Switching to streams every other month

We’re going to run weekend-long art streams every other month. Instead of monthly streams, we’ll be skipping odd months from now on — starting with March.

For those of you who picked the $2, $5 and $12 rewards: you’ll get the same lottery access you always did, except in odd months where there will be no lotteries. In those months, your pledge will be rewarded by our love and continued dedication to making the comic.

For those of you who picked the $25 reward: your pledges will always get you a drawing request in the next stream we run. If your pledge is processed in an odd month where there is no stream, it’ll be queued up for the next stream in an even month where there is a stream. If you stay at the $25 level for two months between streams, that means you get two drawings!

We will be reducing the amount of lotteries run per stream until we can figure out what fits into a three-day weekend. This is to account for the guaranteed slots “doubling up”. We’re starting out conservatively by going from 18 to 12 lotteries, but will adjust this, as we always have.

We’re also making some changes around the periphery: Ask Roseville High updates and spoilers have been removed from the milestone goals, and some milestones have been adjusted. We just want to make things easier for ourselves and not overcommit.

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Why?

A drawing stream is a pretty momentous thing for us — half a day to prepare, three days to run, and a day to recover. (With a screwed-up sleep schedule for weeks afterwards.) If you do the numbers, a monthly stream like we do sucks up 15% of our entire year — or one day out of every five-day work week.

Given how badly we need that extra day, it seems a little off-balance, given that it takes a lot away from our ability to focus on making the thing you’re all really supporting — the comic!

So, after 277 drawings in just over six months of streams, we’re switching to a more relaxed schedule. We think it’s better for everyone in the long run.

It will help us do more with every stream — offer more special deals, bring in more people to talk, find better weird videos! It will give Veronica more time to build the comic buffer, which means no missed pages, better-planned chapters and the potential for new projects. And, of course, it should make every stream just a little bit more special! We want to return to the good old days of our mega BCI drawstreams where each one was much more of an event!

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The campaign will continue to charge monthly. We will make more money this way, for one. But it's also for simplicity: Patreon seems a lot easier to understand when projects are run monthly, and we don’t want to have to explain caps and regularity promises and mid-stream pledges and all the stuff that complicates posting “by creation”. We’ve seen a lot of monthly patreons that offer “access to streams” as rewards with no particular schedule as to when the streams occur, and we’re basically doing that now! Except it’s access to lotteries, and we’ll keep to our schedule. We think it's still a pretty good value.

If you are dissatisfied or don’t think you will get enough value out of your pledge after these changes, please adjust it! The next charge will be on March 1, and April 1 after that. Additionally, we are happy to refund your pledge if you miss this date or want a refund for any other reason at any time. Just send us a message. There are a number of ways you can support the comic, and this is but one of them — so don’t sweat it if this doesn’t work out for you!

However, if you’re happy to stick around, we want you to know that we deeply appreciate your pledges and that they are put to good use! So many of you have generously supported us since we started this thing, and it really does help cover a heap of household expenses. We will continue to work extra hard for you — just with a little more focus on the comic itself, that is!

Thanks for your continued support! See you in today’s stream — and April 22 after that!