New Year, New Nexus!
Happy new year and welcome to the Sapphire Nexus! As surreal and strange as it is, we now exist in a year where the Nexus has existed since the first day! That’s quite a milestone, but we’ve still got a long way to go! With the new year comes new possibilities, and there will certainly be new things happening here on the Nexus as the year goes on and things develop, a lot of which is already in development! So, what can you expect from me this year? Some of the same and some of the new, of course! Let’s dive in and get started with our first blog as we look forward to what this year might offer!
Tearna’s Jounral
Continuing from last year, Tearna’s Journal will be continuing forward on a bi weekly schedule! New entries will be posted every two weeks on Wednesday, typically in the afternoon. So far, we’ve seen the sands of the Karasi, the floating lights of Spiritmarsh, the endless waves of the Esterian Sea, and the mighty city of Adecial! Additionally, we already got our big hint about the next location, the Golden Plains! We’re almost five entries into the journal, but, by the end, there will be almost TWENTY! That’s a LOT, and you can extrapolate when the series will end based on that. What? I’m not doing the math for you!
Each new entry will still come with a new book marker, but work is now also being done to setup for larger landscape images, windows into each of these locations she’s visiting on her journey. You’ll be able to get a better glimpse of what some of these locations are like, but I don’t yet know when these will be dropping. Concept work has been done for three of them so far, but bringing the concept to life can be a bit time consuming, so… standby for more details!
After Tearna?
What comes after the Tearna short stories, you might be asking? Well, more short stories, of course! I’m one of those types who always has things planned out in advance, so my plans have plans and even more plans behind those plans. After Tearna, there are a couple of things we can expect. Number one, more short stories anchored in the present of the Sapphire Verdict. There’s a LOT of side stories to explore as the galactic war kicks off, both involving the war itself and some of the other adventures Sapphiria has on the side.
While I’m not going to spoil what these might be, I will at least say they could include events like a father trying to save his family from a Sapphire Eye invasion, a traumatized pilot trying to come to terms with her guilt the only way she knows how, Vargoth having to decide between the mission and saving his operatives, and Sapphiria trying to uncover the mystery behind a UEC black site. Some of these will truly be short, but others might take a few weekly entries to see resolved, so don’t worry about running out of content!
Beyond the present, there are more short stories available in the past! Specifically, we can cover things such as Sapphiria’s actions as an Archon to save a family missing at sea, an automaton struggling with his memories of a past he hardly remembers, or even some of the hijinks that Atom is infamous for among his friends!
What actually ends up getting created depends entirely on how I’m feeling at any given moment, so don’t count on any specific one becoming a reality. You’ll just have to be patient and wait to see what ends up coming to pass!
Art Projects!
In 2024, I learned a LOT about the process of making digital art through Krita, and the progress I made was extremely obvious for those following the blog. I can make things now that I couldn’t have dreamed of before, and I intend to go even farther with a full year laid out before me! To start, I’m working on a new layout for twitch and youtube, and also a couple of other small pieces for youtube content. Once that’s done, I get to switch to something quite fun, putting a new face in the universe page! Who might this be? Well, it would be none other than… Gale! Gale WILL be the next character to get a face, and no, this will NOT be a repeat of Stockton. The sketch for her exists now courtesy of holiday boredom, so it’s just a matter of slightly tweaking it and then coloring it! I’m looking forward to bringing her to life, but we aren’t stopping there!
After Gale is finished, work will begin on numerous things I’m going to call ‘Art Series.’ Each series will be themed around some concept and are currently called the Landscape Series and Larger than Life Series. The Landscape series is entirely about showcasing some of the locations seen in Tearna’s Journal and currently hosts a sketch of the Karasi, the Esterian Sea, and the Faladorian Slopes! For Larger than Life, the theme is more about Sapphiria facing off against some of her most powerful foes. There will be three of these if I can pull it off and are named as follows; The Executioner, The Raijin, and The Hydra! These will be a totally different style than what I’m used to, so hang in there while I experiment around with this!
Youtube/Twitch
Going forward, I will be attempting to be more active on youtube. When I stream, I will be taking those streams and converting them to video format to post to youtube using some new formats, so expect a lot more content from me going forward. We will also be unifying all of my media under one moniker, and The Flying Fennec ended up winning out thanks to Youtube success. I assume this means most people will be calling me Fenn for short, and I’m ok with this!
As for what content we will be having, it will mostly be whatever strikes my fancy, but I have a couple of ideas at present. Ark is going to be front and center for the time being since we have a new server starting on Saturday. After that, I expect Pokemon to make an appearance with shiny hunting. Beyond that… We kinda just have to wait and see. I’m not sure if I’ll do more ALTTPR stuff, or if I'll dabble in more Pokemon content since it seems to be what the people crave. We’ll just have to wait and see!
Physical Stuff
I’m also working on creating some physical things, though none of this will be stuff I intend to sell. I think it would be neat to have some physical representations from my stories, and this will take the form of plushies and 3d printed statues. This will mean that I will be picking 3d printing back up once I get youtube under control so that I can begin working on some of the ships that have been modeled for the website, though some of them will need touching up to make them print friendly. As for the plushes, that I am going to have commissioned, and I think I know who I can get for that based on some past retweets I’ve seen.
It has also crossed my mind to sell merch through some t-shirt shop like Redbubble or something, but I need to do WAY more research before I get involved with any of this. Stand by for more information!
Website Updates
More updates are planned for the website. This includes all the stuff mentioned previously, such as the pending information on the universe page, as well as some facelifts to the landing page as well as the short story page. Additionally, the world map is going to get another update soonish, probably in February once I get the time to edit the image. More content areas have also been tentatively planned, but whether or not they come to pass depends on how viable the content seems to be. Stay tuned!
Conclusion
Hoo boy, I think that’s it? I most likely forgot something, and while I could show off sketches of some in progress stuff, I don’t think it would be completely worth it. For now, I think we’ve covered more than enough for one blog post, and I really hope people are as excited as I am! We’ve got a lot coming this year, and I expect this website to be borderline unrecognizable by the end! And, hopefully, before the end of the year, the Sapphire Verdict itself will be out for people to read at long last, but only time will tell. With all that being said, that’s all I’ve got, so… Cheers!
The Flying Fennec