changes to tiers (commissions / requests)

Hello friends,

These past 18 months especially have been crazy for me; my average take-home payment from Patreon has increased by around 250% since then! We've also hit not only one but four goals since then, resulting in many free gravure sets (and as of now, are only a handful away from the big 200!) 

Off-site, I've hit way over 10,000 followers on Twitter, and nearly a million views on my work over on Pixiv. From something I was doing solely because nobody else was, to see the growth there has blind sided me.

Your support here means that when my computer failed last year, I was able to quickly source together parts to keep on keeping on; and it's also been keeping my lights on over here! It's also given me the drive to continue working on more than just pin-ups of a particular series; as many have requested and noticed.

Speaking of noticing & requests... I've noticed an uptick in people asking about my current situation regarding commissions. 

Without getting too much into particulars here, it must be done through Patreon. Sites like Itch.io and Gumroad do not allow me to use their services to accept money for something you'll get in the future -- in other words, I haven't quite perfected time travel to deliver a commission to spec the second you press the buy button. Maybe some day~

On top of that, it's a tightrope I've been walking pretty finely due to the extreme speed and diligence I work at, and also trying to find and have time for myself. While I enjoy the puzzles of grabbing assets together and slapping them together into a cohesive but also sexy image, there are times where I have to unwind and... not do that. 

The issue here for me is often I'll get a request for a single character and/or an outfit and concept, and then I'm left to do whatever, but other times I get entire scenarios which require a lot of texture, model and even post-processing work. 

That second one is honestly worth far more than $15, even if that adds up monthly, and I've been selling myself extremely short by letting both a single pin-up with variants be the same as some of the far more complicated requests I have gotten in the past. 

So the compromise is; split them into categories. The current tier will be decommissioned before April's pay-out; and three new tiers will be put in its place:

• Rare tier ($15, 8 patrons) -- single character request. A choice of outfits can be selected as a part of this, as well as alternate versions with clothing on or off. 
• Epic tier ($25, 5 patrons) -- multi character request -- up to three. As with Rare, choice of outfits can be requested, as well as alternate versions with clothing on or off.
• Legendary tier ($50, 3 patrons) -- commission. This is what the current commission tier is right now; anything you want, you can have... within reason of course. 

The difference here is request means you tell me what character(s) you want to see with a simple pose or outfit idea, where as commission is for stuff that is much more involved, stuff that requires a lot of work & planning. It's a difficult line to draw, but I feel the best rule of thumb is; if your request is longer than a paragraph, it's a commission. 

I cannot offer things like only bust sketches or black & white sketches -- those don't really work in 3DCG, so this is the best way I could think of handling it. If it doesn't work, we'll hit the drawing board again in a few months time...

I thank you for all of your support, both financially and as fans of my work; and I hope this is the way to solve the issues of both my availability for commissions, and the time & effort put into them!