State of the Artist Dec 2016

I'd like to start this off by hoping everyone had a good weekend.

And I'd like to repeat my thanks and gratitude for everyone's support over this past year.

I've really enjoyed the art I've been making for the reward-commissions, but I must confess I've actually been putting a lot more work into them than I intended for the price I was charging, as well as ignoring what I normally allow for a wing-it.

The intent was to offer simple on-going wing-it commissions at a discount, but at this point I realise it was too much discount for the effort I've been putting in. I've already raised the price once, and I'd prefer not to do it again. I had briefly considered shutting down this Patreon completely but instead, for now, I will just be removing the Commission Tiers. I had been planning to remove a lot of the more expensive and unclaimed tiers by now but had been leaving them up to catch Scraper-robots (since they tended to go for the most or second most expensive available tiers).

But since I first joined, Patreon has made a lot of improvements and changes this year to help prevent fake Patrons and Scraper-robots... and it's been really effective!

More effective than myself; I've been frequently over-whelmed by my older backlog of owed art, which hasn't really gone away and at some points seems to get bigger and has been haunting me while I try to keep up with newer art. My plan originally was to work on Patreon art for a week or two and then work on older owed art... but I kept finding myself needing or wanting money for one thing or another, necessitating taking on additional commissions... and the older some commissions have gotten, the harder it has been to feel motivated to spend the time needed to complete them - which is an awful mindset and one I really struggle against.

Admittedly, one of the bigger on-going bills SHOULD be cleared up by now (or soon, once I can get hold of someone to cancel an auto-renew I didn't want)... but I've had more than a handful of folks waiting on their much older commissions take note of the newer and more regular Patreon commissions and, rightfully, inquire on the status of the art owed to them. I really need to hunker down and work on these images; it's going to be hard and if I want to get them done sooner than later I'm not going to have time for my Patreon Commissions.

I might offer some slightly cheaper than regular-price black&white reward commissions here in the upcoming months, once I've decided on how much of a discount. I plan to make any adoptables available here first, and ideally also at a discount. I will continue to upload personal art here first as often as possible.

I will also be adjusting the existing none-commission tiers, mostly redefining or clarifying what's being offered... probably get rid of the $10 tier completely.

And maybe, jsut maybe, I'll finally get started on my comic... or possibly, doodles taking place in the world of my comic, at the very least, to get used to the setting and the folks in it.

I hope to resume art-streams, but probably not commission-streams until the back-log is whittled down a bit more. Might even offer private streams, but not 100% sure on that.

TLDR;

*Removing Commission-Reward tiers indefinitely

*Restructing non-commission tiers to better reflect what is being offered

*Refocussing on older owed commissions

*Removing the $10 tier because I didn't really do anything with it

*More personal sketches/comic prep

*More streams, possibly exclusive for Patrons

*Maybe set up a public Discord account/channel next year for more direct communication?

I still have 3 Patron commissions to get to, which will likely be completed next week/year.

I think that covers it.

Thank you, again and again, for your support.

The future is... going to be quite strange, and different, but I hope to make further changes that lead to improvements during it, and that I see you all again in some form or another. Let's work on making a great 2017 for each other.

If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to contact me in the method you find most comfortable.