely better.

When this happens, I’ll let everyone know way in advance, and it shouldn’t be some awful scramble like this situation was.

 

 

I would like to thank everyone for your support during this time. The news was pretty upsetting to me for quite a while and as usual it’s been very touching to have all the support I’ve had for this project, donations or otherwise.

I look forward to giving you all more fun and interesting emoji next year! 💚