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