Content, Subscription, and Other Changes

This is a longish read, if you want to get to the meat and potatoes, jump down to the section titled 'What my content delivery will look like going forward.'

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Hey team,

Yep, it's another one of those talky-talky things! There's a lot of stuff to cover, so I'll jump right in. There are effectively two halves of this update, with other smaller pieces within each of those halves. What it boils down to is the following:

1. My content style isn't sustainable
2. Patreon (for everyone) is changing.

My content style is not sustainable.

For months now, I've felt like producing comics like I've been doing is just not working out. My life has been getting busier and busier outside of making size content, leaving less time for me to do everything. That's happened in the past, but what has changed is how much content I make. Lost In Eden 2 was kind of a breaking point for this, it was way bigger than it should have been for me. This is why Eden 3 was so late. I took a few days off, then started packing up my apartment (I just moved into a new place last week), then started working on Eden 3. Because of the amount of tiny people in the scene, it was just way too difficult to render in 4K, so I restarted the project halfway through the month. Rendering was still pretty rough, and it took me a solid 3 days to edit, all the while still preparing to move into a new apartment, working my full time job, and volunteering with three different non-profits I have commitments to. It's been a lot.

Despite Eden 2 being one of my favorites I've done in a while, it was a beast to roll out, Eden 3 almost killed me with anxiety, and it all really brought into clear focus two things:

This isn't sustainable anymore, and also I really, really hate editing.

I spend more time procrastinating about editing than I actually do editing, but that's also because when I get to the editing phase of a comic, I'm very much bored of the project. Finishing the last few renders usually means mentally forcing myself to prepare for 2 - 3 days of staring at speech bubbles, filling in gaps of the story where a character's expression doesn't match what I planned for them to say (or I changed what they were going to say), or re-rendering bad renders I missed, or adding visual effects...ugh.

But it's a required part of the process. I've accepted that, but that's not the only problem. The thing is... I also get bored really fast. Again, 180 renders (it was actually over 200 if you count stuff I ended up not using) of Eden 2 taught me that I don't enjoy doing these huge releases. They are difficult to plan out, run the risk of being late if anything goes wrong, and I start getting new ideas before I even get halfway through rendering, meaning I'm ready to move on to the next thing, and have less motivation, making editing that much harder. The quality goes down, I have to choose between barely-passable renders and just getting the content out before the month rolls over, and then there's the very minimal scripts. Some of you might remember that I started my Patreon page as a writer, I'd like to say that I can write pretty good dialogue and stories, but that hasn't been a priority lately, and that sucks.

I've also really been wanting to refocus on animation (I know, I say that every two or three months, but it's true), but that's hard to do when I effectively have a 30 day window to deliver some kind of content after I release a project.

So, yeah, this has been a struggle for a long time. I haven't known what to do. Little did I know, Patreon has been trying to tell me what to do for months now, I just didn't understand.

Patreon is changing.

As many of you may be aware, Patreon is being forced by Apple to change how subscribers pay for their subscriptions. Instead of being charged on the day you sign up, then again on the first of every month, you will be charged on the day you signed up, and then 30 days later, without being charged on the 1st again. That changes a lot, and while it does mean you won't be billed twice in one cycle like you might have been previously, it also means there's no way for me to guarantee that my usual once-monthly release will get delivered before or after someone gets charged for the month. I'm not super happy about it, but it's a required change (or it will be) so I've decided to pull the trigger on it starting in November, when Patreon suggests creators switch over to the new model. This means, if I understand correctly, if you signed up on October 1st, you'll still be billed on November 1st, but if you signed up on October 5th, you won't be billed until November 5th.

What my content delivery will look like going forward.

So here's how this changes things for me. Later this evening, I'm going to drop a new comic. A little shorter than usual, but I wanted to get something out for this month just in case something goes sideways. This will be the last full sized, once-monthly comic I release. This will roll out the way my comics always do: a 4k Extended version first for $25 patrons, a shorter Full 1080 version rolling out later this month for $5 patrons, and early access to that full version for $10 patrons the week prior. I'm not totally sure on the abridged version, especially since I still need to release the abridged version of Eden 3.

Afterward, I'm going to start releasing regular, smaller comics (20 - 40 pages max) more regularly, often times being reimagined scenes from a larger comic I've done previously, or a brand new thing I wanted to experiment with. I can't guarantee a regular cadence, but I expect to drop at least two in a one-month (30 day) period. In addition to this, I will sporadically drop an animated short whenever I have one ready, but this won't be as frequent at first.

Finally, every now and again (every 2 - 3 months) I will drop a major release in a longer running series, such as Serial Experiments, Lost In Eden, or, the much anticipated Surviving Reese Part 2 (I seriously get more requests for an update on that than anything else I've ever done). While working on these larger stories, I will provide periodic updates, share test renders and ideas, and provide a timeline for their release so anyone who wants to take some time off and come back later can do that.

This lets me accomplish a few things: I get to experiment and play with new ideas, buy new assets and use them quickly before I get bored of them, spend less time editing really huge stories, and more time on quality control for the bigger stories. It does mean I have to be more careful, because I rely on that 1st of the month 'paycheck' I get from Patreon (thank you so much for how much y'all have improved my life by supporting my work with your hard-earned dollars) to pay my rent, so Im just gonna have to learn to budget a little better.

Anyway, the new project will release in a few hours. It's a new IP that I plan to do a few of those quick vignette, shorter style releases in over the next few weeks. Sorry this update was so long, but I look forward to seeing how this all plays out.

See ya soon! <3

-U.E.