This little survey will help to determine which features are most important for the SP-Studio remake. It might not be possible to include all of them, because donations are still needed. So please take the time to tell me about what’s important for you. Thank you very much!
SP-Studio Functions Survey
A detailed blog post about the current state of the development of the SP-Studio remake will follow soon.
It has been one month since I told you about the bad sitution of my website and it’s time for another update. I received many questions, so this will be a F.A.Q. post about the future of the SP-Studio. Feel free to ask anything else in the comments!
The SP-Studio is coded in Flash. But Flash is slowly dying, so the SP-Studio will not work anymore on your computer. To save it a new version is needed which does not rely on Flash. Continue reading
As mentioned in my previous blog post there are several improvements I think about for the future of this website. The change from Flash to HTML5 means a complete rework is inevitable, and while I edit every item anyway I also want to improve the illustrations. This is the one topic that might cause some controversy among long time SP-Studio.de visitors, so let me explain exactly why I want to do this and what you can expect from the results. Please remember: This is just an idea for now. Nothing has been decided yet and I just share my early thoughts with you.
I would love to change the character design from South Park to a unique style. I know… The whole project is based on South Park and even the name “SP-Studio” is a reference to the show, but please hear me out. Continue reading
Because of the amazing support during the past couple of days I reached my minimum goal, which means I don’t have to shut down this website! This is an incredible relief for me. Thank you so much for your funding (48 people donated so far) and for spreading the word! Every single one of you made a difference and helped SP-Studio.de to survive. I was even contacted by coders with experience in projects like this. So the future looks way brighter now than when I started this campaign two weeks ago.
As displayed in the chart above reaching this “mimimum goal” means there will be a new SP-Studio, which will use HTML5 / JavaScript / SVG instead of Flash. With those 600 $ I can create a working version this year. But since this was only the minimum budget it would lack some of the current features. So while it’s not about life and death anymore donations still are important. With them I can work on the more complicated features, like the little buttons to rotate und move items, or the export function. Continue reading
Happy new year! First of all I want to thank my supporters very much for their PayPal and Patreon donations! You helped me in 2017 to continue with SP-Studio updates and provide the visitors of the site with new items to build their characters. 2018 will be something special though, because huge changes are unavoidable… And I have some sad news.
The death of Flash means the death of sp-studio.de.
Flash is dying. We all knew this day would come, but now we have a date. Adobe will stop supporting Flash in 2020 and Google, Microsoft, Apple and other major companies have already started to abandon it. Since the SP-Studio is coded in Flash it already works on less and less platforms, and soon it won’t work anymore on your computer as well. If I don’t change from Flash to HTML5 / JavaScript this website cannot survive the next two years. Continue reading
How about some statistics? I never posted anything like this before, but it might be interesting bonus content between updates.
Have you ever wondered which items are the most popular on sp-studio.de? Here you go! I looked through data from the last months and created this top 20 of SP-Studio items. “Popular” means these are the items which get the most clicks. It does not mean they have to be actually used in the final pictures (I cannot count this). Excluded from this list are the body shape, single color background and regular hands. Of course they are the top 3 items because every SP-Studio picture starts with them. As you can see the basic items are really important. But some fashionable shoes or the manga eyes seem to attract your attention as well.
The next stats will be about the most popular background images. Can you guess which ones will be on the list? Share your guesses in the comments! 🙂
Do you like SP-Studio.de? You can support it now at Patreon.com with a small monthly pledge. Even a Dollar can make a difference. I started this crowdfunding campaign in order to be able to continue to provide regular updates and more content. Asking for money is not easy for me, but Patreon is a fair concept, because you support artists who already create content you enjoy. So you know what you get. They do it for free, but this doesn’t mean they can survive without money.
I started to work on this project back in 2002 and never charged my visitors for anything. Not only the updates take time to draw and code, I also reply to feedback and provide support every day. Now I cannot afford to put more time into a project I don’t earn money with. I get a lot of interesting feedback and there are so many ideas I would love to draw, but unfortunately I can only include a very small part of those. To pay my rent I work as a freelancer, so if this Patreon campaign pays off I could choose to work less on other jobs and put more time into my own projects like the SP-Studio.
Please take the time to have a look and consider to become my patron. The video is in English, but there are subtitles in German as well. It’s my dream to be able to work on what I enjoy most and you can help me get a little bit closer to this. I see profile pictures created with my drawings all over the web, and if only a small percentage of users considered making a donation, it would make a HUGE difference. Unfortunately single Paypal donations and ad banners don’t work as good as several years ago, so this is why I take this step now. Financial support means more updates in the future! And as a Patron you will get rewards like the possibility to see updates before they are published and to vote for what I should draw next. Check out the rewards on bottom of the Patreon page. And here is a video about how Patreon works.
I need YOUR help now! I am not good at promoting myself, so if you don’t support me at Patreon please spread the news by sharing the link. Many people have visited SP-Studio in the past and use the pictures I have drawn, but I cannot reach them without you. So this is the one time I ask you to share something and spread the word about my Patreon page. Thank you very much for your help!
The SP-Studio will go offline tomorrow (September 18th) for a couple of hours. The reason for this is that I have been working on a new design for the last weeks and now I want to make it public. I will try to get the whole website back working as fast as possible, but things like this usually take some time. While I work on this update you can still visit the SP-Studio community.
Congratulations to Lefiou for winning the SP-Studio contest about famous robots! Check out the pictures in the gallery, there were a lot of good ones this time. And join the current SP-Studio contest about SCHOOL until Spetember 20th. This is a free topic, so your picture can be about anything related to school or university.
I just posted a little preview picture for the next update over at the SP-Studio Facebook page. Can you guess what costume it is? 🙂 I think many fans will be happy about it. The update will be online this week.
By the way: If you use Facebook you can follow my updates there by liking the SP-Studio Facebook page. Then you will stay up to date. It would be great to see you over there!
Of course you can also follow me on Google+ or Twitter if you prefer this.
There seems to be a problem with the SP-Studio community today, because the page does not load anymore. I am not sure about the reason yet, because I did not change anything. But it looks like some kind of database error. I just wanted to let you know I am aware of this and try to get everything working again. This news post will be edited as soon as I know more.
EDIT: Problem solved, the community is online again and no data was lost.
