And another year's down the drain, wew.

//What has 2017 meant for Forgotten Dawn? (other than referring to himself in third person, yay ego)

Production-wise, it's been a rather sophomore year. I was expecting to do more, in all honesty, but I've been slowed down by my studies, health issues, hardware issues (HDD crash) and ultimately myself. Not that I need to justify my relative lack of activity; in fact, I'm not. However, I believe it's important to spend some time reflecting on what has been done for this project I've been carrying on since 2013. It'll be five years in February 22nd, actually.

It's been a planning year, for the most part. Thinking about the future, the current state of things, what I'd like to do to push the project further ahead. I have laid out a solid road map for how I'd like to categorize and serialize my personal future albums (i.e. the non VGM-related albums) and therefore avoid creating a dozen different IPs that would  otherwise be very difficult to manage at once.

Distinguishing my personal discography from my soundtrack albums was the first step towards figuring out the kind of scope I'd like to achieve with my endeavor. For me, it's always been crucial to strive for genuinity in anything I do or plan, something that is not always possible to achieve when working under contract. The goal would be different in that case, since I would be providing a product serving a greater one. In other words, the soundtrack would be considered "mine" since I worked on it, but it's part of a larger purpose that may not be entirely "mine", which often times isn't — I would have to adhere to someone else's vision. My work would have to be more functional than experimental, unless I am the one creating everything in the first place.

Thusly, I would consider my personal discography as my "truest" unhinged exploratory effort. I have come to the realization that all the free tracks that I have released so far, all the singles and tracks that don't currently belong to any larger concept, are a bit of a prototypical vision of what I'd like my albums to be and sound like in the future. Even the two albums I've published a while back (mangled.bits and sixteen) still represent a rite of passage for me, between the idea and the vision. So, there's much to look forward to, and I'd like to think the past year has been seminal in furthering the vision, despite all the difficulties.

//What has been done so far, including the past few years

- Created a basic network infrastructure linking all Forgotten Dawn-related pages

- Made a YouTube channel now counting over 500 subscribers

- Opened an Audiojungle account allowing the selling of multi-purpose stock audio

- Opened a Patreon allowing users/admirers/listeners to pledge any kind of voluntary donation

- Opened a new Bandcamp welcoming my personal discography

- Created a Discord server

- Passing my previous amount of NG followers by almost double (258 as of now VS @KKSlider60's measly 130. Suck it, me!)

- Survived another year (woohoo)

//The Underground Collective

It's been a fun year for the collective. For those who still don't have a clue of what The Underground Collective is, it's simply a group of creatives coming together and collaborating for the sake of it. It currently comprehends the Audio Portal community since that's basically where it all started (me and @RealFaction came up with the idea before ultimately executing it), but it might extend to other communities in the future, should the concept grow past its boundaries.

We made the album m0lecular — soundwaves in liberty, in honor of our good friend and colleague @I0TA, who goes by many aliases and personas, mostly as a way to express our solidarity towards his opus and the difficulties he's faced over the years.

We're currently brewing Volume II with a futuristic theme in mind, as a follow-up to our 2016 Volume I album. Refer to @RealFaction's more detailed post.

//What's cooking in the pot

- New album material! Other than more soundtracks being currently in the works, I've been dedicating more time to my own personal audio and making sure everything lines up with my new road map. I'm expecting 2018 to be a busy year in a good way.

- Furthermore, the release of single tracks here will be less and less frequent, unless unrelated to my personal discography. From now on, I will stream my personal albums in their entirety as single uploads here, linked to my Bandcamp for download. This decision was made for the purpose of giving everyone the opportunity to listen before downloading for free or donating any amount of money they'd like to give. You have complete freedom over what you do with your ears and pockets.

- The previous point would also imply the slow transition from a track-centric portfolio to an album-centric channel. Again, quality over quantity.

- Possible logo redesign? It's still a thought, but I'd like to make a more streamlined version of the FD logo based on the current design. Those 24 rectangles were supposed to represent a future project, but these days I think there's really no need for that, as they tend to lose detail upon zooming out anyways. I still like the idea of a rising sun/eclipse over a floating island, though.

- Notice how I haven't really spoken about my game concepts and my still in-development game .defrag. Yeah, I have no idea when I'll resume writing some new stuff for it. I can only say a generic "in the future", whenever there'll be a chance to do so. I constantly switch priorities depending on what's floating in my head, so that's just the way I work.

That's about it for now.

I wish you all a Happy New Year and thanks to everyone who has been either directly or indirectly involved with the betterment of that journey called Forgotten Dawn~

//FD

Booya! Have a look at my newly designed Patreon page :D

https://www.patreon.com/ForgottenDawn

Hello.

I've been taking some time to pick myself up after that "incident", attempting to do some damage control and recovering the scraps. Long story short, that wreck of a drive is irredeemably dead. Not only did the head get likely disintegrated but the platter might have actually separated from the case leading it to vibrate and gleefully erasing data left and right.

Lesson learned.

It's funny because I was planning to release some 3.4-something GB of unreleased material from my past KK days, back when I thought stretching, looping and pitch-shifting my own samples was so oh-my-god cool (vaporwave before vaporwave, huh). Oh, the irony. Not that it was anything groundbreaking. In fact, most of it was either made of dead end experiments or whole album outtakes. Still, I thought it would have been interesting to let everyone see how far I've come from then. I guess it's all in my memories now. There's still my old released stuff for the really curious.

So, what now?

Well, I've been trying to get into a composing mindset again. I've been kinda set back by a number of real life commitments, then that thing happened and it pushed me further back in hibernation mode. However, I still have some plans and thoughts for the sort-of-immediate future.

1) Possible 1-hour long lo-fi dark ambient music video series.

Following the release of this video here, I have been slowly, but steadily receiving some positive feedback about trying to do something similar in the future or a straight follow-up. I love creating ambiances, so if I do have a niche audience liking this kind of music, I might as well give it a shot. I generally don't like the prospect of spawning sequels to my own music unless there's a recurring motif or underlining theme/concept wrapping everything up that I find particularly interesting, but hey, they're ambiances, whatever. Be it one minute or 12 hours, it doesn't really make that much of a difference. Versatile. They're versatile.

2) Work in progress soundtracks.

This year I have been largely working on a number of soundtracks for different game projects. Since I'm contractually bound by them, I can't unfortunately disclose any details concerning these works. I can just tell you they're indeed in progress and they're being pretty substantial. In terms of sound, they feel close to the soundtrack work I have publicly released so far, with perhaps a further emphasis on dark cinematics and ambiances. As with most indie projects, there's no release date as of yet, so everything will be done when it'll be done.

3) Personal works and possible future albums.

The other day while I was in the middle of salvaging some papers scattered across my room, I realized I still have a wealth of ideas regarding future albums that I'd like to figure out somehow. I feel like I'm giving my mind a creative rehab session just to get into the groove of creating/composing again. Whatever will fly off my head in the future weeks or months, I might finally dedicate some time to my own personal aural explorations.

4) Patreon...?

Yeah, I don't know. It's been in my head for a while, but I'd like to be real with you guys for a sec. If I opened a Patreon right now, I think it would be a bit problematic for me to sustain. There's the issue of constance; I don't deliver content regularly since I multitask and have to mind many things at the same time. Burnouts happen and when they hit, they tend to hit pretty hard and I'm assuming any hypothetical donor would be in the right to expect some new content from me. If I'm not able to deliver for whatever reason, then it could be a problem. Then there's the relative lack of a following leading to a potential crawl in monthly earnings (a.k.a. zero). Any earning I would theoretically generate from Patreon would be treated as a nice extra "something" to put under the mattress for as long as it's needed, but it definitely won't be enough as a would-be full time job unless I experience a sudden miraculous overwhelming support from very dedicated donors with more than a pocket to spare. Maybe in the future considering Youtube is becoming more and more small channel-unfriendly, but I just think it's premature as of right now. What do you think? Any Patreon experts in the house?

5) Game projects.

They're in an undefinite hiatus for as long as I'm mentally, psychologically and materially able to work on them again. Also, at least 70% -if not more- of those development files were lost forever, so I think it would take me a while to rewrite some of those ideas from scratch, if I'm still in the mood to do it.

So, that's it for now. See you folks next time.

//FD

Hi there, bad news.

One of my HDD has failed me recently. It caught me off guard since I wasn't able to fully backup my data, meaning I lost a good portion of my own work and ideas for the future including games, albums and soundtracks.

Since I'm still trying to recover from the blow, I might go on a hiatus indefinitely, enough for me to come up with a viable road map.

I'm considering data recovery, but I'm negotiating the option as it would cost me an eye and a leg for something that is not 100% guaranteed to work (and would still have to pay no matter the result).

That's about it for now.

//FD

Yay.

Current progress:

1 sub - Mom's favorite Youtuber award

50 sub - Someone actually gives a shit award

100 subs - Toilet paper award

200 subs - Bottom of ELO Hell award

500 subs - Still doing better than your neighbor award

Next goal: 1'000 subs - You're still giving yourself awards award

Oh, and feel free to join my newly created Discord server if you wanna have a chat.

EDIT: New links now available.

Personal albums Bandcamp: https://forgottendawn-main.bandcamp.com/

VGM Bandcamp: https://forgottendawn-vgm.bandcamp.com/

Hey folks, what's good.

So, I've been preparing a secondary Bandcamp account. Why? Because I've been needing a place to host my personal albums, i.e. a collection of organized noise unrelated to video game music.

Since I'd like to create my own album series (plural), each with their own kind of sound, I figured it this would be a good incentive for me to start churning out albums and focus on my own creative research. I've been holding two oldies in particular ("sixteen" and "mangled.bits", made in 2015) because I've been in the process of figuring out how to better organize my own material. When my website will finally be finished and fully optimized for both desktop and mobile, my series structure will be much clearer and hopefully more evident.

For those who missed out my older posts about how I'm envisioning my personal discography, here's a quick summary: think of a tree with many unique branches and leaves. Each branch represents an entire series of albums (the figurative leaves), as they all belong to the same tree (a.k.a. me). Refer to the infographic below.

It's a way to avoid spawning different aliases and projects every time a new series is born whilst giving everything a sense of unity. This categorization also leaves me plenty of creative freedom in the long run, as I can come up with as many different styles and stories as I can.

So, in short, expect more albums coming out before the end of the year, and I hope you guys won't mind the two accounts for everything. Of course, both VGM-related material and personal albums will be fully streamed on my Youtube channel, so nothing is lost.

Will put links once I'm done prepping everything.

Later

//FD

Care to take a look?

Hey folks,

I just wanted to announce that I am going to publish a full soundtrack version of my _fade prototype/demo game, which is already available on Gamejolt and RMN, featuring nearly all the audio you can hear in-game.

The soundtrack isn't representative of what the project _fade will be in the future, so take it as an idea that will be developed at some point.

The soundtrack was made between 2014 and 2016.

I will post the soundtrack link when I'll be done arranging each loop.

See you guys later,

//FD

EDIT: Feel free to get the full album here: https://forgottendawn.bandcamp.com/album/fade-prototype-complete-ost

Hey folks, just a quick PSA.

My website will be temporarily unavailable until it's actually finished and fully optimized for mobile. It might take me months or even years due to how busy I am, but I just wanted to let you folks know.

Some of my related links are back in my profile page, so nothing is lost.

Personal albums will be available again at some point in the future.