a lil chat

(title and thumbnail designed to trigger the PTSD of vtuber enjoyers lol)

No, I am not 'graduating.' It's a little prank! Forgive me.

I do have some life stuff going on in the background, though. And nothing bad, fortunately! I've started a new job, which is good, but it's a full-time gig, which means I will need to figure out how I'm going to balance things in my non-work life.

I'm pretty confident that I can keep the Fanbox exclusives going at the same rate. I completed the recent Lucy piece, start to finish, working around my current work schedule. That piece actually required MORE work than normal since it included diaper and panty alts, two inlay panels, a BG, etc... if I can complete a piece like that in a timely manner and with time to spare, I know that I can keep the content rolling on a monthly basis just fine.

That being said, I do think SOME cuts are in order. The custom diaper designs are first on the chopping block. I'm gonna shift these from being a guaranteed monthly commit to being something I do primarily if I have a really good design idea that I feel strongly about creating a standalone pattern for. They may not be as time-consuming as a full art piece, but they still take time that I would rather commit to the character art pieces themselves, especially now that I need to be using my free time more wisely than ever.

Polls will continue for now, but they're another thing I am looking at because, again, they are more time-consuming than you might think. Between coming up with a theme, deciding on a set of characters, pulling reference images and creating threads for each subscription tier... it's a bunch of micro-tasks that add up when you put them together every month. I will keep the polls going through the end of the year, and then I'll take a close look at what I want to do going forward... which leads me to the last thing I wanted to cover.

I've been drawing diaper stuff for something like five years now, and though I haven't gotten bored of it, I do want my content to evolve and grow, and stay fresh. I don't see myself stopping with fan-art, but at the same time, I feel like I've drawn most of the characters I really wanted to draw -- multiple times, at this point. Frankly, I'm not sure myself what 'evolving' actually means, but I have some ideas. I'm open to yours as well! I wonder if there's anything you'd like to see more of from me, or if there are any paths you think I should pursue. For my part, developing my own characters and stories is something I've become increasingly interested in; my sketchbook is filling up with some characters that I'm becoming pretty fond of, so if there's any apetite for that, then maybe I can introduce them to you, as well.

Lastly, I just wanted to say thank you~! Late last year, I found myself in a situation where I realized that I would need to lean on art to pay my expenses. Thanks to you guys' generosity, I ended up earning way more than I expected, and I got to experience the feeling of living 100% off of my art. It's been incredible, and I feel very humbled by it. So thank you again! Though I have some new constraints on my time, situations like this make me feel even more passionate about creating art, learning new stuff, and expressing myself.

Cheers!

-omu