Addressing Personal Problems (and Solutions)

Heads-up, I’m gonna be having a long moan here. I promise to not be sad or overbearing, but I am probably gonna need to get a bit serious, or at the very least, contextualizing and processing what the heck is taking me so long with a lot of my current projects and others. Don’t be alarmed, I’m not planning on doing anything drastic yet, especially not without letting yall know and voicing your thoughts and opinions first, and ESPECIALLY especially since I haven’t been able to commit to anything, because of reasons I’ll be explaining now.

In terms of what to expect this month: arcade girl TG will be coming soon, sketches also coming soon, I may take an extra week off for FOAS to clear this (maybe a second page the following week to make up for it?). Might take a little longer to do the sword spirit TG as well as other Creator Crownie comics depending on how busy I get.

Though to summarize what’s going on with me: I’m TOO BUSY. I feel like has been an open secret for many months, especially those close to me in discord chats, but recently I met with my therapist and we discussed this bizarre level of creative block and inactivity I’ve had, especially regarding this now long-overdue arcade girl sequence that I’m still trying to figure out. I also have a lot of other stuff going on that I also have to think about, including sketches, the also overdue commissions for Creator Crownies, and then THIS month’s fantasy loot sequence... and many, many other things and matters that I want to do but can’t, or other things taking up my time just because stuff happens like technical difficulties, family stuff, or other demotivating private stuff.

Now, this isn’t a new topic with me and my therapist, I believe this has been a trend since like... at least a year. My work ethic... hasn’t been the most stellar, and the only thing making me more ashamed about my chronic lateness has been my seeming inability to actually break this bad habit. We’ve been trying to keep my eye on it for a really long time, and I’ve been attempting to remedy it through a lot of different ways, including adjusting my schedule whenever possible, taking a mini-hiatus whenever I could... and I’m always still late.

After a lengthy talk, my therapist asked me to lay down what I do vs. what I want to get done, and it turns out the balance is... REALLY lopsided. “What I want to get done” doesn’t just include my actual obligations as a creator and artist, but also like... my dreams and mini-desires. My personal projects I really wanna get done, time I wanna spend exploring new styles and improving my skills (something that’s actually a big reason for why this arcade girl sequence is taking so long -- getting a fitting retro arcade vibe right has been REALLY hard for me), I wanna take actual personal time off to be able to have more of a personal life and day career. But simply put, I’m cramming A LOT.

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To visualize things, I’m just gonna put things down in list form. This is what I want to accomplish every month at a minimum:

• 10 fully-drawn panels for 10 different Creator Crownie comics (along with all the necessary correspondence to get drafts and approval from said Crownies), from script, layouts, character design (though these ones are done in advance at the start of each 6-month term... ideally...), lineart, colors, backgrounds, FX, typesetting, and potentially other forms of post-processing.

• A fully-drawn original sequence/comic of what is usually 4-ish “rows”, from script, layouts, character design, lineart, colors, backgrounds, FX, typesetting, and potentially other forms of post-processing.

• 4 monthly character sketches in limited colors, sometimes with light dialogue, design work varies (may or may not be fanart). Also a “finished” version of one voted by patrons, with full colors/rendering/backgrounds/the works.

• 4-5 pages of FRIENDS ON ANOTHER SIDE, coming out on a weekly basis, from script, layouts, lineart, colors (while significantly more limited due to being in semi-monochrome, requires lots of time), backgrounds, FX, typesetting, post-processing, etc.

• Also all of the boring administrative stuff like doing correspondence with appropriate patrons, writing up polls and scheduling posts and images, etc.

Which, when I lay it out (or with the case of my therapist, say it out loud), is A LOT. Especially for someone who also works as a PA/video editor in a studio for most of their week as a day job, and sometimes dealing with family and other personal stuff.

Now I wanna list out all the stuff that I WANT to do aside from all of that:

• Devoting time to more personal TG comics again and stuff based on ideas I came up with and have been sitting on. I genuinely have hundreds just lying around (I documented a lot of them on my Twitter for a while lol), and many of them I still think are very good. Again, this would require their own full process of script, layouts, lineart, colors, etc. etc. etc.

• Devoting time to NON-TG projects, especially character design stuff. I have FOUR different series I wanna do some stuff on:

  • Untitled Cyberpunk Magical Girl Project (a longtime passion project of mine)

  • RunGunBun (my “Ranma ½ meets Metroid” space opera/comedy series)

  • Pray For Them (my black comedy isekai parody about an isekai’d cleric and her band of idiots)

  • Rapture Academy (supervillain school fighting game roster!)

  • Also I just have some personal OCs I really wanna be able to draw again offhandedly. Remember Gigi? Or even Dani the Ghost Maid? Would also be fun to make new ones for other artists to do lewds of lol

• Making more FRIENDS ON ANOTHER SIDE comics faster. A page a week is pretty nuts not gonna lie, but I’d love to be able to make more of them just to keep the pace going. There’s a lotta stuff I wanna do with these characters and the overall story (shenanigans and also some sincerity), and I’ve worried that the pace it’s going at right now is really slow and I should rectify that.

• Experimenting with artforms I’m familiar with but haven’t really given my attention.

  • Animation is something I wanna be able to get back to and make manageable (not give myself sleep deprivation and subsequent physical problems trying to finish). I haven’t forgotten that catgirl animation from last September-ish, yall. Or even Unholy Bliss.

  • Also wanna do more music. I recently got on a kick of trying to make music again, I thought it might be fun to do a mixtape of some sort... WITHOUT wasting peoples’ time when it doesn’t seem like it’s interesting them.

  • Same thing with game development. I still haven’t touched that copy of RPG Maker I bought some time ago...

• DnD! It’s just a bit of a personal passion right now -- I’d still love to at the very least do a one-shot to try out DMing, and I do think I and a buncha other players would have a fantastic campaign, though it’s still very much in a pre-production phase as I’m still unsure if I can ever possibly do something like weekly games.

• While I’m at it, I guess just the ability to have more hobbies. I haven’t played a big game that wasn’t ARAM or Overwatch in like... years. I keep saying I want to play Tears of the Kingdom, Alan Wake 2, and Bauldur’s Gate 3 at some point... but my fear is that if I end up sucked into playing one of these games, I’ll be completely unable to focus on anything else and make my deadlines even more screwed (say what you will about League of Legends or Overwatch; at least their games only last like 10-30 mins each).

• Also like... more time to focus on other personal stuff. I’ve been thinking offhandedly of looking for a better day job than doing PA and video editing for crappy webshows -- I’d love to be involved in something actually art-related or something creative, like a game by an indie studio or something -- but I haven’t been able to give that the proper attention.

• Also also... adopt a new cat.

So yeah, that’s a ratio.

Basically, the fear I have is that I’ve put myself in a really terrible position of becoming unable to do anything I wanna do long-term because of these impossibly steep expectations and promises I can’t keep, and it SUCKS. It sucks for me to have to deal with privately and then to tell you all, and it sucks to you because it’s so... unfair.

To my patrons... I’m sorry that I couldn’t be a better artist and worker. Your financial support and continued understanding after all this time means far more to me than what you can imagine, and from deep in my heart, I’m sorry that I keep coming up short of expectations. My fear of disappointing you that your investment isn’t worth it is what leads me to making a lot of promises I can’t keep with full tact and integrity, and that’s a completely unfair burden to have to place onto you. I just want to be able to make the best content I can while also feeling safe and secure, but evidently I’m not even keeping that personal end of the bargain as well as I’d hoped, because my work/life balance has been a clusterfrack and a half. It’s my responsibility to be professional, especially so your enjoyment of my stuff is unhindered and within expectation. For not being able to reach up to that standard I promised... I’m sorry.

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So, what now, how do we fix this? Fortunately, I have a few ideas in mind, though again, I’m more of just sounding out ideas rather than committing to anything at the moment because you -- my generous supporters and followers -- are extremely important in my decision making in how to best keep you satisfied. I’m aware that some things will have to change, and how much tolerance for potential BS regarding any one of them is something I want to know of before I can really put it on the board. But here’s what I’m thinking:

The most likely thing to address is the Creator Crownie tier. I’ve recently spent the last few days consulting with those who are members right now, and after passing through the possibilities with all of them, I’m strongly inclining to the idea that once this term is complete, this monthly, Patron-specific reward will be retired, and I will instead be returning to doing on-demand commissions. Not only do I (and the fellow Creator Crownies) believe this will be better for my workload, as well as the patience of viewers who don’t want to wait 6 months for a bulk of comics at once, but I also believe it will be better for the quality of the comics themselves as I will no longer need to be constrained by the 6-panel structure, and I might return to doing more experimental and dynamic comic commissions (all at roughly the same collective price for a full comic).

I know that there’s a lot of people who have expressed interest in commissioning me for the last year or so, and I’ve always been disappointed to have to turn them down and redirect them to Patreon for something to change. I look forward to rectify this by finally opening the gates again rather than keeping it in this rigid monthly format. I’ll still be figuring out what to do with the $40 tier though (and the $25 tier for that matter) -- perhaps if you join either, you may be compensated with a discount for any separate commissions, though that’s a matter of specifics we’ll address when we get to that bridge. Perhaps that may actually also influence my queue if I end up getting multiple proposals for commissions at once, I’ll prioritize those who are subbed to the tier, perhaps? Just a random thought haha

Speaking of competition, I am strongly considering reworking the Character Crownie tier for monthly sketches. I feel like the inherently built-in nature of having to fight for other peoples’ ideas for the 4 sketch slots turns people off, especially with the $15-per-month entry fee. I’m trying to think of solutions to make sketches more of a guarantee as to definitively reward people for their support through a premium tier, while also remaining feasible for me to accomplish, though admittedly this is giving my brain a bit of a hangup because this is very “hm.” Something I feel I WON’T do is raise the prices, but if you have any ideas on what kinds of ways to work around this might be, I’m all ears.

Lastly, I may also make some adjustments regarding the monthly project, less in terms of function (I still REALLY want to give yall opportunities to be involved in suggesting and voting for ideas), more in terms of direction over what kind of content I want to pursue and do per month. While I don’t think I would mind continuing doing assorted TGTF comics per month as per suggestions (especially since like, half of the options per month are my own lol), I’m thinking about how possible and likely it is what we can look to comics concepts that have been sitting in my backburner for a while (hey hey hashtag-tg-ideas yeah?).... or hell, maybe even find a way to integrate my non-TG concepts in there for once. Maybe voting might be a matter of not just a comic subject, but perhaps just a general small concept to pursue each month, like “work on an animation” or “pursue that one particular idea you proposed a bit ago” or “draw concept art for that project you’re talking about”, that kinda thing. Again, I’m spitballing here, lemme know if that’s something you wanna see!

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So... that’s a lot. I probably should have made this more concise as to not make people even more confused as to what’s actually happening, but hopefully I’ve illustrated at least the insane mountain going in my mind that can provide some sense of the chaos I’m working through, haha. I’m optimistic about my future and eager to find solutions to make me, you, everyone happy, and I hope that whatever I’ve laid out here interests you, and I look forward to seeing what you have to say about it. Your generosity, patience, honesty, and thoughtfulness are all duly noted, and I humbly appreciate everything you’ve done to support me even through this, and I look forward to better properly rewarding you for it. Thank you very much!