April Update

Hello Patrons!  The last 2 weeks a ton of things changed for me and I thought I'd give an update on the going ons of the studio.

Creative-wise, I've been doing freelance character animation, VR art, oil painting, Polaroid shoots, linocut and comics.  I also published 2 more books, wrote a bunch of new music and collaborated more with Alina and filmed/ released multiple tutorial courses.  I'm not really on any social media so as far as the world writ large is concerned I'm not doing anything at all!

Work-wise, the school year is starting to wind down and while I spend the 2019-2020 school year getting back into the public school system as a paraprofessional, re-upping my certification with the aim of being a high school art teacher and having a comfortable steady job, it just didn't happen.  A similar thing happened in 2008-2009 when I did all my student teaching and tried to get an art teacher gig, only to have the economy collapse and no new jobs appear. 

Bizarrely though, I just got 2 new freelance jobs where I'm actually on a payroll, one for a non-profit martial arts school in Ohio I did some animation for last year and the other for a staffing agency that does creative gigs- for example, 360 photos of an office building in my city of Chandler.  The karate school got a government grant and is able to spend it towards a year's worth of animation, and I'm also training other people how to do fitness workshops online.  

This, along with several other adaptations like our home gym, implementing government assistance programs, modifying bills, and boosting all my e-commerce, means we ended up in a better position than a lot of creatives and I wanted to say this as a boost to anyone out there who isn't sure how to adapt to the "new normal".  For example:

Arizona has programs to help local artists- is there one that could work for you wherever you are?

creative jobs that previously asked you show up and clock in at offices now are available to anyone to work remotely - this opens up the number of creative gigs immensely.

Do you have specialized knowledge you could film at home or screen record yourself doing and put out there?

Do you have an archive of images you can now focus on exploiting through your own Patreon/ OnlyFans/ publications/ print sales etc.?

If you have acting skill, have you looked into voice acting sites like Voice Realm, Voices.com etc.?

Before I jumped off social media, I saw a lot of the people doing the same things as before as if it were sustainable or nothing had changed.  But everything's changed.  There's a really eye-opening article about concerts and how Fall 2021 is realistically the next time concerts/ festivals are a viable thing- that all the bands who were living this "live performance is how you make money" life that happened after the Mp3 revolution killed album sales now gotta figure out something else entirely.  

Anyways, hope you are all well!  I just sent out the rewards for $20+ members for April, unless I don't have your address in which case I can't send ya anything until you give it to me!