(crossposted from my personal bulletin)

*not a very good roadmap bc I can't set any date goals 

This bulletin serves more as a bit of a journal for myself and my very very scatterbrained mind to keep track of all my features I want to add, but also a bunch of info dumping for my dearly treasured SF enjoyers who deserve an update dsffds if you don't feel like tuning in to some thoughtless ramblings just scroll down for the good stuff!

What are Sugar Flyers?

Sugar Flyers are a semi-closed species I released in 2019 which are funny little kemonomimi humanoid aliens residing in a dystopia kingdom on a desolate desert planet. I wanted to take the closed species formula and make something unique with a ever so developing storyline that users could follow along with. I also didn't want the entire species to be locked behind a paywall so I offered basic F2U resources so anyone can join in even if they cannot afford to financially support the species. I thought it would be interesting if the species mascot was, instead of some cutesy representation of the species, the main antagonist instead. Spitfire, the corrupt greedy king who looks down at his people suffering drought and famine in his castle of gold and ivory and continues on without a care outside of whether or not he's looking as handsome as always. My goal was to have the users with their newly acquired SFs collab together and plan out how they're gonna overthrow their nasty king and rejuvenate their dying kingdom with what little resources. To my surprise I got the completely exact reaction. Everyone fell in LOVE with corrupt king Spitfire with hardly any SFs in the kingdom questioning his antics causing me to have to re-approach how to continue the lore from there :'D I personally found it hilarious! This species has to be my most successful franchise as a freelance artist and while it never became super popular or anything, I accumulated a couple hundred members on the DA group with several dozen active members and still have many who show an interest in the species despite being on hiatus for the past couple years.

So what happened?

To be honest? Burnout with a hint of self sabotage and poor time management skills. Not to make it sound like it was anything serious because it's not!!! I don't like to talk about my mental health publicly, but I do have sm that makes it very hard for me to focus and then stay focused consistently. Add college to the mix and it is very hard for my to organize my priorities. I was also managing a pretty extensive species pretty much by myself. I would occasionally bring in staff who were amazing help! But ultimately when it came to me to keep projects going I would start to procrastinate or hit dead ends on the brainstorming. There was also a lot of stress when it came to keeping an entire species going and then also valuing other art projects and my own personal life at the same time so I started to get overwhelmed and neglect the species and once that burnout started it just intensified and I couldn't find the desire to keep the species going. There were also some events that me, as a very nonconfrontational person, were really hard for me to manage on my own. In a species it is inevitable that rules are violated, and having to step on toes to enforce that for the safety of the users was hard! There were also times where my own personal boundaries were crossed and standing up for myself and voicing that was also hard! Not going into detail over stuff that happened like years ago but it did make the species feel less like fun and more like a job and I started to get disinterested. Again it was never anything super serious but more just taking on way too many responsibilities on my own :'3 

Why is the reboot taking so long?

It has taken a long time for me to rebuild that fire over me again to return to the species and these past few months I feel like it is there again. Problem is, nursing school takes top priority over anything else in my life. I have been planning the reboot of this species for a long time and it is like whenever I develop something, I find two more things I need to develop next. Continuing forward. Progress is very slow as it is costing quite a bit to get started. I would LOVE to get the reboot out before the end of the year, but that is going to be very difficult. Pretty soon I will have to drop the project entirely for a few weeks and put all my focus on my finals.

Moving forward...

Basically I don't want a repeat of last time. I am already taking on a lot of responsibilities, but I am aware once the species is launched I can't do it on my own. I want to find staff who are going to be dedicated long term to the species as a system that can manage itself well enough for this staff to be able to handle it in periods where I can't be very active because of school. It's a balancing act and until I find a solution and not a lot of progress can be made until then :') I want to start looking for staff to hire soon, but I need to finish up some basics like the updated ref sheet and a layout of the species before I can even tell them what I can expect from them so I am not unfairly dumping responsibilities on them. I have been apart of species in the past that were very disorganized and I do not want that kind of stress to fall on any of my staff. I'll figure something out I am so close! but it requires a lot of brain power and my brain is small... This is my largest project ever and I see a lot of promise in it. It just needs a LOT of kindling to get off the ground.


Ok mushy stuff over! Here is my list of what I want for this species

It will still be Semi-Closed. That means people can make one free common MYO to join in on activities. After that, you will have to either pay or participate in events to acquire more stuff afterwards. I also have a variety of items stashed away for people to buy/earn to upgrade their free MYO like trait upgrades and such.

Lorekeeper: I am now heavily leaning more towards hosting a LK site as what I envision for this species is near impossible to manage without a site like this! People will be able to create accounts on this site and have full control over their SFs, MYO tickets, items, currency, etc. and should be able to transfer any of them to other users with little to no staff intervention. This is apart of my self-managing goals I have set to help with the longevity of the species. Hosting events/prompts and their submissions will also be much easier to track! I am looking into resources now to getting a site underway... it just takes funding I don't have atm 

Items: I have been working with an amazing artist on twitter who has made some EPIC item art that users will be able to obtain and use! I have plans for more items as well but I am just too excited to not show what I have so far here

Currency: My initial plan for the reboot was to do away with currency as it was just too hard to track, but with LK I wouldn't have to scrap that idea! Trinkets can be obtained through being an active user such as creating SF art and redeeming it for a small currency reward that adds up over time which can then be exchanged for items in the shop. 

Traits: I am revamping traits, swapping some rarities around, etc for the sake of consistency + adding a few more! I just finished the ears and man my hand hurts. I understand it may be disappointing for old users who want to return for the reboot only to be told their pre-reboot SF isn't even as rare as it originally was anymore so I will be more than willing to discuss compensation through trinkets, items, or whatever we can agree to be fair! I will share some traits and then a messy comp of what I still have to redraw. 

Misc concept art: nuff said. Some anatomy, critters, flora, background. lot of sketchy stuff. plus a sun beetle doodle!!!!

And I guess that is an update to what's been going on with the species to those who care. If you read this far, thank you! I just wanna say if you have not made your one free common MYO SF in the past, if you go ahead and make one now, you will be allowed to make another free common MYO once the reboot starts since I do not have a consistent way to track who has made theirs already //eyes emoji... 

If you are seriously interested in supporting the species be it through staff moderation, concept artist, guest artist, etc lmk! I will eventually release some google forms to officially apply but I would love to see where interest stands now!